BY D.C.-BASED CHEF SHEILA BROWN

In an ideal world, the food choices you make would be healthy, natural, delicious and pure (free from cruelty, genetic manipulations and environment toxicity). This would make it easy for your body to process the beautiful information they contain from the sun and turn into useful information that healed you from the cellular level. Just as important as the type of food you choose is, so is the person who prepares the meal for you to consume. Meaning, what you eat is just part of the equation. The other part is who prepared the meal for you to eat and how? Here I will describe what I believe has plagued the spiritual health of the black community for many years, and is only getting worse as the trends in fast food and junk food increase and negatively impact not only our physical, but spiritual health.

What is a Divinely Prepared Meal?

A divinely prepared meal, a term that I coined, refers to food that is made with pure intentions. This kind of meal plays an important role in a person’s health because when someone eats a meal that contains vital nutrients, tastes good, and is made at home by someone who cares; they are likely to feel completely satisfied and tend to not overeat. This is because a divinely prepared meal is meant to address the two sides of a person’s hunger. The first aspect of person’s hunger is clearly physiological, meaning it’s satisfied with the consumption of food. The other side is more esoteric in nature, but could be understood to mean that something else is responsible for addressing the remainder of a person’s hunger. That something is love. Perhaps you’ve heard your mother or grandmother say “The secret ingredient is love,” but there is research to support this. A study from the University of Maryland discovered that good intentions when cooking food can pacify pain and increase pleasure. This might be why you find yourself craving grandma’s cooking over those from eating out at restaurants.