# Eat

Discover how the Mormon Transhumanist Association explores the sacred and scientific dimensions of eating, nourishment, and the future of human sustenance.

[Image: In Doctrine and Covenants 59:18-19, the Lord declares: “all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of man… to strengthen the body and enliven the soul."]

To eat is to consume food for the nourishment of the body. The Hebrew *‘akal* means to eat and also to consume, as fire consumes an offering, and the Greek New Testament usually uses *esthiō*. The first instruction given to the man in Eden concerns food: “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat,” with one tree excepted (Genesis 2:16-17). Because the Fall came through partaking of the forbidden fruit, a long strand of Christian devotion has treated appetite as the body’s most dangerous impulse, to be disciplined by fasting and seldom trusted. Restoration scripture treats the same act as part of the life God means to keep, in the garden, at the resurrection, and at a feast still to come.

## Flesh That Is Meat Indeed

It has long been recognized that the discourse on the bread of life in John 6 moves from manna to the flesh of the Son. Less often noticed is a change of verb partway through. From verse 54 the Gospel sets aside the ordinary verbs for eating and uses *trōgō*, a word that in older Greek described animals munching or gnawing: “Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:54). The point should not be pressed far, since *trōgō* had become a common verb by John’s day, yet the promise still ties the eating to the raising of the body at the last day, and many disciples found the saying hard enough to leave him.

## The Risen Lord at Table

[Image: In Luke 24:41-43 the risen Jesus asks for “meat” and eats broiled fish and honeycomb in front of the disciples.]

Latter-day Saints read the meals of the resurrection as evidence that eternal life is embodied life. While the disciples “yet believed not for joy,” the risen Jesus asked, “Have ye here any meat?” and when they gave him broiled fish and honeycomb, he “did eat before them” (Luke 24:41-43). Many interpreters have treated the meal as a concession to doubting witnesses. Restoration doctrine, which teaches that the Father and the Son have bodies of flesh and bone, reads it as a disclosure of what resurrection is. Indeed, scripture frames human history between two meals. The transgression in Eden brought death into the world, and Isaiah foresaw a reversal on God’s mountain, where the Lord of hosts would “make unto all people a feast of fat things” and “swallow up death in victory” (Isaiah 25:6, 8). The verb for swallowing, *bala’*, is a verb of eating, and scholars of the ancient Near East have noted that Canaanite poetry pictured Death as a devourer with an open throat; in Isaiah the devourer is itself devoured. The Restoration expects that feast to be literal, and in an 1830 revelation the Lord promises that “the hour cometh that I will drink of the fruit of the vine with you on the earth” (D&C 27:5).

## Food to Gladden the Heart

[Image: D&C 59:18-19 says earthly things are made to strengthen the body and enliven the soul.]

An 1831 revelation declares that the things of the earth are made “both to please the eye and to gladden the heart; Yea, for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body and to enliven the soul” (D&C 59:18-19). The Word of Wisdom adds that herbs and fruits in their season are “to be used with prudence and thanksgiving” (D&C 89:10-11). Read together, the two revelations make it clear that nourishment was never intended to be reduced to mere biological utility or austere asceticism, but was ordained as a means of strengthening the body and enlivening the soul.

## A Call for Moderation

[Image: A controlled trial at the National Institutes of Health found volunteers ate more calories per day with ultra-processed meals than with unprocessed meals matched for nutrients.]

By United Nations estimates, about 673 million people faced hunger in 2024, roughly one in twelve. In wealthier countries, the problem often runs the other way, and in a 2019 controlled trial at the National Institutes of Health, volunteers offered ultra-processed meals ate about 500 more calories a day than when offered unprocessed meals matched for nutrients. By late 2025, nearly one in five American adults reported having taken a drug such as semaglutide, which imitates a gut hormone and quiets hunger. Mormon transhumanists welcome such tools as means to strengthen the body and feed more people.

The moral hazard rests in the market incentives. Hyper-palatable food designed to override satiety turns human appetite into a commercial lever, and drugs marketed to restore self-restraint become a lucrative second commodity sold to remedy the initial excess.

A scripturally grounded approach to nourishment resists both the predatory engineering of hyper-palatable commodities and the clinical cynicism of corrective pharmaceuticals. To receive the fruits of the earth with prudence and thanksgiving is to honor the Divine Creator of all things.

*See also*: [Bread](/topical-guide/bread), [Charity](/topical-guide/charity), [Cultured Meat](/topical-guide/cultured-meat), [Edification/Education](/topical-guide/edificationeducation), [Health](/topical-guide/health), [Nature/Natural](/topical-guide/naturenatural), [Precision Fermentation](/topical-guide/precision-fermentation)