The Heart Behind the Faithful Table

I’m Jacqueline, the face behind The Faithful Table. I want to take a few minutes to explain my heart and purpose behind this blog.

I’ve loved food for as long as I can remember, so taking a degree in Nutrition and Dietetics seemed like a great choice for me. After years of studying nutrition and then working as a nutrition coach, I have been trying to find the angle from which to talk about nutrition in a way that felt right to me. It seemed like the only options in the nutrition coaching world were to be an expert on a specific diet (vegan, keto, paleo, etc), a weight loss or meal planning coach, or take the intuitive eating route. While none of these “categories” are wrong, I didn’t feel like I fit neatly into any of them. I don’t follow any specific diets, I still enjoy eating sugar and fast food, and I also think that sometimes more structure is needed than just mindfulness when it comes to eating healthier. While I love helping people reach their goals with nutrition coaching, I felt that I wanted to do more than help people shed weight. We are much more than our weight and our physical appearance, so I started brainstorming. Other than wanting to keep the scientific aspect of nutrition relevant, I kept seeing nutrition through the lens of my faith in Jesus.

When I pursued this idea further, I could hardly find anyone talking about the connection with food and faith. God gave us food as a gift -- think about it, if all food was meant to do was give us energy, He didn’t have to make it so delicious. But He did! The Bible gives us advice on portions, celebrating with food, and gluttony. Eve ate forbidden fruit and we partake in communion with bread and wine to represent Jesus’ sacrifice. More Bible stories than not add in details about food and meals, and the need to eat is something that every human has in common. As these pieces started to come together in my mind, I knew this is an angle I wanted to share about.

I believe that the way our culture currently sees food is actually distracting us from our true calling on this Earth. Through the pursuit of becoming healthier or maintaining an image, I feel that our culture (specifically women) has become obsessed with food. I’ll be the first to admit that I love food and eating and cooking. What I mean by obsession is taking this gift of food that God has given us and twisting it to meet our culture's obsession with self. It’s either the perfect diet to help you lose weight or feel confident, or a wave of body acceptance that gives way to eating whatever you feel like at any given point. And while eating healthy, losing weight, or eating to satisfy cravings are not wrong at all on their own, we should not be looking to food to meet the need for acceptance and purpose that only Christ can offer.

More than just blog posts about the link between food and faith, I want to share delicious and beautiful recipes. Some healthy recipes and some not as healthy, but all using foods that God has created for us to enjoy. I hope these recipes can be enjoyed with loved ones, or as a way to love the people around you well.

Being physically healthy is a great goal, and something everyone should be mindful of pursuing. I want to help Christian women keep things in perspective though. Let’s first focus on becoming more like Jesus and take care of our spiritual health first and then tend to our physical health.