There is a saying that you are what you eat. Since what you eat is the basic material from which your body is formed, it is largely true. It is also true in our spiritual life. Changes in diet, either spiritual or physical, will drastically affect our health.

Mother's milk has everything the newborn needs to begin to grow. Before too long, however, the infant begins to need different levels of various nutrients for the development of various body functions. The diet needs to change accordingly. Various foods, even when very similar tend to have widely disparate nutrient values.

Modern society tends to like very tender meat so various ways of obtaining tender meat have developed. Many people like veal, rather than steak. True veal as developed in French cooking is illegal in the United States. It is produced by preventing a newborn calf from nursing for up to three days, then butchering it and serving. Because the calf has never exercised, nor eaten other food, living only on what was already in his system, the meat is nearly white and very tender. It has very little nutritional value. Because the practice is cruel, in the U.S. what is called veal is fed for the first few days before being butchered, but is prevented from moving around much. The meat is darker colored and slightly tougher because the animal has had nourishment, and has a lot more food value.

Animals who have been confined tend to be fatter and thus tenderer than those who get more exercise, so feed lots were developed where the cattle get less exercise and are fed richer foods that produce more fat. The meat from cattle finished in a feedlot, will have up to thirty percent less nutrient value, and up to fifty percent more fat in the meat than that of range cattle eating mostly grass, besides the layer of fat just under the skin. Older Navajos used to reject to tender meat because it didn't have any value.

Besides the way the animal has been raised, how the meat is cut and cooked makes a lot of difference in the level of nutrition. If the bone is left in the meat during cooking. calcium leaches into the surrounding meat, and can raise the calcium consumed by several times as much. Gnawing the bone, as when one eats ribs will raise the concentrations even more. The need for calcium supplements would largely be eliminated if people simply ate their meat with the bone still in.

Eating the ribs, and chewing the bones, however takes more effort than eating hamburger, or chopped steak, or veal cutlets however. The effort spent chewing strengthens the muscles, causes increased blood flow in the jaw and teeth. and increased calcium levels, resulting in healthier jaws and teeth.

Just as it takes more effort to eat ribs than to eat a hamburger or chopped steak, getting more nourishing spiritual lessons require greater effort to read and study the scriptures. The benefits outweigh the extra effort however. Just as I eat ribs periodically,because I enjoy them, As one acquires a taste for stronger spiritual food, he will come to prefer it.

Several times people have told me the book of Hebrews is too hard to understand. That is probably because they have never learned to chew their food. People who don't enjoy chewing get little value from eating ribs.

It is interesting to notice what the author of Hebrews calls strong meat. Hebrews 6:1-2 lists some baby food that he wants to wean them away from so that they can begin to grow again. Many thought those were strong meat.