Our favorite lunch-date stop, Eden’s Smoothies near Atlanta. A Christian-owned shop we vetted before we ever brought the kids, because the same filter that decides where we eat is the filter that decides what we believe.
That is the same three-question test you will read about below, applied to a smoothie counter instead of a headline.
Before we say anything else, if you have been confused about health for a long time, please hear this first.
That confusion is not a sign that you are not smart enough, not paying enough attention, or not faithful enough. You are navigating one of the most deliberately complicated information environments in human history, and you have been doing it largely without a framework, which means the confusion is the predictable outcome, not a personal failure.
There are now millions of health influencers on Instagram alone, and every day a fresh wave of articles, videos, and posts claims to reveal the latest breakthrough that will finally change everything. Research studies are published constantly.
Headlines simplify complex findings into dramatic claims designed to capture attention. The average person is now exposed to more health information in a single week than previous generations encountered in an entire lifetime.
Yet more information has not produced more clarity. It has produced the opposite.
That is not an accident, and it is not just the cost of doing business in a connected world. It is the predictable result of running a Spirit-led life on a system designed to keep you scrolling for the next opinion instead of sitting still with the Holy Spirit, your Bible, and a clear, Biblical filter.
The very thing that was supposed to empower you is wearing you out.
The Most Dangerous Health Trend Christians Follow
There is something unfolding in Christian communities that grieves us, and it is far more serious than any single ingredient or supplement debate.
Believers are letting health influencers replace the Holy Spirit.
That is a strong sentence, and we mean it as written. We have watched this happen inside real families, including families we love.
An influencer says something is dangerous, another says the same thing is healing, a third contradicts both, and instead of going to the Lord for wisdom, the believer scrolls for more opinions until exhaustion sets in. The result is fatigue, paralysis, and a slow erosion of the discernment God gave us.
“He shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and shall think to change the times and the law; and they shall be given into his hand for a time, times, and half a time.” — Daniel 7:25
Notice what Daniel names as the strategy. It is not to destroy God’s people outright in one dramatic blow.
It is to wear them out over time, to keep them confused, scattered, and chasing competing voices until they either quit or hand their discernment to someone who does not share their values. A church that cannot tell truth from trend in something as basic as food, water, and air is a church that is easier to deplete and easier to sideline from its calling.
The enemy does not need to silence you. He just needs to exhaust you.
If that has felt true in your house, you are not crazy and you are not weak. You are tired because the noise was designed to tire you.
And the way out is not louder noise. It is a quieter, sturdier filter.
Why Headlines Have Stopped Telling You the Truth
Part of the confusion comes from the way health research reaches the public. Scientific studies are narrow and specific on purpose, and responsible researchers understand that their conclusions must be interpreted carefully, in context, with limits clearly stated.
By the time those findings reach you, however, they have been simplified into bold, attention-grabbing headlines that strip away every limit the researchers put in.
This is not a small problem. A landmark study published in The BMJ analyzed press releases from twenty UK universities and the news stories that followed, and the researchers found that more than a third of those press releases contained exaggerated advice, causal claims, or extrapolations from animals to humans that the underlying studies did not support.
When the press release exaggerated, the news stories usually followed. The distortion is happening upstream of the journalist, inside the very institutions the public is told to trust.
That is why two headlines about the same nutrient or the same food can sit on top of each other in your feed and tell you the opposite thing, and both can be technically traceable to a real study, and yet neither one is telling you the truth in the way the truth was actually written. People notice the contradictions over time, and slowly they stop trusting any of it.
They are not wrong to mistrust the process. They are wrong only when they conclude that nothing can be trusted, because Scripture has not changed.
“For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.” — 1 Corinthians 14:33
God never intended His people to live inside this kind of noise, and the chaos we are describing is not the natural cost of a complicated world.
It is the predictable outcome of trying to navigate that world without an unchanging Biblical filter underneath you.
“I’m grateful to be here, receiving encouragement, recipes, and whole-body transformation. Even after trying times, I trust you and Mama Z. The spiritual aspect completes the system: body, soul, and spirit.”
— Ellen D.
The Business of Telling You What to Eat
The second reason health advice feels confusing is that it lives inside a massive commercial machine. The global wellness industry, according to the Global Wellness Institute’s most recent reporting, is valued at well over six trillion dollars worldwide, and every food brand, supplement company, and content platform inside that machine is competing for one thing, which is your attention long enough to convert it.
Novelty wins that competition, every time.
A dramatic claim about a new ingredient spreads further than a careful analysis of the evidence. A new diet attracts more clicks than a sober conversation about what the human body has always needed.
The cycle rewards trends and punishes principles, and the cost lands on you, the believer trying to feed your family and steward the body God gave you, because trends rotate every season while principles do not.
The endocrine system, for example, does not change because a brand needs a quarterly bump in sales. Fragranced chemicals that disrupt hormones are still obesogens whether the wellness brand of the month is selling clean candles or a new powder, and the marketing copy can shift overnight while the underlying biology stays exactly where God put it.
The principle is older and more reliable than any influencer’s feed, which is exactly why the principle is what gets buried.
That is why we keep teaching our seven kids the same handful of truths over and over again instead of running a new health experiment every twelve weeks. Trends rotate.
God’s design does not.
The Three Questions That Stop the Noise
If a single shift could quiet most of the confusion in your inbox tomorrow, this would be it. Before you act on any health claim, any product, any protocol, or any influencer takeaway, run it through these three questions in this order.
Do not skip the order.
Question 1: Does this honor how God designed the body?
The body is not random. It was designed, on purpose, by a Creator who told us exactly what He used to build it and what He gave us to feed it.
If a health claim asks you to act against how God built the body to work, the claim is wrong, no matter how many credentials sit behind it. Real food, sunlight, real movement, real sleep, and real rest were the inputs the body was given.
A protocol that ignores those four and sells you a fifth as a shortcut is selling you something the body was never asked to run on.
Question 2: Is this a principle or a trend?
Principles are the truths that were true a hundred years ago, are true today, and will still be true a hundred years from now. Trends are the loud, attention-getting claims that come and go every season.
Both can wear lab coats. Only one will still matter when your grandchildren are raising their kids.
If you cannot identify the principle underneath the trend, the trend itself is not worth your money or your attention.
Question 3: Is this being offered to help me or sell me something?
There is nothing wrong with someone selling a real product that helps you. We do it, and we are not apologetic about it, because a worker is worthy of his wages.
The question is whether the message itself is honest, and the test is simple. Strip the marketing copy off and ask whether the underlying claim would still hold up under careful research.
If the claim only works while the marketing is loud, it was a sales pitch dressed as wisdom, and you are allowed to walk away.
These three questions are not a magic formula, and they are not a substitute for the Holy Spirit, but they are a stable filter that holds up across topics, across seasons, and across every fresh wave of health noise the algorithm sends your way.
Test Everything, and What the Research Actually Says About That
Scripture has been calling believers to this kind of filter for two thousand years, long before there was an Instagram, a wellness brand, or a press release machine to manage.
“But test everything; hold fast what is good.” — 1 Thessalonians 5:21
Paul is not telling the Thessalonians to chase every voice and weigh it for amusement. He is telling them, plainly, that the believer’s job is to put every claim under the light of truth and keep what survives.
The Greek word translated test is the same word used for assaying metal for purity. Heat is applied, impurities rise to the surface, and what is real stays.
The believer who tests claims is doing the same work, just with information rather than ore.
And what science itself has learned about how people process information in this environment supports the Biblical principle exactly. A systematic review in the Journal of Medical Internet Research surveyed dozens of studies on health misinformation on social media and found that misinformation about vaccines, smoking, drugs, diet, and non-communicable diseases is widespread, reaching as high as 87% of posts in some studies.
In other words, the data and Scripture are saying the same thing from opposite sides of the room. The believer who does not test will be carried by the loudest current, every time.
The believer who tests will not.
“Thank you so much for everything you all do, and especially today for the Scriptures. I really needed those today.”
— Mary G.
The Proper Order for a Believer
If we had to summarize Bible Health on a sticky note, it would be the order in which a believer makes decisions, because the order is most of the game.
“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.” — James 1:5
The proper order is the Holy Spirit first, Scripture as the foundation, godly wisdom and lived experience as the support, and information as the tool. Not the master.
Information is a hammer. It is excellent in the hand of a carpenter and dangerous in the hand of a toddler.
The believer who reverses the order, who lets information lead and asks the Holy Spirit only when the data is confusing, is the believer who gets worn out.
We are not asking you to become our favorite health influencer’s followers, including ours. We are asking you to put the Holy Spirit, Scripture, and a clear filter back in front of the information, and to stop expecting the algorithm to give you what only God can give you.
What Comes Next
This filter is the front door. The full house is the framework we walk every Christian family through, the one we wish someone had handed us twenty-three years ago when we were starting out.
A Prayer for You. 🙏
Righteous Father, thank You that Your truth never changes, even when the headlines do.
Give me discernment to test everything and hold fast what is good.
Help me ask wise questions, seek godly counsel and follow You first in every health decision.
Bless my family with peace, wisdom and strength as we walk this journey together.
Amen.
Upgrade and learn what God’s Word says about every area of life
and how to live it. That’s what Bible Health is all about.
Walk each 6-week live group study the day it opens.
Get the Blueprint and every weekly Swap.
Follow Jesus, not trends, in every area.
As always, our hope and prayer is that you experience the abundant life.
~ Dr. Z & Mama Z
References
· Global Wellness Institute: The Global Wellness Economy Reports (industry size)
· The Lie You Believed Before You Ever Got Sick (Bible Health)
· The Health Framework Your Pastor Never Taught You (Bible Health)
Thank you so much - I totally agree with you - too much noise drowns out the real voice of His wisdom - Be Still and Know who I am - Be still and know who you are and just Be!!
I LOVE that photo with all 3 of you, dressed in pink - for your little baby girl. you are so natural, happy and joyful. God bless you all!