Fasting is Greater Than Medicine
There are some who would be benefited more by abstinence from food for a day or two every week than by any amount of treatment or medical advice. To fast one day a week would be of incalculable benefit to them.
- Counsels on Diet and Foods, p.190
For certain things, fasting and prayer are recommended and appropriate. In the hand of God they are a means of cleansing the heart and promoting a receptive frame of mind. We obtain answers to our prayers because we humble our souls before God.
- Counsels on Diet and Foods, p. 189
Persons who have indulged their appetite to eat freely of meat, highly seasoned gravies, and various kinds of rich cakes and preserves, cannot immediately relish a plain, wholesome, and nutritious diet.
Their taste is so perverted they have no appetite for a wholesome diet of fruits, plain bread, and vegetables. They need not expect to relish at first food so different from that which they have been indulging themselves to eat.
If they cannot at first enjoy plain food, they should fast until they can. That fast will prove to them of greater benefit than medicine, for the abused stomach will find that rest which it has long needed, and real hunger can be satisfied with a plain diet.
It will take time for the taste to recover from the abuses which it has received, and to gain its natural tone. But perseverance in a self-denying course of eating and drinking will soon make plain, wholesome food palatable, and it will soon be eaten with greater satisfaction than the epicure enjoys over his rich dainties.
- Counsels on Diet and FoodsCD 158.3
The True Fasting which should be recommended to all, is abstinence from every stimulating kind of food, and proper use of Wholesome, simple food, which God has provided in abundance
- Counsels on Food and Diet P. 188
The sick have their lesson to learn. They must be denied those preparations of food that would retard or prevent their recovery to health. They must learn the science of self-denial, eating simple food prepared in a simple way. They should live much in the sunlight, which should find its way to every room of the building. Lectures on health topics should be given. These lectures will open the blinded understanding, and truths never before thought of will be fastened on the mind.
--Letter 63, 1905.
"Intemperate eating is often the cause of sickness, and what nature most needs is to be relieved of the undue burden that has been placed upon her. In Many cases of sickness, the very best remedy is for the patient to fast for a meal or two that the overworked organs of digestion may have an opportunity to rest. A Fruit Diet for a few days has often brought for few days has often brought great relief to BRAIN workers. Many times a short period of entire abstinence from food, followed by a simple, moderate eating, has lead to recovery through nature's own recuperative effort"
- Counsels on Food and Diet, p. 189