You Are What You Eat

There is a little piece of advice I remember getting from time to time as a child; 'you are what you eat'. The advice as far as I have come to understand it was a warning against eating really fatty food because you would become a fatty person. Given the national obesity rates I would suspect that this advice was never really taken seriously. After all the aim of the advice was to get to people eat their vegetables, and skimp on the junk food. From my vantage point I count 5 fast food restaurants on the street I work.


But perhaps ignoring this advice is waning, at least amongst the overly conservative crowd in the USA. As it turns out here in Canada Campbell's mmm-mmm good soup is going Halal. This has promoted some to call for boycotts of all of Campbell's soup for fear that this act is a)somehow funding terrorists and b)will somehow convert your average God fearing Christian soup consumer Muslim.

This is almost too ridiculous to comment on. However if we don't denounce the lunacy of it all non-Christians will assume we speak with a united voice on this topic. On the first concern, I am sure there is some Muslim somewhere that has ties to extremists that will buy Campbell's soup now. But unless Campbell's starts air lifting cases of soup in to the mountains surrounding Afghanistan and Pakistan I will assume no effort on their part to feed the jihad.

But what about this other stranger fear, that somehow if I buy and consume this Halal soup I will be in danger of becoming a Muslim. This is the 'you are what you eat' warning to the extreme. First I want to point out that whether you buy or don't buy one of these 15 soups, you likely have Halal food in your home. To the best of my knowledge apples are Halal. I have a whole bunch of Halal apples in my fridge right now, and at no time have I ever found myself eating an apple and started thinking I should be Muslim.

I need to say that most rational people will look at this as just plan silly. Who cares if Campbell's wants to sell Halal soup. After all, they are only trying to expand their customer base. The real problem here is there are many well meaning Christians who are taking something this non-impacting issue so seriously at the same time as they take far too many very serious issues flippantly.

We need to stop caring whether Muslims can eat Campbell's soup, and start worrying about the people who have no soup, or any other food, to eat at all.