For He charged you too to abstain from certain foods, in order that even in your eating and drinking ye may have God before your eyes, since you are prone and apt to depart from the knowledge of Him. As also Moses says: The people ate and drank, and rose up to play.Exodus 32:6 And again, Jacob ate and was filled and grew fat, and the beloved kicked; he grew fat, and grew thick, and grew broad, and forsook God who made him.Deuteronomy 32:15 For that God had granted to Noah, a righteous man, to eat every living thing, save flesh with blood, namely a carcase, was related to you by Moses in the book of Genesis.
Now when Trypho was intending to say: as green herbs, I forestalled him: Why will ye not understand how the phrase as green herbs has been spoken by God, namely, that as God had made the herbs for food for man, so also He had given the living creatures as flesh for him. But since we do not eat some plants, so ye say that a distinction was appointed to Noah in animals from that time onwards.
Your explanation is not credible. For first, though I can say and maintain that every green herb is also for food, I do not waste time over this. But even though we do make a distinction between the green herbs, not eating all, it is not because they are common or unclean that we do not eat, but rather because they are bitter or poisonous or thorny. But all the sweet and most nutritious and finest, of both sea and land, we desire, and partake of them.
In the same way God commanded you by Moses to abstain from things unclean and injurious and wrong, for when you were even eating the manna in the wilderness, and were seeing all the wondrous deeds that were done for you by God, you made the golden calf, and began to worship it. So that rightly does He ever cry aloud: Foolish children, there is no faith in them.