Current thinking on the sin of gluttony

[CarolAnnSFO]

kage_ar:

Gluttony, to me, is more than food - it is the wasteful extravagance of modern day life. People who make a good living yet deep in debt, so they can have the big new SUV and the big house in the new development. We now do not worry if we can afford the item, as long as we have room on the card limit. Kids are taught from an early age that you have to have all the newest, biggest, best of everything - people with housese filled with so much STUFF that they have to hire a professional organizer to come in - ya’ll looks like 99% of America is guilty of gluttony!

I thought I lived in the United States, but maybe I don’t – because there is nobody like this where I live. But then, maybe that’s because I don’t live in a development, and the houses here are old.

The children here play outside, and I’ve never seen any obese ones. Maybe because most of my city isn’t wealthy, and the kids don’t have all the expensive tchotchkes that would keep them indoors and sedentary. While other kids are sitting in front of their PCs (in their bedrooms, apparently – dumb move), kids in my neighborhood are out riding bicycles, playing hide and seek, or baseball, or some other game.

I do get a bit tired of hearing about how “decadent” we Americans supposedly all are. I mean, where are all these people? I don’t know anyone like that at all! Not at home, and not at work. Certainly not in the Franciscan Fraternity. Is my city the only place in the US that still has “working class” people in it?

I don’t think eating a lot is always gluttony. If you have a physical job that burns loads of calories, then you’re not a glutton for eating a lot. Some people have a problem with emotional eating – they don’t even realize how much they’ve packed in until it’s all gone – I don’t think that is gluttony, either. In school, the teachers taught us about the ancient Romans who ate until they were stuffed, purged, then started eating all over again. Now that is gluttony!

Restaurant portions can be pretty huge, but I don’t see that as a problem. Eat one third of the food, take the rest of it home in a doggie bag, and get two more meals out of it. If you can’t abide the idea of a doggie bag, or leftovers, then go to one of the restaurants known more for the quality of its ingredients than for hearty portion sizes.

As far as food pyramids are concerned, I have no use for any of the American ones – I’ll take the Mediterranean one any day!

Crazy Internet Junkies Society
Carrier of the Angelic Sparkles Sprinkle Bag

 

[frogman80]

bapcathluth:

What about people who are real “foodies” and love to cook gourmet and dine out on special foods? More and more gourmet food stores are opening, and people have money to dine out now–not like when I was a kid. Does this qualify as gluttony?

I would say eating gourmet food is not by itself intrinsically evil, but I can think of handfuls of situation that could make it gluttonous. Moderation in all things. (Movie watchers might be interested in the movie Babette’s Feast… read a bit about it here: karenblixen.com/babette.html)

One major example of gluttony in our society is drunkenness… drinking too much alcohol.

God bless you and Mary keep you.

 

[Grace_and_Glory]

I think, as others have said, that gluttony comes in many forms. I also think that it depends on the person’s situation as far as what constitutes a sin of gluttony. What I think really matters is the attitude. If I eat a meal, grateful to God for the gift of the food, and in the course of conversation, I eat too much without realizing it, I don’t think I’ve sinned. On the other hand, if I look at food, know that eating it will be excessive and that I will regret it later, but eat it anyway, I probably am guilty of gluttony.
One reason I think that gluttony is considered one of the seven deadly sins is because of the fundamental attitude behind it. The glutton (in regards to food) sacrifices the long-term good of health for the short-term pleasure of taste. His mind is on the pleasure of the moment, and gluttony prevents him from having the mindset that we must endure some sacrifice in the short term in order to have good in the long-term. When this attitude is prevalent in a person, that person becomes so focused on the pleasure to be gained in each moment that he/she loses sight of the necessity of storing up treasure in heaven and taking up his/her cross in order to gain a greater good than momentary pleasure.