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.”

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.

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.

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.

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?”

Dr. John Henry Cook III hadn’t meant to appear bare-chested on Sylvia Rosemarie Auton’s iPhone when he called her for a chat last July. It was 7:45 a.m., and Cook, who was home alone with his dog in Leesburg, Va., was having trouble facing the day.

“I was lying in the bed my wife had died in,” he said. “I was feeling busted by sorrow, and I just wanted to talk to Sylvia.” An accidental push of the FaceTime button sent more than his voice through the ether.

Auton, who was visiting her daughter at the time in Phoenix, Md., was taken aback.

“He said, ‘Good morning, Love,’” she recalled. “I was stunned.” She was equally stunned a day later when, hours after their first kiss, he proposed.

Auton, 85, and Cook, 90, first met in May 2011, when Auton and her late husband, Forrest Hanvey, became patients at Cook’s concierge medical practice in Leesburg. Hanvey, who died in 2024, had known Cook since the 1950s, when both were midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy. A friendly relationship between the former classmates soon extended to their wives, Auton and Agnes diZerega Cook, whom friends knew as Di.

Both couples would routinely see each other at U.S.N.A. alumni events, and after Cook retired from medicine in 2017, they met up occasionally for group lunches with Navy friends.

“I got to know Di, who was a wonderful watercolor artist and wonderful person,” Auton said. When Di died in April 2025 of cardiac arrest, the friendship between the two surviving spouses deepened.

Auton is an author and educator. Before she moved to Fairfax, Va., in 1969 with her first husband, a nuclear physicist named David Auton, she lived in Chicago, where she grew up. Her bachelor’s degree in mathematics and master’s in mathematics education are from the University of Chicago. Her doctorate in mathematics education and statistics is from the University of Maryland.

Auton and David, who died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 2003, raised a daughter, Alyson Russo, now an anesthesiologist at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the mother of Auton’s two grandsons, ages 6 and 2. The Autons also had a son, Timothy Lee, who died in 2014.

Auton taught in Chicago classrooms before she was promoted to her first position in educational leadership in the late 1970s. In 2005, she retired as director of staff development for Fairfax County Public Schools.

Auton now teaches personal finance classes at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, part of George Mason University. She also advises women on beginner stock market and investment strategies.

Her advice extends to navigating romance and relationships, too. “The Last Embrace: Caregiving for a Beloved Spouse,” a self-published 2025 book, was written after she spent a protracted period caring for Hanvey, who died after a fall at home in Fairfax Station. “The Wondrous Embrace: Finding Love in the Sunset Years,” also self-published in 2025, is meant to inspire hope among older people who may be souring on the chances of finding love.

Auton met Hanvey when she was well into her 60s and he was 70 in January 2005. They married the same year, in September. “One thing I do not want is for anyone to feel discouraged,” when it comes to love or otherwise, she said.

Before Cook earned his medical degree from Yale, he was a Polaris submarine commander in the U.S. Navy. During the Cold War, he served in nuclear submarines. He married Di in 1957, the day after he graduated from the Naval Academy.

Military service had been a Cook family legacy. His father was a Marine first lieutenant; he was born at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. With Di, he had a daughter, Elizabeth, and two sons, John and Harrison. His five grandchildren range in age from 24 to 30.

When Hanvey was declining in 2024, Auton wasn’t always certain she understood his needs. In those moments, she would ask Hanvey if he wanted to talk with someone else. “Invariably, it would be, ‘I want to talk with Jack,’” she said. Cook picked up the phone every time.

On May 17, 2025, Cook held a memorial for Di at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Leesburg, where they had married almost 70 years earlier. Soon after she died, Auton sent the family a condolence card and tucked a printout of the 1934 poem “Immortality,” by Clare Harner, inside. “I thought it might comfort Jack,” she said.

At the memorial, he told her how much he liked it. But Auton knew his grief was of a depth poetry could do little to assuage. “I saw the pain he was in,” she said.

Less than two weeks later, she was surprised when he texted her a handwritten poem. “He had taken the original poem I sent him and created a poem as if Di were reading it to him,” she said. “I was so taken with that I sent a poem back to him as though Forrest were writing to me.” Both poems touched on how they shouldn’t feel alone, how their spouses’ spirits wouldn’t leave them.

Auton was planning a June 2025 celebration of life for Hanvey at the time. “Jack had done such a wonderful job with Di’s, I asked him if he would come over and look at my ideas,” she said. Over lunch, the effects of his loss were as apparent as they had been at the memorial for Di.

“He was still zombielike with grief,” she said. Compassion and a sense of hopefulness about helping him through his pain led to a shift toward tender new feelings.

On June 29, as Cook was leaving the celebration of life for Hanvey, he bent down to hug her and whispered “I love you” in her ear. “What was astonishing is that, without a moment of hesitation, I responded ‘I love you, too,’” she said.

The next morning, he sent her a text message: “Bravo Zulu,” a Navy term for “well done.” She asked herself if his declaration of love at the service meant little more than appreciation for the celebration honoring his friend.

They didn’t speak again until July 11, when Auton was preparing to get in the shower at her daughter’s house and Cook was shirtless and in bed. Auton checked that only her face was visible when she answered the early morning call. They hung up with a plan to meet for lunch the next day, at Auton’s house in Fairfax Station.

“At 1 o’clock, there he was, holding a mini orchid plant” as a gift, she said. “He stepped into the foyer, stepped into my arms and gave me a long, deep kiss.” Two hours later, on a deck overlooking a lake on the property, he proposed.

At the memorial for Hanvey, Cook’s feelings for Auton had taken him by surprise. “When you’ve been in a long-term, loving marriage, you always have your feelers out” for your spouse, he said. When the spouse dies, “those feelers that had been intertwined wither away.” For Cook, maintaining hope that they would one day regenerate and intertwine with someone else had been a challenge.

But “the moment I kissed her, it’s almost like I put the key in the lock,” he said. “My life started again.”

On May 9, Cook and Auton married at St. James’ Episcopal Church. Rev. Chad Martin officiated a traditional Christian ceremony for 90 guests.

Auton wore a dusty rose ankle-length dress from her closet — the same dress she had worn to marry Hanvey. “It brought back loving memories,” she said. Cook wore a dark gray suit with a multicolored tie and his trademark red socks. Both had entered the church from a side door, then sat in chairs arranged in front of the altar, standing only to say their vows.

“At our age, stability is an issue,” Auton said. “I wobble well, but I didn’t want to wobble up a long aisle.”

After a kiss to mark the start of their married life and a careful recess to the church parish for a buffet lunch, they reflected on the resilience of the heart.

“Even if the days ahead are few, both of us would like others to have hope for the future,” Auton said. Since he and Auton fell in love, Cook said, “life has been delightful.”

“Beauty and music surround us all,” he added. “If you listen for it, you’ll hear it. If you don’t, you’ll miss it.”

On This Day

When May 9, 2026

Where St. James’ Episcopal Church, Leesburg, Va.

Church Finest The reception in the church parish was catered by Tuscarora Mill, a local restaurant whose owner Cook has known for years. On the menu were prime rib and roast chicken. The lively spring décor, including bright florals, pink napkins and white tablecloths, had been set up by the church sexton and came as a surprise to Auton. “People came up to us to say they had never seen the church look so lovely,” she said.

A Past Worth Preserving Cook will move into Auton’s home in Fairfax Station. He recently sold the 16-acre Leesburg farm he and Di lived on for over 40 years, known as Historic Rock Spring, to the City of Leesburg, to be used as a park. “It was important to Di that the land be preserved,” he said.

Accidental Vintage Auton’s wedding dress was at least 21 years old, she estimated, and Cook’s suit was more than 30. “We were not in today’s fashions by any means,” she said, unapologetically.

Gratitude The day after the wedding, Auton and Cook sent thank-you emails and texts to each of their guests. “At 85 and 90, we wake up each day with a sense of profound thanks-giving: for you, for our health and for the joy of hoping to continue to be of value in this world,” they wrote. They signed their first correspondence as husband and wife with, “Many thanks from two wrinkly, creaky, wobbly but very grateful people.”