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What is Gluttony?


Elissa

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A dear friend is contributing to a book about the Seven Deadly Sins. He has asked me to solicit responses to the following questions:

What is gluttony? How do you define when an act of eating becomes gluttonous? How can you tell a gourmet or a gourmond from a glutton?

Is gluttony a sin? If so, how bad a sin is it? Are there any defenders of gluttony?

If gluttony is a sin, is there another sort of eating that is virtuous? What or where is virtue when it comes to eating, preparing and contemplating food?

Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love at all seasons: That is all there is to distinguish us from the other Animals.

-Beaumarchais

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Gluttony + Sloth = SLUTTONY

Gluttony and Sloth are personally, my two favorite Deadly Sins, preferably performed in that order. Eat incredibly well, then lie about completely sated and lazy. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. If you can work Lust in there somewhere, maybe after the Gluttony, just call it a great date. :wink::laugh:

On a more serious note:

I think the "sin" in Gluttony was back when the classes were more sharply divided and the overlords would (over)indulge themselves at the expense of serfs. I don't believe I recall any mention of Deadly Sins in the Old Testament or specifically in the New Testament either, so I have to think this was one of Church horrid means of keeping the public order in the Dark Ages. Be good, deny yourself, don't be greedy, lustful, gluttonous, etc. or you might have some fun, get enlightened and rebel. Gluttony is a sin if it comes at the expense of others. But it's really the sin of selfishness. If your eating well and picking up the check at French Laundry isn't hurting anyone but your own waistline and wallet, then is Gourmandise. Does this distinction make sense?

Katie M. Loeb
Booze Muse, Spiritual Advisor

Author: Shake, Stir, Pour:Fresh Homegrown Cocktails

Cheers!
Bartendrix,Intoxicologist, Beverage Consultant, Philadelphia, PA
Captain Liberty of the Good Varietals, Aphrodite of Alcohol

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Gluttony + Sloth = SLUTTONY

Gluttony and Sloth are personally, my two favorite Deadly Sins, preferably performed in that order. Eat incredibly well, then lie about completely sated and lazy. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. If you can work Lust in there somewhere, maybe after the Gluttony, just call it a great date. :wink::laugh:

Katie, this is hilarious! Sluttony. :biggrin:

I agree. The "sin" gluttony implies depriving someone else in search of your own pleasure.

How do you tell a gourmand from a glutton? I guess in my mind a gourmand is into his or her food for the entire experience: the company, ambiance, the sights, smells, tastes, textures and most of all the pleasure in the understanding of the ingredients and effort put into the food in front of them. A true glutton would have none of those appreciations, just a selfish desire to have what others do not.

Very interesting questions. I'll look forward to reading more posts.

What's wrong with peanut butter and mustard? What else is a guy supposed to do when we are out of jelly?

-Dad

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Oh come on boys, all this flattery will swell a poor country girl's head in no time :batting eyelashes:

Both Guajolote and Al Dente have met me personally, so I have to believe the diversity in their opinions is due to the fact that Guajolote is happily married and Al Dente is single. :wink::biggrin:

Katie M. Loeb
Booze Muse, Spiritual Advisor

Author: Shake, Stir, Pour:Fresh Homegrown Cocktails

Cheers!
Bartendrix,Intoxicologist, Beverage Consultant, Philadelphia, PA
Captain Liberty of the Good Varietals, Aphrodite of Alcohol

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Oh come on boys, all this flattery will swell a poor country girl's head in no time :batting eyelashes:

Both Guajolote and Al Dente have met me personally, so I have to believe the diversity in their opinions is due to the fact that Guajolote is happily married and Al Dente is single. :wink::biggrin:

Interesting that Guajolote is "happily" married, and I'm just single-- no accompanying adjective. :hmmm:

peak performance is predicated on proper pan preparation...

-- A.B.

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hmm.....gluttony to me is eating not for taste, pleasure or nourishment, but more to make sure no one else gets the food in question.

it's just a shade of greed.

it's eating way past your point of fulfillment.

romans and vomitoriums come to mind.

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Oh come on boys, all this flattery will swell a poor country girl's head in no time :batting eyelashes:

Both Guajolote and Al Dente have met me personally, so I have to believe the diversity in their opinions is due to the fact that Guajolote is happily married and Al Dente is single.  :wink::biggrin:

Interesting that Guajolote is "happily" married, and I'm just single-- no accompanying adjective. :hmmm:

Sorry Darlin'. Happily Single? Satisfied single? You have to tell me. Guajolote makes no secret of his devotion to Flaca and the little G's. You play it a little closer to the vest so I make no assumptions. :wink:

Katie M. Loeb
Booze Muse, Spiritual Advisor

Author: Shake, Stir, Pour:Fresh Homegrown Cocktails

Cheers!
Bartendrix,Intoxicologist, Beverage Consultant, Philadelphia, PA
Captain Liberty of the Good Varietals, Aphrodite of Alcohol

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Gluttony + Sloth = SLUTTONY

Gluttony and Sloth are personally, my two favorite Deadly Sins, preferably performed in that order. Eat incredibly well, then lie about completely sated and lazy. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. If you can work Lust in there somewhere, maybe after the Gluttony, just call it a great date. :wink::laugh:

Lust first. Helps you work up an appetite.

NPR's "Talk of the Nation" did a riff on this last week -- interviewing an author of another book on gluttony. Seems to be a trend here...

I'm on the pavement

Thinking about the government.

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Lust first. Helps you work up an appetite.

I'll go along with this logic. Definitely more efficient than bumping bloated bellies :biggrin:

Katie M. Loeb
Booze Muse, Spiritual Advisor

Author: Shake, Stir, Pour:Fresh Homegrown Cocktails

Cheers!
Bartendrix,Intoxicologist, Beverage Consultant, Philadelphia, PA
Captain Liberty of the Good Varietals, Aphrodite of Alcohol

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I think gluttony involves a certain self-centeredness that cares nothing for the needs or desires of others. On the other hand, the kind of love that gourmands have for food usually leads them to want to share their joy with others.

Most women don't seem to know how much flour to use so it gets so thick you have to chop it off the plate with a knife and it tastes like wallpaper paste....Just why cream sauce is bitched up so often is an all-time mytery to me, because it's so easy to make and can be used as the basis for such a variety of really delicious food.

- Victor Bergeron, Trader Vic's Book of Food & Drink, 1946

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I think gluttony involves a certain self-centeredness that cares nothing for the needs or desires of others. On the other hand, the kind of love that gourmands have for food usually leads them to want to share their joy with others.

well put...

peak performance is predicated on proper pan preparation...

-- A.B.

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Gluttony + Sloth = SLUTTONY

I thought that was something else. :laugh::laugh:

I agree with Busboy. Lust, then gluttony.

From the website www.deadlysins.com (no, I did not make that up):

In the words of nineteenth-century Russian Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov:

Wise temperance of the stomach is a door to all the virtues. Restrain the stomach, and you will enter Paradise. But if you please and pamper your stomach, you will hurl yourself over the precipice of bodily impurity, into the fire of wrath and fury, you will coarsen and darken your mind, and in this way you will ruin your powers of attention and self-control, your sobriety and vigilance.

Whoa.

Heather Johnson

In Good Thyme

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Gluttony is All You Can Eat Buffets... And I won't elaborate on that.

The human mouth is called a pie hole. The human being is called a couch potato... They drive the food, they wear the food... That keeps the food hot, that keeps the food cold. That is the altar where they worship the food, that's what they eat when they've eaten too much food, that gets rid of the guilt triggered by eating more food. Food, food, food... Over the Hedge
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There's some sense in which gluttony hasn't anything to do with others though: seems to me it's quite possible to be greedy about food for its own sake. When we eat to fill up parts of ourselves that are empty emotionally, when we eat to assauge hurt or pain, that can be both gluttonous and sinful, not agaist God or mandates or others, but sinful against what our own higher selves know would suffice.

Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love at all seasons: That is all there is to distinguish us from the other Animals.

-Beaumarchais

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I have a three dimensional gluttony mask hanging on the wall in my dining room. While considering the best placement for my gluttony mask I thought it would serve to remind me to have some control when eating a meal. Previous to this, phen-phen was the only thing which had this effect. A side effect of having gluttony on the wall is guests seem not to overindulge, thus leaving more left-overs for yours truly. When I see someone who seems to be pigging out a little too much, after catching their eye, I slowly move my gaze toward the mask, just to bring them back to reality.

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One point hat has not yet been brought up here is the fact that to the early "fathers" of the Catholic Church, the body was deeply distrusted, as was pretty much any sort of bodily pleasure. Obviously, the body is necessary, but they looked at it as a necessary evil. So the point with them was to give the body what it needed to survive, but no more. Sex was okay as long as it resulted in children; eating was okay as long as it was only enough to sustain one. As soon as you start to enjoy the bodily pleasures for their own sake, you end up in deadly sin territory.

So, in this sense, the sin has nothing to do with whether you're denying others the food you're eating. If you're eating more than necessary, and enjoying it, then according to the men who wrote up the rules, you're a glutton.

As for the difference between a gourmet and a gourmand, I've always thought that a gourmet prefers quality to quantity, while for the gourmand, quantity is all.

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