Following Daniel's example of eating and drinking to the glory of God... it's NOT by doing a Daniel fast

Right before my family moved away from New Jersey two years ago, the church we attended there dedicated a few sermons in their current sermon series to discussing health. The pastor was a fairly fit, health-conscious guy, so I believe he was happy to do this.

As part of the sermon sub-series, the church held a Daniel fast for anyone who wanted to join. For many churches, the Daniel fast is a way to promote health and wellness Biblically. All too often, it’s the only thing they ever do.

I want to examine here if the Daniel fast is the best way for churches to tackle health and wellness, and what may be a better way.

First, let’s look at where the Daniel fast comes from. The modern Daniel fast is based on Daniel 10:2-3, which records Daniel in a period of mourning:

In those days I, Daniel, was mourning for three weeks. I ate no delicacies, no meat or wine entered my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all, for the full three weeks.

Daniel was a Jewish noble exiled to Babylon since his youth by King Nebuchadnezzar and selected for royal service. It’s not entirely clear what Daniel was in mourning for, but it probably involved the lack of Jews who had returned from exile with the prophet Ezra or the opposition Ezra faced in rebuilding the temple.

Some commentators have pointed out that this should not actually be called a fast, since in every instance in the Bible, a fast is considered to be complete abstinence from food.

Regardless, the modern Daniel fast is usually followed for twenty-one days like Daniel’s period of mourning, but it’s also promoted based on the success Daniel and his friends has eating a similar diet, as recorded in Daniel 1:11-16:

Then Daniel said to the steward… “Test your servants for ten days; let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king’s food be observed by you, and deal with your servants according to what you see.”So [the steward] listened to them in this matter, and tested them for ten days. At the end of ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king’s food.

Daniel’s “fast” during his period of mourning in Daniel 10 was likely based on the events recorded here, when Daniel was still a young boy recently brought into the king’s service. Daniel 1 probably occured about seventy years before the events of Daniel 10.

The “prophetess” Ellen G. White, one of the co-founders of the Seventh Day Adventist church, may have been the first to advocate following Daniel’s pattern of eating. She wrote and spoke extensively nd gave many prophecies about health and wellness, which the Seventh Day Adventist church is still known for promoting today. She encouraged Daniel’s vegetarian and kosher diet.

The Daniel fast as we know it today, however, was popularized in late-1990s or early-2000s in evangelical circles and Catholic churches which use it sometimes during lent.

While there is no one organization or person known for starting or dictating the rules of the Daniel fast, guidelines generally include a much longer list of foods to eat and avoid than what is listed in Daniel 10, but overall, follow the pattern of avoiding meat and animal products as well as other foods commonly considered “unhealthy” while promoting fruits, vegetables, and simple foods. It’s promoted as a healthy “reset”.

I want to make clear that I am not attempting to make any moral judgements about following a Daniel fast. It’s possible your church community is doing one together and it’s important you participate, or that it just helps you connect with the story of Daniel. But to examine if this is the best way for church groups to promote health, let’s look at more of the story in the book of Daniel.

Examining the Daniel fast

Earlier in chapter 1, verses 8-10 tell us:

Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank. Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself.And God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs and the chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, “I fear my lord the king, who assigned your food and your drink; for why should he see that you were in worse condition than the youths who are of your own age? So you would endanger my head with the king.”

There were probably two reasons Daniel and friends refused the king’s food and wine. First, it had not been prepared according to their law, and it may have been sacrificed to Babylonian false gods.

So they refused the foods in order to honor God, and trusted that He would protect them for their faithfulness.

But the steward over them was so worried that this diet would put them in a bad condition for their service that he feared for his life. It was only by God’s favor to Daniel that he agreed to it.

When Daniel requested this diet, it wasn’t because he was the first person to discover the health secrets of a vegetarian diet, it was because he trusted that by honoring God, He would provide for him.

And when this diet kept him healthy, it was a testament that His God was the one true God and was on his side.

There were three things that happened in the book of Daniel where Daniel and his friends should not have been protected, and when they supernaturally were, it was a witness to the pagan nation around them that their God was true: Daniel’s friends were thrown in the fiery furnace, Daniel was thrown into the lion’s diet, and Daniel and his friends ate a diet of nothing but vegetables.

If we were to ask, “What can we learn about a vegetarian diet from the book of Daniel?”, it should be that, "It takes a miracle of God to keep you healthy on a vegetarian diet”.

If a church promotes a Daneil fast, I think it’s great that they are trying to approach the topic of health somewhat, but following a Daniel fast thinking it’s healthy is a complete misinterpretation of Scripture.

What does it reveal if a Daniel fast is a church’s only solution to tackling health?

First, we need more in-depth interpretations of Scripture. A biblical approach to health is not about pulling out a few verses and taking them at face value with no context.

Second, the Daniel fast appeals to most modern approaches to nutrition. Whether someone believes that what makes food unhealthy is the meat, sugar, carbs, fat, saturated fat, “unhealthy” fats, or whether they ascribe to veganism, plant-based, Whole-30, or some general idea of “clean-eating”, the Daniel fast will meet them there.

The Daniel fast doesn’t have any well-established foundation for determining what makes food healthy or unhealthy. If we look at this list of foods again, we can even see that there are some contradictions.

While the guidelines recommend avoiding “solid fats”, it also encourages coconut oil, which is, of course, a solid fat. If the problem with solid fats is that they are saturated (the saturation of carbon atoms with bonds to hydrogen rather than less stable double bonds to each other in the fat molecules is indeed what makes them solid), then coconut oil indeed qualifies. It’s a highly saturated fat, just one that has been given a glow-up in alternative health circles in recent decades, largely thanks to the paleo diet.

The point is simply that the rules are basically based on modern, popular conceptions about what makes a healthy diet—and tries to reconcile a lot of them.

The third thing this reveals about many churches’ approach to health is that if this fast, promoted for twenty-one days, is the only thing they ever do about health, then a Biblical approach to health is not very demanding. It’s not asking anyone to make any great life changes.

What I propose a better approach could look like

First, churches need to be willing to take health a lot more seriously.

We need to recognize that we are facing a chronic health crisis as we have willing adopted modern foods and lifestyles that are slowly killing us.

There’s a lot that could be said about this, but I’m sure you already agree if you are here reading this.

You’ve probably already heard from churches a lot of the Biblical arguments I would make to argue this point, though:

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

We do not have the right to be poor stewards of God’s temples and things that are not our own.

You shall not murder. (Exodus 20:13)

The sixth commandment implies that God cares about physical life.

We know that our bodies will be resurrected—we can only speculate how—but they have some enduring, eternal value.

We know that God created a natural order to health and healing. We are not meant to just rely on supernatural healing or scientific innovations.

You’ve likely heard many of these arguments because Christians will use them to advocate for health—but usually only take it as far as smoking, drugs, and maybe extreme gluttony or… a Daniel fast.

It’s easy to talk about these things because they are socially acceptable and non-controversial. In the year of our Lord 2026, it is not contentious or surprising, and likely does not challenge anyone at your church, to say that smoking is bad and you should not do it.

The slide into antinomianism

What has happened is that over about the last one hundred years, churches have adopted more of a gospel-only approach where they have become less and less willing to talk about practical matters of everyday life.

This is partly because of popular, modern interpretations of eschatology and it’s partly because of the seeker-friendly approach many churches take where they so focused on getting unbelievers and nominal Christians in the door that they don’t want to challenge congregants on anything. I’m sure there are other reasons as well.

But the Bible is clear that it is supposed to apply to and change every area of our life.

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. (1 Corinthians 10:31)

We commonly think of things as either spiritual or secular, but whether it is education, clothing, artwork, entertainment—or health, none of these subjects are spiritually neutral.

God’s Word is the truth and if we aren’t using it as our foundation for approaching these subjects, then we are relying on other, spiritual, shaky foundations, that may or may not lead us to truth.

No spiritual neutrality: the meat-eating example

To illustrate this, let’s look at the example of meat-eating, since we are talking about Daniel fasts anyway.

It’ be easy to think that science alone should be enough to settle the question of “Is it healthy to eat meat or not?”

But first of all, science itself is spiritual. The scientific method should be an objective process of observation and testing to come to an unbiased conclusion, but in reality, the modern scientific community is governed by scientism, a belief system that is governed by certain unquestionable dogmas, notably that science is the only way of knowing truth and that all reality is material, which means God cannot exist, and God cannot therefore factor into any serious scientific conclusions. So all scientific “facts” are merely the most reasonable conclusion given the presupposition that God cannot exist.

Nutrition science is also incomplete. It is beyond the scope of this post to go into all the reasons for this (my book Eat by Faith goes into much more detail), but we wouldn’t have so much confusing, contradictory, constantly changing information about health and nutrition if science didn’t have so many challenges in this area.

How our culture formed its beliefs about meat-eating

The first historical examples of meat-avoidance come from Eastern religions like Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, which all include principles of non-violence and a spiritual connection to animals.

From there, we see many examples throughout history of meat-avoidance used for ascetic purposes. Asceticism means practicing self-denial to achieve righteousness, but the Bible warns against this:

Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind. (Colossians 2:18)

We cannot achieve righteousness through self-denial because we cannot earn righteousness ourselves. Even if we practice something like a fast, it is for the purpose of focusing on God and reminding ourselves of our reliance on God, not on making ourselves more righteous by eschewing worldly pleasures.

Humans have a great temptation to try to earn righteousness on our own however, including through asceticism, and meat is an easy target because it is such a filling, appetizing, valuable, and (historically considered) nourishing food.

Possibly the greatest influence on beliefs about meat-eating in Western culture came from the Seventh Day Adventist church, as mentioned earlier with Ellen G. White. They originally believed that meat and other fine foods led people into sexual sin. In service of this belief, this church has ended up having a massive influence on the foods available in grocery stores, what is taught in schools (from elementary to medical schools), government dietary guidelines, and even the science.

Vegetarianism has also historically had ties to movements like women’s suffrage, temperance, and New Age movements.

Now that vegetarianism has become more mainstream, what we see is attempts to support anti-meat ideas Biblically, like the Hallelujah Diet or Garden of Eden diet, which advocate a meat-free diet as the original, ideal diet of the Garden fo Eden, or the Daniel fast.

A more in-depth examination of Scripture gives a very different picture.

First, we are not meant to re-create the Garden of Eden. To strive towards avoiding sin, yes, but not to try to live the same way Adam and Even did in the very different, pre-fall world. We are no more meant supposed to try to eat the same way Adam and Eve did as we are supposed to try to dress the same way Adam and Eve did.

We see multiple instances in the Old Testament where meat was explicitly given as food (Genesis 9:3, Deuteronomy 12:15). We even see times where it was commanded to eat meat, such as in the instructions given for observing the Passover (Exodus 12:8).

We know that Jesus ate meat (Luke 24:42-43) and lived a perfect live that could not have been any more righteous.

A common modern belief is that we are essentially the same as animals, and therefore should treat them the same as humans. But the Bible teaches that we have been set apart from animals and given dominion over them:

And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth’. (Genesis 1:28)

Dominion doesn’t mean license to abuse and mistreat, it means God-glorifying stewardship that fosters a mutually beneficial relationship between us and creation, which can include raising animals for food.

And it turns out that a good use of science (because we absolutely can and should use science, just being careful of its pitfalls, limitations, and presuppositions) backs up the conclusion that meat is essential in a healthy diet (again, the details of this are beyond the scope of this post).

So if we’re going to follow the world, forming our opinions and standards with the foundation of a Biblical worldview, we’re taking our chances on the false spiritual ideas influencing cultures beliefs.

And a good biblical approach to health is not a surface-level approach of pulling selected verses out of the Bible and expecting they will conform with existing, cultural ideas and that they won’t really challenge us.

We should expect that a Biblical approach might lead us to unconventional conclusions. Even unconventional in the alternative health space. I teach some fairly unconventional conclusions in my book and I believe I lost at least one high-profile endorsement of my book over it, but I’m not shifting what I teach to appeal to more people.

We should expect that a Biblical approach might require a lot of us: real sacrifices, real changes, doing real counter-cultural things.

What this looks like practically

To wrap this up, let’s look at the tangible expression of everything we’ve been discussing.

My book goes into all the details of what I believe a thoroughly Biblical approach looks like to all areas of nutrition, but this is how I summarize it:

When we practice good dominion over creation by reading the book of nature, honoring God’s natural created order, and seeking mutually beneficial relationships that improve upon creation, we create healthy and enjoyable foods that we can trust our appetites with.

What most of this ends up looking like is a focus on food quality. It’s not about cutting out whole food groups or macronutrients. And it doesn’t start with assuming foods must be unhealthy if they taste good.

While I love getting into all the historic and scientific details of food quality and distinguishing helpful and unhelpful foods, what much of it comes down to is simply making your own food.

So what could this look like practically for churches?

I would say that churches, should, absolutely follow the example of Daniel. Daniel made great personal sacrifices, putting his life on the line, and took great risks, to honor God in everything he did—even what he ate and drank. He didn’t throw up his hands and say, “oh well, this is all the food that’s available to me, I’ll get weak and sick if I don’t eat it, so God will understand!”

But the practical details of what that looked like for Daniel are very different than what they look like for us. We are not held to Jewish dietary laws. What we face is a world where foods that remove all our connection to creation, don’t care for our bodies, and don’t exemplify glorifying stewardship of creation, are normal.

So first, churches must be willing to challenge their congregants.

When we have the truth, we should not expect to look like the rest of the world in terms of what we are doing or the results. And this will be a witness to the rest of the world.

We must be willing to say no more grocery store donuts in the reception hall after the church service every Sunday.

We must be willing to say that we are no longer going to give kids standard packaged, pre-made snacks in children’s church.

But this doesn’t mean someone couldn’t make these treats at home with high-quality ingredients and bring them to church to share. Remember, this isn’t an ascetic approach to nutrition.

Churches could encourage homemade foods from scratch at potlucks. (Cut fruit or cheese is OK—it doesn’t have to be complicated!)

Something my church does that I love, is that all the women take turns making the communion bread. Every week the bread is something new, unique, healthy, and tasty.

Home cooking is an easy thing for churches to promote, especially when we make the connection to the homemaking skills the Bible celebrates.

Older women likewise are to… teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. (Titus 2:3-5)

There’s a reason that real, whole foods and even RFK Jr’s agenda are a threat to feminists.

One of the reasons that vegetarianism was historically tied to women’s suffrage is that people saw cooking meat as one of the tasks that tied women to the home. We probably don’t think of it this way since, today, we can easily buy pre-made foods with meat in them, but a hundred years ago, preserving and cooking meat was far more complicated than, say, boiling a pot of beans.

Today what ties women to the home is simply scratch cooking in general. But churches shouldn’t be shy about what the Bible says about women’s roles, and therefore encouraging home cooking, because they are worried about offending career women.