Health eTools

Biblical Diet Readiness Score

Before you start the 21 days, find out how far you have to go. Slide to what you eat on an ordinary day and get a score out of 100, and a plan that starts with your weakest food group.

Start the 21 Days Biblical Diet →

“And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.”
Genesis 1:29 (KJV)

How to use it. That verse is the definition: seeds, nuts, legumes, fruit, herb and grain. Below, move each of the three sliders to what you eat on an ordinary day, counted in servings (each slider says what one serving is). Your score out of 100, the points behind it and your action plan all update as you slide, so you can test a change before you make it: drop a serving of meat and watch the number move. Your plan ends with a button to email, save or print it.

What the evidence says. The largest pooled analysis of plant-based eating combined 96 studies and found that vegetarians had lower body weight, cholesterol and blood sugar, and about 25% less heart disease, than meat eaters.³ A second, of 9 cohorts and 307,099 people, found the lowest diabetes risk in those who ate mostly healthy plant foods.⁴ These are associations from people who chose to eat this way, not proof that the diet caused the benefit.

Why I do not stop at “we can digest it.” In my essay on alcohol dehydrogenase I argued that having an enzyme for a substance does not show we were made to consume it. Alcohol dehydrogenase is housekeeping, and ALDH2, the enzyme that clears its toxic product, shows what the system is for: when it fails, the result is cancer. The same logic applies to the table. That we can digest something settles little about what is best for us, and the question has to be answered by the evidence and by the verse.

Everything runs in your browser. If you ask for your plan by email or as a PDF, your three numbers travel with that one request so the document can be built, and are not stored.

Healthy plant foods

Whole grains, vegetables, whole fruit, beans and lentils, nuts and seeds

1 serving = 1 cup raw or ½ cup cooked vegetables, 1 piece of fruit, ½ cup cooked beans or whole grains, or 1 oz nuts

Less healthy plant foods

Refined white bread, pasta and rice, added sugars and sweets, sweetened drinks, packaged snacks

1 serving = 1 slice white bread, 1 cup white pasta or rice, 1 can of soda, or a small handful of chips or cookies

Animal foods

Meat, poultry, fish, dairy and eggs

1 serving = 3 oz meat, poultry or fish, 1 cup milk or yogurt, 1 oz cheese, or 1 egg

Your readiness

0out of 100

Healthy plant foods

Less healthy plant foods

Animal foods

Your Transition Action Plan

An estimate for orientation, built on the logic of the Healthful Plant-Based Diet Index and on servings you guessed. It does not know your health conditions, your medicines or your lab results. Show it to your own doctor before you make a large change to the way you eat.

Prepared at drgily.com. Bring this sheet to your doctor, with a list of every medicine you take.

What the score measures

The first diet in Scripture is the one in the verse above. Seed-bearing plants and fruit-bearing trees: grains, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds and fruit. Meat is not given until after the Flood. When Daniel asked to be tested on vegetables and water, that was the diet he asked for, and the 21-day plan on this site follows it.

The score asks how far your eating is from that pattern, using three numbers. Each is a count of servings on an ordinary day.

How the 100 points are made

Healthy plant foods, up to 50 points. Every serving earns points until you reach six a day, where the group is full.
Less healthy plant foods, up to 25 points. You start with all 25 and lose them as servings of refined grains, sugar and snacks rise. At three servings a day they are gone.
Animal foods, up to 25 points. The same, reversed in the same way: all 25 at none, nothing at three servings a day.

Below 40 you have a high-transition curve, from 40 to 75 a moderate one, and above 75 you are highly prepared. The scoring follows the logic of the Healthful Plant-Based Diet Index, which rewards healthy plant foods and reverse-scores the other two groups. It is a simplified version. The published index scores food by quintiles of intake across 18 groups, and I have used three groups and fixed cutoffs so you can do it in half a minute.

Two limits. It will not tell you whether you are getting enough protein, iron or B12 once the animal foods come out. And a plant-based diet is not healthy by that fact alone: in the large cohorts, the refined, sugary version carried more risk than the whole-food version. So refined foods are scored down, not up.^1,2

If you take medication

If you take insulin, a sulfonylurea, warfarin or blood pressure pills, this does not apply automatically. A large change in what you eat can lower your blood sugar and your pressure within days, and a jump in leafy greens changes the dose of warfarin you need. Discuss it with your own physician first.

If you want to see what your day actually adds up to, the nutrient tracker will show protein, iron and B12 from the foods you enter. For the plan itself, start with the 21 days.

Questions people ask about this

What is the Biblical diet?

The first diet in Scripture is given in Genesis 1:29: "Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." That is grains, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds and fruit. This score measures how close your eating is to that pattern.

How is the readiness score calculated?

Out of 100 points: up to 50 for healthy plant foods (full marks at 6 servings a day), and up to 25 each for keeping refined plant foods and animal foods low (full marks at none, nothing at 3 servings a day). It follows the logic of the Healthful Plant-Based Diet Index, which rewards healthy plant foods and reverse-scores the other two groups.

Is a plant-based diet safe if I take medication?

Not automatically. Insulin, sulfonylureas, warfarin and blood pressure pills can all need a dose change within days of a big change in diet. Tell your own doctor before you start.

References

Satija A, Bhupathiraju SN, Spiegelman D, et al. Healthful and unhealthful plant-based diets and the risk of coronary heart disease in U.S. adults. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2017;70(4):411–422. doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2017.05.047 The index this score is modeled on: healthy plant foods lowered risk, and refined plant foods raised it.
Satija A, Bhupathiraju SN, Rimm EB, et al. Plant-based dietary patterns and incidence of type 2 diabetes in US men and women. PLoS Med. 2016;13(6):e1002039. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002039 Where the healthful plant-based diet index was first set out, and why the three groups are scored in opposite directions.
Dinu M, Abbate R, Gensini GF, Casini A, Sofi F. Vegetarian, vegan diets and multiple health outcomes: a systematic review with meta-analysis of observational studies. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2017;57(17):3640–3649. doi:10.1080/10408398.2016.1138447 The 96 studies (86 cross-sectional, 10 prospective) behind the figures above. Vegetarian diets were linked to 25% lower ischemic heart disease and 8% lower total cancer; several individual cancers showed no difference.
Qian F, Liu G, Hu FB, Bhupathiraju SN, Sun Q. Association between plant-based dietary patterns and risk of type 2 diabetes: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Intern Med. 2019;179(10):1335–1344. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2019.2195 Nine prospective cohorts, 307,099 participants and 23,544 cases of diabetes. The pattern made only of healthy plant foods had the lowest risk.