The "Off Grid Diet"

In the Old Testament, Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. While wondering in the desert, God provided them with manna. In Exodus God commands the Israelites not to keep the manna, but eat only that which was collected that day. Storage of manna was prohibited except for the day of Shabbat.  This part of scripture has been used many times as a lesson of “waste not, want not”*.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manna

http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/4/messages/1216.html

This meaning that if one does not waste, one will not be lacking in food, things or prosperity.  The lesson here is that if one finds ways of not wasting what one has, one will not suffer from it. With food as with anything, waste is a problem in many ways. It is economically detrimental, socially unacceptable in many areas of the world, and mostly it is just stupid to throw away that which could have been used. Thus, butter keepers allow butter to not go to waste.  But the lesson of Moses is that one should also not hoard those things which will waste away. Use what you need and look not to keep those things that are good only for a short time.

But with refrigeration, food can be kept for long periods of time. Compulsion to consume that food can become prevalent. Again though not THE only source nor even a main reason why, a refrigerator allows you to keep larger amounts of food available. That access to larger amounts of food can and has been a contributor to over eating. You eat it because your ________... (Fill in the blank.)  You go to the fridge, get some food and eat. Do this enough times because of whatever reason and in a short period of time you’ve gained enough weight to put you in the over weight and/or the obese category.

It is a short and not very convincing argument, granted. I do not advocate “smaller fridges” nor elimination of fridges. This is an observation made when after a week of removing food that was spoiling; I realized that the amount we had purchased and kept was far above what we actually consumed. Cleaning out the fridge because of no electricity simply put into perspective the amount of food we had purchased and more importantly, the amount we were actually consuming. Thus the amount we were WASTING!  The reality was simple, without the refrigeration, we did not spend as much on food, nor on frozen foods which contain many of the very harmful preservatives and chemicals that are detrimental to our health. So without realizing it, no electricity translated to: A new Diet!!!   THE Off GRID Diet!