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Home » Transcript: What the Bible Says About Red Meat, Pork, Dairy, and Bread – Jordan Rubin

Transcript: What the Bible Says About Red Meat, Pork, Dairy, and Bread – Jordan Rubin

Read the full transcript of best-selling author Jordan Rubin’s interview on The Dr. Josh Axe Show on “What the Bible Says About Red Meat, Pork, Dairy, and Bread”, premiered on July 10, 2025.

Introduction: A Life-Changing Discovery

DR. JOSH AXE: Many years ago, when my mom was diagnosed with cancer and I was searching everywhere for answers, I came across a book that radically changed my life and helped my mom ultimately heal from cancer with its guidance. Today I have that author on the show. Now he’s become a close friend of mine. He’s a New York Times best selling author. He’s the co founder of Ancient Nutrition. He’s one of the largest leaders in regenerative agriculture in the world. And today we’re going to be talking about how to heal the body with a diet based on the Bible. Jordan, welcome to the show.

JORDAN RUBIN: Thanks for having me, man.

The Unique Approach to Biblical Medicine

DR. JOSH AXE: It’s so good to have you on. I know we typically talk every day, so this is no different than what we typically do, only we’re doing it in front of some lights and cameras here. But you and I have spent the last couple years working on a lot of content, diving into theological ideas, diving into scientific research, and of course, diving into the Bible itself and writing a book about how to heal based on biblical medicine.

And I know this is something that goes way back for you. You’ve studied the Bible and its healing properties for a long time. One of the things I want to start off with is this: There are a lot of things that people have written about the Bible in terms of diet and healing. There are some people I know. I remember reading a book years ago that talked about how a biblical diet is really more eating vegan. I know that I’ve read other books that have said otherwise.

Why is this book that you’ve written so different in terms of biblical eating and biblical medicine? And how do you think very differently about biblical medicine?

JORDAN RUBIN: Josh, what has amazed me over the years, and I know you agree 100%, I read the Bible every day. Mostly it’s on audio now. I’m an audible learner. Some aspects of technology have been life changing and this is one of them for me. I can’t believe that 10, 20, 30 years of reading the same book that you could receive new revelation the way that we have. And that’s what blows my mind.

People that read the Biblio diet are truly going to learn to live long, master metabolism, fight depression, reduce pain and conquer cancer with healing secrets from the Bible. And someone might say, “But Jordan, if you’ve written biblical books before, the maker’s diet, et cetera, and you’ve read the same book hundreds of times, how is their new revelation?”

All I can say is people are going to be blown away because today we’re going to touch on some of the information that will show that thousands of years teaching what you mentioned – the vegan diet as being biblical, talking about red meat being unhealthy – we are going to blow the lid off of some of these misconceptions. And for anyone watching who believes the Bible is the word of God, we are going to show them the unequivocal truth of how they can restore their health and unlock that potential that God has for all of us.

The Biblio Diet vs. The Paleo Diet

DR. JOSH AXE: I know one of the reasons why you and I wanted to create a diet based on the Bible, the Biblio diet, is that for so many years, people promoted Paleo. And I remember at first I thought, am I the only one that just doesn’t like the term the Paleo diet and sort of the underlying ideas behind it?

In fact, I was, to my knowledge, the first person that wrote an article against a Paleo diet. And this was back in, like, 2009, so this is quite a few years ago. But I know it was making it seem – and a mutual friend of ours, actually, who I saw at Lifetime Fitness yesterday here in Nashville, Mark Sisson, was writing that and talking about it. I respect Mark so much, and he’s done so many amazing things.

But I wrote about in that article some of the foods that I disagreed with, everything from pork to alligator. I mean, some of the different foods that are very not kosher and not healthy that were part of the diet. I started talking about how everyone on the Paleo diet is so against eating grains, but yet they’re eating pounds of almonds and saying, even despite the lectins and phytic acid and all this.

So there was a lot of sort of levels of incoherency, I felt like, with that diet. But what is the difference between a biblical diet, the Biblio Diet, and a diet like the Paleo diet?

JORDAN RUBIN: Well, let me first talk about the origin of the name. So another mutual friend of ours, the late Benny Johnson, Pastor Bill Johnson’s wife, wrote a book on fitness and asked me to write the foreword. And as I was reading her book, I said to her, and this is someone I had immense respect for. And I said, “Benny, as a believer, you reference the Paleo diet. I don’t feel comfortable with that because it presupposes millions and billions of years of human evolution.”

Now, I’m not going to talk about Old Earth, New Earth, but this talks about us coming from apes and how our colon evolved and all of that. If you believe that humans were created by God in a more normal timeline, what I would consider normal, Paleo doesn’t work. And I said, “I wish people would talk about Biblio.”

Now, this was 12 years ago, and Biblio obviously rhymes with Paleo, but the idea is biblio means the book.