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Eating Healthy? No, They’re Eating Biblically.

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Eating Healthy? No, They’re Eating Biblically.

Kayla Bundy likes to start her day with a cup of bone broth.

She buys her milk raw, snacks on sardines, eats authentic sourdough bread — no commercial yeasts here — and generally cooks with locally-sourced ingredients. On TikTok, where she has over 500,000 followers, she claims that her diet “fixed” her skin, her hair and her depression, and she sells coaching sessions to help others with their diets.

Bundy, a 27-year-old Christian content creator, might sound like your run-of-the-mill clean-eating type, but she believes her diet to be part of a higher calling. For eight years, she has been a biblical eater, someone who consumes mostly foods mentioned in the Bible. She is part of a niche but dedicated online community trying to tie religious values to dietary needs.

In an era when the Make America Healthy Again movement has pushed for more access to unpasteurized dairy products, stricter boundaries around ultraprocessed foods and new definitions for what counts as healthy food, alternative diets focusing on simpler foods are finding popularity, even when their proponents don’t actively consider themselves part of the MAHA movement. Add to that the growing numbers of GLP-1 users struggling to eat enough protein, and biblical diets can offer an appealing repackaging of certain age-old diet tenets. (The new acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, who assumed his role on Tuesday, is also a vocal champion for policies to remove chemicals from the food supply.)

“I had never really thought to look to the Bible for a recipe book,” Bundy, who grew up in Michigan and now lives in Bali, said, but after cutting out refined sugar made her feel good, she said, she started “studying scripture from that lens of noticing what they are eating.”

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She added: “Sin entered into the world through food, and Satan doesn’t stop there. Food, for me, is really like a weapon of how I can fight back.”

Bundy is open about not having nutrition credentials, but she sells a $28 digital guide to biblical superfoods, as well as coaching sessions that start around $700 for a month, she said.

She’s not the only one. Like other health food influencers, the biblical eating proponents with popular accounts often sell products.

Annalies Xaviera, a stay-at-home mom who lives in Gainesville, Ga., and posts biblical eating tips, said her Facebook following had jumped from scant thousands to over 300,000 in just a few weeks this spring. She sells a digital cookbook.

“The Bible says that God appreciates and celebrates small steps of obedience,” said Xaviera, 32, who added that she did not consider herself part of the MAHA movement, but that some of its goals, like removing artificial dyes from foods, aligned with her own preferences.

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She said her approach boiled down to eating whole foods and cooking meals at home. She still buys some processed foods, like pasta.

Eating biblically — which can mean strictly sticking to the good book’s ingredients, cooking from scratch or anything in between — is not new. “The Eden Diet,” a 2008 book, offered weight loss and nutrition tips rooted in biblical teachings. The author Jordan Rubin’s 2004 book “The Maker’s Diet” was a best seller (as was his recent book “The Biblio Diet,” coauthored with Josh Axe, a supporter of the MAHA movement, and published last year).

For years, some Christians have also participated in “Daniel fasts,” 21-day fasts based on the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament, in which Daniel consumes only vegetables and water. (There’s also, of course, the long tradition of religious diets, such as keeping kosher or halal, or following a Levitical diet. Jesus, himself, presumably kept kosher.)

On social media, however, biblical eating has appeared to have a resurgence in recent months.

A few years ago, the actor Chris Pratt talked about completing a Daniel fast when he was on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” In January, as part of his partnership with the prayer app Hallow, he posted a video encouraging his followers to use the app to participate in a fast and prayer challenge. The bean-heavy fast had made him quite gassy, he said with a laugh. Other celebrities, including Mark Wahlberg and Patricia Heaton, have been part of similar efforts with the app.

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Casper Schimmer, a college student in Amsterdam, said he sold coaching sessions for young, Christian men looking to align their diet and exercise with their faith.

“It’s not like eating healthy only is what makes a godly person,” Schimmer, 20, said. He said he also focused on physical and mental fitness as part of a larger system of “godly habits.” (For example, sabbath as the “original biohack.”)

Jennifer R. Ayres, a religious education professor at Emory University, said the biblical food movement online seemed to show “a focus on personal decision making.” She added that “the more collective and environmental analysis of what’s happening in our food system” is missing from some of the social media dialogue.

Abbie Stasior, a Christian dietitian who lives in Nashville, said much of her work looked, at first, like standard nutrition guidance. She often starts with clients by talking about the importance of breakfast. But then she’ll reference Bible verses, pointing, for example, to a scene in the Book of John in which Jesus eats a balanced breakfast of bread and fish with his disciples. “He’s got carbs and protein,” Stasior, 31, said.

Tying dietary counsel to scripture offers “an extra incentive,” Stasior said.

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When it comes to meeting nutrition needs, Dr. Marion Nestle, one of the country’s foremost nutrition policy experts, said that if people on the biblical diet consume ample calories and eat “a wide variety of relatively unprocessed foods,” they are “probably doing just fine.”

She also described how wellness culture had been colliding with policy.

“The thing about wellness is that it’s based on personal experience rather than science — it’s what makes you feel good,” Nestle said, adding: “Diet is about belief. We don’t have a lot of belief systems left in this country. People are desperate for meaning in their lives.”

Xaviera, the stay-at-home mother in Georgia, said she encouraged her followers to pause before eating, describing a person who might be deciding whether to eat a cookie.

“When you’re in a craving,” she said, “have you ever thought to stop and pray?”

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They were world-class tennis rivals. Now friends, they’ve teamed up against cancer

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They were world-class tennis rivals. Now friends, they’ve teamed up against cancer

Once rivals on the tennis court, Martina Navratilova, left, and Chris Evert have become close friends in retirement. They are pictured above at the French Open in 1986.

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Trevor Jones/Getty Images Europe

Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova were the most successful women’s tennis champions of their generation. Both were 18-time Grand Slam tournament winners — and each other’s greatest rivals.

Evert, a Florida native, became a tennis star in her teens. Navratilova was born in communist Czechoslovakia, and emerged as a player after Evert was established. They first faced off during a match in Akron, Ohio, in 1973, when Evert was 18, and Navratilova was 16. Evert won, but Navratilova left an impression.

“I remember thinking to myself, holy cow, when this young girl gets into better shape, she is going to be a force to be reckoned with,” Evert says. “She had so much talent. Her hands were quick, she had a big first serve, she had a big forehand, and she just was so powerful.”

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Two years later, on the day she lost a semifinals match to Evert at the U.S. Open, Navratilova defected to the U.S. In the years that followed, her tennis game improved. Though she and Evert had initially been friendly, the friendship cooled as their rivalry heated up.

“Playing Chris was difficult because how can you not like Chris? What’s not to admire?” Navratilova says. “She was like the epitome of cool.”

The new Netflix documentary Chris & Martina: The Final Set tells the story of how Evert and Navratilova re-established their friendship and how they both faced cancer in retirement. Evert was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2021; Navratilova was diagnosed with throat and breast cancer in 2022.

“I can’t get away from her,” Evert jokes. “We had a 15-year career, and then we got cancer at the same time. It really is freaky, but I always say: If I want someone to be in the trenches with me, it’s Martina because she has been so supportive and so understanding.”

Navratilova agrees: “We have such a level of trust that we know whatever we say to each other, it stays there. We give each other the best advice we know how to. And there is no ulterior motive, no playing games.”

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At the time that this interview was taped, Evert and Navratilova were both in remission from cancer. But late last week, Evert disclosed she’d recently been diagnosed with a recurrence of ovarian cancer.

Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova

“We know whatever we say to each other, it stays there,” Martina Navratilova says of her friendship with Chris Evert.

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Interview highlights

On supporting each other through cancer

Evert: There are a lot of phone calls between us. … I don’t cook, but Martina would bake bread for me, and her wife Julia would cook, make some chicken soup. … I got a lot of food from Martina. She got a necklace from me.

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Inside Hearts On Fire’s Plan For a New Era of Diamond Jewellery

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Inside Hearts On Fire’s Plan For a New Era of Diamond Jewellery
As Hearts On Fire celebrates its 30th anniversary, global president Rita Maltez unpacks the brand’s multi-year transformation from a diamond wholesaler into a fine jewellery specialist with a clear strategy to tap into the Asian market.
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3 World Cup rivals find ‘Common Ground’ in a cross-border beer

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3 World Cup rivals find ‘Common Ground’ in a cross-border beer

Headlands Brewing launched its World Cup-themed beer Common Ground ahead of the first World Cup game in June.

Justin Gellerson for NPR


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Justin Gellerson for NPR

The British betting company William Hill predicts that soccer fans will throw back more than 5 million pints of beer in stadiums and fan zones during this year’s World Cup. And that number doesn’t even account for the millions of pints being poured in bars as fans tune in to the global soccer event.

But while international soccer crowds are focusing on goals and penalties, a trio of craft breweries from the tournament’s three host nations are using the tournament to brew something increasingly rare: cross-border solidarity.

A shared recipe with local spin

The collaboration began months ago over a flurry of video chats and emails. The beermakers at Rey Árbol Brewing Co. in Mexico, Headlands Brewing in the United States, and Cabin Brewing Co. in Canada set out to design a single, unified recipe representing the brewing traditions of all three nations.

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“It’s a Mexican lager,” said Alejandro Gomez, founder of Rey Árbol.

“That’s like a West Coast IPA,” said Ryan Frank, chief operating officer and brewmaster for Headlands.

“And up in Canada, most of our beers are hop driven,” said Haydon Dewes, co-founder of Cabin. “So we thought, let’s go for a dry-hopped Mexican lager.”

While all three breweries share the exact same recipe, each is giving the final product a distinct local spin, including unique, regionally designed labels. A four-pack of the U.S version costs $15.99. Frank said Headlands has produced about 130 cases of the limited-run brew.

Headlands Brewing COO and Brewmaster Ryan Frank drinks a Common Ground beer in Berkeley, Calif. on June 11.

Headlands Brewing COO and brewmaster Ryan Frank drinks a Common Ground beer in Berkeley, Calif., on June 11.

Justin Gellerson for NPR

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For the brewers, however, the project is less about marketing and more about connection: They named the multinational beer “Common Ground.”

“When I go to California or Canada, they will treat me like family,” Gomez said.

“It makes the world feel so much smaller,” said Dewes.

“It’s about building bridges and knowing what’s important in life,” said Frank. “And for us, that’s soccer and beer.”

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