Our Legacy
So, this happened.
In a recent Netflix documentary titled You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment, the Seventh-Day Adventist Church received an honorable mention.
Without further context, some might wonder: how does a church become a part of national conversations about health and the future of the food industry?
The Beginning
The answer might astound you. And it dates back to the 1800s with a visionary woman named Ellen White.
As early as 1863, Ellen White urged her community about the importance of conducting a healthy lifestyle. A co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, she also sustained that a relationship existed between physical and spiritual health.
Ellen White's work paved the way for the Seventh-day Adventist health reform and had lasting results. She authored over 20 books in her lifetime, and even before medical evidence emerged, she spoke out against the dangers of alcohol consumption, using arsenicals for medicinal purposes, and smoking tobacco.
Starting in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the SDA Church led an anti-smoking initiative that eventually became the Breathe Free 2 program. It continues to impact people today, operating in multiple countries, in-person and virtually.
Eventually, the Adventist lifestyle and its results on health started gaining more public awareness. Here are a few notable mentions throughout the years:
TIME Magazine
On October 28, 1966, TIME Magazine shared that, even though Seventh-Day Adventists in Southern California suffer from the same diseases as other Californians, Adventist men live longer, with only one-fourth as much lung disease as their non-Adventist neighbors. The author of the article called it the "Adventists' Advantage."
The Blue Zones
In the November 2005 issue of National Geographic, Dan Buettner wrote about how residents in certain parts of the world have increased their life expectancy through healthful living. One of these regions is Loma Linda, CA, where the Seventh-day Adventist institution Loma Linda University Health resides. Buettner later published the bestseller The Blue Zones, including Loma Linda and its Seventh-day Adventist community as one of the five regions whose residents lead exceptionally healthy lifestyles and live actively into their 100s.
National Geographic
On October 2011, National Geographic published a photo gallery titled "Blue Zone Photos: Seventh-Day Adventists in California," portraying individuals of all ages living active and healthy lifestyles. One of the photos features Marion Westermeyer, a 94-year-old who swam every day, emerging from a pool in Loma Linda.
The Adventist Lifestyle
The Adventist way to live is ultimately rooted on biblical principles of healthful living. However, the lifestyle can be summarized with the acronym New Start, which encapsulates the teaching of the 8 natural remedies.
