Gluttony: Still a Deadly Sin

I agree that this is something that should be addressed by the faithful, but the government's definitions of "obese" are ridiculous.

I am 5'10" and 200 pounds with an athletic build.

I am considered obese by the gubmint.

All these alarmist headlines we see everyday about percentages of Americans who are "overweight" or "obese" are BS.

Colbert says that if parishioners see their minister eating junk food, sporting a bulging waistline and not exercising, they will often feel free to emulate his example.

Is "not exercising" part of gluttony? I can overeat but as long as I exercise enough to remain trim, everything is cool?

Good point, Bruce Geerdes.

Actually, in any discussion of gluttony, it's important to remember a few simple things:

1. Overeating is not the only form of gluttony. One may be a glutton by giving food an exaggerated importance in one's life, by insisting on the finest foods, freshest ingredients, or the food one finds personally most palatable on all occasions.

2. Not all weight gain is due to gluttony.

3. Not all gluttons are fat. It is possible to be a slender, willowy glutton.

C.S. Lewis wrote an interesting bit on gluttony. I think it was Screwtape speaking, but I'm going from memory.

Lewis/Screwtape described gluttony as something much broader than overeating, and specifically including picky eating -- needing to have food prepared and served "just so." If something is a little overcooked, or too salty, the glutton complains that it's not quite right. If memory serves, the context was that we take pleasures that God intended for good, and we overdo them (gluttony) or twist them (lust).

So the crunchy, sacramental view of food is something of a tightrope. I revel in a good foie gras or duck confit, but I wonder if I shouldn't sometimes eat instant mac-n-cheese for the good of my soul.

As for pastors not addressing gluttony, it's probably not just that they're concerned about losing folks, but that you can't talk about it without people thinking they're being singled out. If my pastor talks lust and greed, I can feel my shame privately. If I'm the fat guy and he talks about gluttony, I can feel everyone's eyes on me.

In the Lutheran church we attend, the pastor recently preached on each of the Seven Deadly Sins. Gutsy. It was his sermon on gluttony that made the congregation most uncomfortable. Each era has its own particular "favorite" sin. Perhaps gluttony is ours. Thanks to both Bible Girl and Rod for broaching this subject.

Maybe we need to remember that "the Last Supper" wasn't a seventeen course meal followed by a giant size serving of Mudd Pie with a chocolate graham-cracker crust.

It's one thing to break some bread, quite another to eat the entire loaf.

All good points. I should point out that at the present moment in the Orthodox Church, we're in the middle of a fasting time of preparation for the August 15 Feast of the Dormition. I am awful at fasting. The priests at my parish are wise on the subject, advising me that the point of the fast is not the fast; rather, the point of the fast is to draw closer to Christ through the disciplining of the passions. Meaning that not everybody will derive spiritual benefit from the same exact fasting rules -- that a fast can be so mild that it may as well not be a fast at all, or so strict that the fasting believer can become hung up on the fast itself.

The fact that I think so much about what I put into my mouth is a good sign that I need to fast, to restore proper balance. Though I'm only about 10 pounds over what I should weigh, gluttony is something I struggle with.

I don't believe that eating mac and cheese is necessarily a sign that one has renounced gluttony. The French, for example, eat good food, but they eat reasonably small amounts of it. Contrast that to the American who goes to one of those Hungry Heifer $4.99 all you can shove in your piehole buffets, and eats humble food in massive quantities. Who is the glutton there?

"The World Health Organization estimates that 1 billion of the world's nearly 7 billion citizens are overweight, 300 million of whom are defined as clinically obese."

Just a "tidbit."
from
"heifer"

Before you dismiss this as another shameless plug for the free enterprise system over the sprawling welfare-state, here me out....

If we moved to a free market health care system (the one we have now if full of anti free market subsidies, regulations, preferential tax treatment for health insurance paid as a fringe benefit, etc.) we would stand a better chance of moving more Americans away from gluttony.

You see, you often hear politicians screaming about how health insurance companies shouldn't deny insurance coverage to people with "pre-existing considitions." Sounds all fine and dandy, right? But what this really means is that the health insurance company is forced to offer a health insurance plan to the guy who thinks ice cream is a vegatable.

Medicare? That government run boondoggle charges people the same premiums to the 70 year old who jogs 5 miles a day as the 68 year old who watches cable TV with a remote in one hand and the other hand in a bag of cheetos.

Now I understand that one's health isn't entirely under one's control. Some people are born with serious health problems while others are blessed with good health. A friend of mine had quintuple coronary bypass surgery when he was 32, not because he was a junk food maniac, but because his family had a history of heart disease.

Still, I have heard co-workers tell me (as I try to eat meals lite on sodium and saturated fat) that, "I take a cholesterol lower drug. I can eat anything I want. I told my doctor that I am not into dieting. I want to eat what I want."

So, the logic of welfare-statism basically seduces people into an "I'm entitled" mentality. And if a health problem comes up? Well, that's the government's problem or the health insurance company's problem.

You see where I am going with this? That's where free enterprise kicks the behinds out of welfare-statism. Free enterprise demands that its citizens play a part in the solution to the problem and doesn't allow them to simply pass the buck to the government.

Phil,

Watching a porno film is no greater a sin than stuffing your face with an entire bag of doritos.

Really? Is that just your personal opinion? Or is their some combination of scripture/theology that backs that up?

It seems that a porno film cuts at the foundation of family structure with the use of the human body as a commodity. But while eating an entire bag of Doritos might signal a lack of nutritional sense, how does it rank up there with celebrating loveless sex?

Or is watching a porn film morally acceptable as long as the "actors" and "actresses" are married or pretend to be?

rock,
my husband has had a cronic health condition completely unrelated to lifestyle since his mid twenties. Without constant medical care, he will die within 6 months. He would leave behind a wife and 4 kids who would at least temporarily have to turn to the government for help and would collect social security for many years. We just went a year and a half with no insurance and are currently in the one year exclusion period for pre-existing conditions. Private insurance wasn't an option as no one will cover him, myself (pre-existing condition completely unrelated to lifestyle) or my oldest son (mild birth defect). The high risk pool insurance offered by the state wouldn't have allowed us to continue buying the medication my husband needs to live, much less pay the rent. Even when we do have good health insurance we have had years where we had to cover over 5K in co-pays. Before you get on your high horse about poor, poor insurance companies potentially being forced by big bad government to accept those with pre-existing conditions, make sure that families such as mine don't continue to end up as collateral damage to short sighted, insurance industry pandering right wing ideology.
There are many good ideas out there which are from a conservative perspective (Newt Gringrich's work is pretty darn good). However, from within the Republican Party nothing realistic is being done precisely because the insurance industry likes the current regulation system which allows them to maintain a stranglehold on our premiums with very little competition while asking for very little benefit for the consumer in return. What is good for business isn't always what is good for either American families or free market ideals.

Rod,

I think I see what you're getting at, but come on, you can't convince me that you'd be just as upset catching your teenage son and his girlfriend pigging out on Doritos as watching porn.

You make it sound like porn is acceptable as long as it is only viewed by adults. But isn't the whole "Adult book store" concept a little crazy? What is "adult" about Adult book stores?

Hasn't it been proven that porn movies are harmful to the people, including adults, who watch them? Makes them less capable of maintaining a monogomous relationship? Increases the likelihood of divorce?

For a minute there, I almost thought you were saying that porn is bad for teenagers but acceptable for adults. Have I misinterpreted your comment?

Rock,

We share the same birthday. I am one year less old than you. :D

Many years!

Regarding the great porno/dorito debate--I disagree that the two are comparable sins. The pornographic image you see in the magazine is captured by the mind forever. On the other hand, the mind captures the flavor of the doritos whether you have one chip or a thousand. It is written, "The eye is never full of seeing, nor the ear full of hearing," but it does not say that the tongue is never full of tasting. ;)

On the contrary, folks, when was the last time you heard the words "sin," "vice," and "virtue" in any context other than diet and exercise. The issue of being fat, and the conduct popularly believed to cause it, are the focus of more moral energy than anything else happening in our culture today. The fact that the form of our moral belief about fat is a vastly over-simplified pseudo-Calvinism that holds that anyone who is overweight can lose weight by eating less only makes it worse. Sorry, I would rather live with our current weight problems than waste another erg of moral energy lamenting them that could be used to deal with envy, lust, anger, greed, pride, and sloth, as well as exploiting the poor and the weak, cheating, stealing, and war.

Feeding people is basic human nurturing gesture.

I learned this as a child: people who love me, feed me. This was no less true in the church than in my extended family.

This is why so many people, myself included, find it particularly difficult to avoid overeating during Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. We associate these holiday foods with love and, as we grow older, loss.

Doritos and porn? Good grief.

Marian,

I've never heard gluttony addressed from the pulpit.

Yes, I've heard weight/food intake referred to as 'sin', 'vice', or 'virtue'.....but not in the sense that GLUTTONY is a sin or a vice, but rather that not being the currently fashionable twig shape is a sin or a vice and that being waifish is a virtue.

That's not treating gluttony for what it is. That's just indulging in vanity. Totally different sin. :-P

This is why so many people, myself included, find it particularly difficult to avoid overeating during Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.

Several things:

1) Christianity has room for the occasional feast...our problem is that we will feast but not fast.

2) Someone struggling with booze should not go to bars, nor someone with lust hit the red light district, etc. My point here is that if you surround yourself with your temptation, it's only a matter of time. And in America, our problem is that food is just so cheap. It's everywhere. There is nowhere to run.

My point is that we are just too wealthy, and this leads to all sorts of strange places. There is a reason why Jesus kept warning us about money, and gluttony is just one more consequence of our greed. Work hours shoot up, stress increases, and food becomes inexpensive due to our great wealth.

Heck, just look at what percentage of one's income goes to food anymore...100 years ago, it must have been 50%. Today? Who knows. For lust today to equate to gluttony, it would take like 10,000 hot babes strutting around all the time, everywhere, begging for attention.

As St. Phillip Neri said, victory against lust goes to the coward, that is, he who runs. But how can one run in today's food environment? Nowhere to go.

Additionally, no one in this thread has noticed that, in the US, obesity goes hand in hand with poverty. So we are given one more excuse for looking down on the poor, because we already know that fat people lack self-control and are bad people, so now we can be confirmed in our basic belief that poor people are bad people.

Marian Neudel,

Poor people are statistically more likely to be:

1) overweight (gluttony)
2) not graduate from high school (sloth)
3) come from broken families (anger/lust)
4) have broken families (anger/lust)
5) engage in crime (sloth)
6) have more abortions, health issues, smoke more, do more drugs, etc., etc.

These are just facts.

Why? The strongest correlation for all these things is not poverty, but IQ. In other words, low IQ is the more likely cause, with poverty and 1-6 above is the effect. More simply, the less intelligent are unlikely to project ahead and fear the real consequences of their sins, and thus more likely to engage in them without a strong culture that warns of the moral consequences. This is also why Christianity is a group religion: we have responsibility for our neighbors and are not saved alone. And why Libertarianism is a pipe dream.

As our culture began to take a "anything goes" modern progressive mentality around the 1950's and 60's (and a lesser extent the 1920s), it is the less intelligent (poor) who suffer the most without the moral protections of culture that once existed. Go libs!

Excuse me, how does "coming from a broken family" indicate an excess of lust in one's own character? Or is this just blame-the-victim day? GB Shaw once suggested that if we treated poverty and disease and crimes, all of the other things we now regard as criminal would disappear pretty quickly. I was under the impression that he was being ironic. Was I wrong?

Sorry, my GB Shaw allusion was that if we just treated poverty and disease AS crimes, etc. etc.

rebeccat:

Did you read my post? AT ALL?

I made six very specific points of fact, and mentioned one theory (which is not my own; many other social scientists have made it before me).

You did not address a single fact I mentioned, nor anything else I wrote. What is your grief?

For an example of one of your more outrageous whoppers, you snarled: Sorry if I find your claims of superior intelligence to be farcicle at best!

I never said anything about me (or anybody else in particular) "having superior intelligence". You made it up. That is, you lied.

I have a suggestion: actually read my post. And then, if you wish to comment on anything I said, do so. But if you can't grow up and control your animus of me long enough to address my post as I have written it...just forget it.

M_David. Puleez! You made a post which quite clearly drew a straight line between moral failings and poverty, then threw out the notion (not your own, of course, must maintain some sort of defense for yourself, eh?) that both the poverty and the moral failing had their source in low IQ's. My point was that there are so many other explainations which need to be taken into account for the persistence of poverty and negative outcomes in America that to start with IQ levels just reeks of stupidity. The most generous thing I can possibly say in response to your post is that perhaps skating over something as major as deliberately shutting major groups of Americans out of their chance to take part in the American dream in order to put forth (some one else's) ideas about the correlation between poverty, morality and IQ is due to extreme ignorance of history.

>M_David, you hardly deserve a response, but just for the beneift of anyone else for whom your effluence may seem worth considering

rebbecat, don't shoot the messenger. It's the nature that molded us that is "racist" and amoral on average, not the scientists that describe it. You make good points, but they still don't cancel out what evolution has wrought.

I am fat for satarters and really do not find anyofense in talking about the subject.
My gluttony has chanllenegd my life several times.
and yes if you do not love yourself you might be fat .
But beeing fat and gluttony are 2 different things.
I can get fat because of just gluttony
or get fat because of need...

Can someone with a little insight ,can guess what kind of needs really can provoque being a fat person?

then we can have a discussion of the difference between Glutonny and being obese like me!!!!
Can someone be truthfull and tell me the reasons that one has to eat why does one eats and then we can discuss ........

Some important early spiritual writing -- most notably John Cassian's Institutes and Conferences treat gluttony not just as a deadly sin, but as the deadly sin, the one that seems to open us up to all others, especially sloth, lechery, avarice, envy and even anger (when we can't get our food the way we like it, etc.). So the starting point for spiritual development began with fasting and regulation of the diet. One of Cassian's subjects advised that the path to a more holy life was to conquer the deadly sins one at a time, starting with gluttony, since it can be approached most readily and practically.

Of course this is in the context of an ascetic, monastic theology that sees governing the physical appetites as the foundation of spiritual progress, and the the extremes to which the Desert fathers and other spiritual masters went to achieve that end strike us today as frightening distortions of a healthy faith life.

But still, there's something to it. I can see in my own life how an overattachment to food is implicated in other sinning, which I won't go into since this isn't a confessional.

Attending more carefully to what we eat, and more importantly, our attitudes toward food, might just be a useful step to spiritual growth as well as physical health.

PLEASE READ, KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, NOT JUST ABOUT KIDS......Dr. Oz

He says there's a very good biological reason why it's so hard to get kids to eat their vegetables. In fact, they are hardwired to not like them. Dr. Oz says when our prehistoric ancestors searched for food, their children were most susceptible to poisons, which often taste bitter. So instead of liking something bitter—like broccoli—children tend to crave sweet and bland foods like dairy or chicken nuggets.

Children also have a biological reason not to like certain foods. Flavorful fruits and veggies may actually taste differently to kids than they do to adults. "An older adult has 3,000 taste buds," Dr. Oz says. "A kid has 10,000."

Dr. Oz says we run into problems when we don't allow our taste buds to mature. "That's the big challenge we have in America—we've infantilized our taste buds. When a 3-year-old wants hot dogs, a burger, fries, a shake, cola, that's not abnormal. When a 30-year-old wants those foods, we're in trouble."

This natural craving for fatty blandness and sweetness is part of why there are so many "white kids" in America, Dr. Oz says. "You know what a 'white kid' is? It's not the skin color, it's kids that only eat white—white flour, white bread, white rice, white sugar," Dr. Oz says. "They only eat white foods, because white foods are seen as being safe to them visually, emotionally, from a taste perspective."

Each pre-teens eats about 49 pounds of sugar a year
Everyone knows Dr. Oz loves to bring props with him, but this time he didn't bring along a brain, a lung or a heart. Instead, he has a sobering reminder of the obesity crisis in America. Three huge jars hold 49 pounds of sugar—equal to the amount the average American pre-teen eats in a year. Eating this much sugar and other unhealthy things sets in motion a lifetime of health problems, Dr. Oz says.

"As you get older, the fat comes alive," he says. "It becomes a hormone secreting gland. They get acne because they're getting feminized, because those hormones are estrogen. [Boys] grow breasts, which hurts your self-esteem and scars you your whole life. And as you get older, you begin to develop fat around your jowls. Now you can't sleep at night because you've got sleep apnea, which is like having a bunch of rear-end collisions all day long."

That's not where it stops. Dr. Oz says an enlarged omentum squeezes the kidneys, leading to high blood pressure. It poisons the liver and leads to more bad LDL cholesterol. And it blocks insulin, which leads to diabetes. "The next generation will be the first that we know of in our recorded history that will have a shorter life expectancy than its parents," Dr. Oz says. "The major driver of that is the obesity that's causing diabetes. Almost a fifth of the kids in the country today are overweight. Thirty-five percent of the kids that are born in this decade will be diabetics. If you're black—40 percent of the kids. And if you're Latino, half the kids."

What makes a renowned heart surgeon like Dr. Oz so passionate about childhood obesity? It's because he personally witnesses what happens when unhealthy 10-year-olds become unhealthy young adults with heart problems. "When you're operating on 25-year-olds … you feel a big obligation to speak up about it," he says. "It brings tears to us because we know it's preventable."

If you're having trouble jump-starting your family's health, Dr. Oz has five strategies to help.

Step 1—Keep Nothing Off-Limits

"I know that sounds crazy, but it turns out when you make foods off-limits, you create a cult around them and the kids just want to get to them. And they're smart—they'll find it," Dr. Oz says.

The time to make decisions about food isn't when you lock cabinet doors, he says. It's when you're in the supermarket. "Don't even bring the stuff into the house," he says.

Step 2—Fiber for Breakfast

When kids have sugary cereals, doughnuts and soda for breakfast, Dr. Oz says they start the day on a sugar high. "They show up in class, and teachers complain about this all the time, the kids can't be controlled for the first hour. And then they bottom out when their insulin goes up and now they can't pay attention … until lunchtime," he says. "Their whole day is like this."

Instead of allowing this sugar blast in the morning, make sure your kids get about half their fiber intake—about 7 to 10 grams—from their breakfast. Fiber is found in abundance in healthy foods like steel-cut oatmeal and fruit. If your kids refuse to eat those things right away, Dr. Oz recommends sprinkling the fiber—psyllium husks, for example—in their food.

"Find things that your kids resonate to and use those tools," he says.

Step 3—Try Healthy Foods 10 Times

This is especially difficult, Dr. Oz says, because many parents want meals to be easy. But giving up on healthy food is a big mistake. "It will take you, on average, 10 times of exposing a kid to a food before they'll finally say, 'You know what? I sort of like that.'"

One way to break through that barrier is by using good peer pressure. Dr. Oz says he used his oldest daughter, Daphne, to influence the younger ones. "Once I got her to eat right, then the other ones [followed] because they think the oldest child's cool," he says.

Dr. Oz says you don't even need to rely on other sons and daughters—any peer your kid knows can help. "You get one child who's willing to be smart about the way they eat," he says. "It can be in your play group, your school, whatever, just get one kid—one ally—and you'll bust through the defense."

Step 4—Get Moving

Dr. Oz says healthy families are ones who incorporate physical activity into their family life. One way to do this is by getting a dog and walking it together. In the Oz household, the family works up a sweat playing Dance Dance Revolution, an interactive video game that makes players move their feet to the beat. "It's a cool little game," he says.

You can also take family walks. "If you're putting 500 more steps [or about a quarter-mile] into your life every single day, that's a lot of extra calories you'll get rid of," Dr. Oz says. "That's the kind of health-promoting habit you'll take into adulthood."

One thing you should be sure not to do is to hit the couch right after meals. "You'll actually change your metabolism," Dr. Oz says. "Those are the kinds of moves that will change America's health."

Step 5—No Eating in Front of the TV

If you eat while watching television, not only are you more likely to spill food on your shirt, you're also more likely to gain weight. Dr. Oz says people consume approximately 225 more calories a day when they eat absentmindedly in front of the TV.

In just one month, that adds up to two pounds!

"Food is precious," Dr. Oz says. "Food is a drug in your body. Take advantage of your power to decide what you want."

Thanks for great information keep it up