An earlier post addressed the nature of gluttony. One important point to emerge was that gluttony cannot be identified with the consumption of excessive amounts of food or drink. But what is wrong with it?
There are the worldling's reasons to avoid gluttony and there is no need to review them: the aesthetic reasons, the health reasons, and the safety reasons. These are good reasons, but non-ultimate.
The best reason to avoid gluttony, one that applies both to gluttony as excessive consumption and gluttony as inordinate concern for food, is that gluttony and other vices of the flesh interfere with the exercise of our higher nature, both intellectual and spiritual.
If you eat too much and die before your time you have merely shortened your animal life. Much worse is to blind your spiritual eye.
I like food. From the time that I was in the food and beverage industry, I found much of it a delight. There was a beauty to the craftsmanship of creating and serving food and drink. One of my very favorite things to do is to cook a fine meal paired with a great beer and see my wife enjoy both. I consider myself a novice in cooking, so I like to browse through cook books and food magazines. On my breaks from my academic reading, I like to watch videos about food and cooking. So then came a question to my mind: What distinguishes me from the glutton?
I have always been a slim man, so I'm clearly not physically gluttonous. But is that what really constitutes gluttony? Would it not rather be the undue preoccupation of food and its enjoyment that would make one a glutton? Where do you think the balance lies in enjoying food and the sensations it brings because the Lord has made creation and made it good and we can partake of it without being gluttonous?
Being of Italian extraction, I am also attracted to the pleasures of the table. I too like food and I like cooking. I can't quite relate to people who wolf their food without savoring it or think of eating as a chore. And it surprises me that so many men (and contemporary women!) are clueless when it comes to the most basic culinary arts. You can change a tire or fix a toilet but you can't make a meatloaf? I had a housemate once who literally didn't know how to boil water.
Let me begin with the reader's claim that being slim rules out being physically gluttonous. I don't think that is the case. But it depends on what physical gluttony is. Spiritual gluttony, the pursuit for their own sakes of the quasi-sensuous pleasures of prayer and meditation, is not our present topic. Our topic is physical gluttony, or gluttony for short. It is perhaps obvious that the physicality of physical gluttony does not rule out its being a spiritual/moral defect. But what is gluttony?
Gluttony is a vice, and therefore a habit. (Prandial overindulgence now and again does not a glutton make.) At a first approximation, gluttony is the habitual inordinate consumption of food or drink. But if 'inordinate' means 'quantitatively excessive,' then this definition is inadequate. Suppose a man eats an excessive quantity of food and then vomits it up in order to eat some more. Has he consumed the first portion of food? Arguably not. But he is a glutton nonetheless. To consume food is to process it through the gastrointestinal tract, extracting its nutrients, and reducing it to waste matter. So I tentatively suggest the following (inclusively) disjunctive definition:
D1. Gluttony is either the habitual, quantitatively excessive consumption of food or drink, or the habitual pursuit for their own sakes of the pleasures of eating or drinking, or indeed any habitual overconcern with food, its preparation, its enjoyment, etc.
If (D1) is our definition of guttony, then being slim does not rule out being gluttonous. This is also perhaps obvious from the fact that gluttony has not merely to do with the quantity of food eaten but with other factors as well. The following from Wikipedia:
Laute – eating food that is too luxurious, exotic, or costly
Nimis – eating food that is excessive in quantity
Studiose – eating food that is too daintily or elaborately prepared
Praepropere – eating too soon, or at an inappropriate time
Ardenter – eating too eagerly.
I think it is clear that one can be a glutton even if one never eats an excessive quantity of food. The 'foody' who fusses and frets over the freshness and variety of his vegetables, wasting a morning in quest thereof, who worries about the 'virginity' of the olive oil, the presentation of the delectables on the plate, the proper wine for which course, the appropriate pre- and post-prandial liqueurs, who dissertates on the advantages of cooking with gas over electric . . . is a glutton.
There are skinny gluttons and fat gluttons, and not every one who is obese is a glutton, though most are.
In short, gluttony is the inordinate consumption of, and concern for, food and drink, where 'inordinate' does not mean merely 'quantitatively excessive.' It is also worth pointing out that there is nothing gluttonous about enjoying food: there is nothing morally wrong with enjoying the pleasures attendant upon eating nutritious well-prepared food in the proper quantities.
To make it right is a royal PITA. First I make a killer sauce from scratch, a Bolognese or something pork-based. That's plenty of work right there. Then I cut an eggplant lengthwise, run the slices through egg wash, bread 'em and fry 'em in olive oil. Extra virgin, of course. Why monkey with anything else? Then I make a casserole with the cooked eggplant slices, intercalating plenty of sauce and mozarella and other cheeses between the slices. Then into the oven, covered, at 350 for 35-40 minutes until bubbly hot.
To make the one-pan quick version, crosscut the eggplant (so that it fits better in a large skillet) and fry with olive oil at moderate-high to high heat. Eggplant sucks up oil something fierce, so keep adding the stuff. Don't worry, it's a good fat. After all the pieces are cooked to the point of tenderness, set them aside to 'rest.' Now, in the same pan, add more oil and saute a blend of chopped onion, garlic, green peppers, and sliced mushrooms. When that mixture is tender, layer on the eggplant slices with mozarella and a store-bought sauce. There is no need to grate the mozarella, just slice it with a sharp knife. It melts readily. Dump in the usual spices: fresh-ground pepper, oregano, basil. Cover, and let simmer at low heat until you have a nice molten mess of vegetarian chow:
Serve with pasta, but you must absolutely avoid the Seven Deadly Sins of Pasta. Otherwise, I kill you. I prefer capellini, but it's all good. The true aficionado avoids oversaucing his pasta, and he doesn't mix pasta and sauce together a priori as it were. Do that, and I kick you, a posteriori. A trencherman true throws some sauce on top of the pasta and adds a little more or a lot more extra virgin olive oil. Freshly grate some Romano or Parmesan cheese on top of that. No crap out of a cardboard cylinder. Then add a green garnish to set it off such as Italian or American parsley, or, as I did last night, cilantro for a Southwestern accent. Fresh from the garden. Yes, you can actually grow stuff in Arizona in late December, which is another reason why Arizona is a terminus ad quem of Continental migration as oppose to a terminus a quo such as Minnesota. Some places are for leavin' as some are for arrivin.' You should get something that looks like this. Serve on a big white plate. Enjoy with a glass of Dago red. Not as good as the real thing, but good enough, especially on the second day, reheated.
Pope Francis recently spoke, quite foolishly, of "unfettered capitalism," as if there is any such thing in the world. A more worthy cynosure of disapprobation is the slide toward unfettered regulation and omni-invasive government spearheaded by presumably well-meaning liberal-fascist nanny-staters.
You know things are getting bad when they come after your hot sauce. An Asian restaurant without Sriracha is like, what? A house without a fireplace? Coffee without caffeine? A man without balls?
You see, if these food fascists can go after Sriracha on the ground that it is a raw food, then Tabasco sauce, that marvellous Louisiana condiment from Avery Island, that undisputed king of the hot sauces, recognized as such by true connoisseurs all across this great land, that sine qua non of fine dining, and the criterion that separates, in point of the prandial, the men from the candy-mouthed girly-men, and which is also a raw food — then, I say, Tabasco sauce is in danger, a state of affairs the only appropriate remedy to which which would be of the Second Amendment variety, if I may be permitted a bit of holiday hyperbole.
David Tran, founder of Huy Fong Foods, fled communist Viet Nam to come to our shores for freedom and a chance at self-reliance and economic self-determination . Unfortunately, the successors of commies, the leftists of the Democrat Party, may drive Tran out of California into a friendlier environment.
When they came for the soda, you did nothing because you don't drink the stuff. When they came for the Sriracha, you did nothing because you didn't know what the hell it was. But if they come after Tabasco sauce and you do nothing, then you deserve to be shot — figuratively speaking of course.
Mayor Bloomberg has been slapped down by the courts once again. So not all news is bad. Malcolm Pollack in "Sugar Daddy" gets it exactly right:
The issue here is personal responsibility. Implicit in this ban is the idea that it is the proper role of the State to intervene in the choices of its citizens when the citizens themselves cannot be trusted to choose wisely. But this is nothing more or less than the State assuming the relation of a parent to a child. If it is indeed the case that certain of our citizens are so incapable of adult judgment that they must be treated as children in this regard, then for consistency’s sake they ought to be assumed to be children in other respects as well, and declared wards of the State: incompetent to vote, to enter into contractual obligations, or to assume the other rights and privileges of adulthood. [. . .]
Say 'no' to the food fascists and oppose these nanny-stating nicompoops every chance you get. The liberty you save may be your own. You many not care about sugary sodas, but there may be something you do care about, peanuts, say. "When they came for the soda, I didn't care because I didn't drink the stuff; when they came for the red meat I did nothing, being a vegetarian . . . ." You know how the rest of it should go.
UPDATE: Chad M. points us to Christopher Hitchens' protest against Bloomi in I Fought the Law. The piece begins entertainingly with a couple of Sidney Morgenbesser anecdotes.
I am told that the consumption of paleolithic vittles conduces to weight loss. Maybe it does. But I say unto you: What doth it profit a man to lose weight if he suffereth the clogging of his arteries or the loss of his mortal anus to colorectal cancer? On the other hand, you are not going to take away my olive oil and nuts.
So I'm sticking with the Mediterranean diet as a via media between every Scylla and Charybdis the food faddists can fabricate. But don't make a religion of this stuff. Brother Jackass needs to be kept in shape. Well maintained, he will carry you and your worldly loads over many a pons ansinorum. Just don't expect him to convey you to the summum bonum.
Avoid fads and extremes. Where is the extremist Nathan Pritikin now? Long dead. A little butter won't kill you. Use common sense. Eat less, move more. Keep things in perspective. Just one pornographic movie can damage your soul irreparably, but one greasy double bacon cheeseburger will have no adverse effect on your body worth talking about. And fight the nanny-staters and food fascists every chance you get. A pox upon their houses of cards.
And now the anti-gluten craze is abroad in the land. Those with Celiac Disease need to avoid the stuff. But I don't see that that the rest of us need to fear it or that our well-being will be improved by abstaining from it. Be skeptical.
So what can we teach the Muslim world? How to be gluttons?
Another sign of decline is the proliferation of food shows, The U. S. of Bacon being one of them. A big fat 'foody' roams the land in quest of diners and dives that put bacon into everything. As something of a trencherman back in the day, I understand the lure of the table. But I am repelled by the spiritual vacuity of those who wax ecstatic over some greasy piece of crud they have just eaten, or speak of some edible item as 'to die for.'
It is natural for a beast to be bestial, but not for a man. He must degrade and denature himself, and that only a spiritual being can do. Freely degrading himself, he becomes like a beast thereby proving that he is — more than a beast.
I'm curious as to when you eat breakfast in relation to when you do your early morning studying, meditating, hiking, or running. I know you've mentioned a few times that you've done these activities before meeting folks for breakfast, so I am curious to know if eating affects your mental and/or spiritual clarity.
Eating definitely affects mental and spiritual clarity, and usually adversely, although it depends on the quantity and quality of what is eaten and drunk. My rule is: Nothing but coffee until after meditation. And no electronics until after meditation. A typical day goes like this. Up at 2 AM, reading and journal writing and coffee drinking til 4, then meditation 4-5, then more coffee and some toast smeared with almond butter (great stuff!). Then I turn on the modem (which I keep off at night), fire up the computer, answer e-mail and blog comments, work on a blog post, then around 5:30 or later depending on the season head out for 2-3 hours of exercise either a local hike/run or a combination of weight-lifting, swimming, and riding the mountain bike. For hydration I drink copious amount of water and OJ.
Only after physical exercise do I have a proper breakfast, around 7:30 or 8:30. But a little something before exercise is a good idea to fuel your exertions.
Don't imitate Jim Morrison, that distinguished member of the 27 Club, Roadhouse Blues: "I woke up this morning and I had myself a beer. The future's uncertain and death is always near." Yes it is if beer's your breakfast.
Neither. I am told that the consumption of paleolithic vittles conduces to weight loss. Maybe it does. But I say unto you: What doth it profit a man to lose weight if he suffereth the clogging of his arteries? On the other hand, you are not going to take away my olive oil and nuts.
So I'm sticking with the Mediterranean diet as a via media between the extremes. But don't make a religion of this stuff. Brother Jackass needs to be kept in shape. Well maintained, he will carry you and your worldly loads over many a pons ansinorum. But don't expect him to convey you to the summum bonum.
Avoid fads and extremes. Where is the extremist Nathan Pritikin now? Long dead. A little butter won't kill you. Use common sense. Eat less, move more. Keep things in perspective. Just one pornographic movie can damage your soul irreparably, but one greasy double bacon cheeseburger will have no adverse effect on your body worth talking about. And fight the nanny-staters and food fascists every chance you get. More on this in the related entries infra.
It was my pleasure to meet science writer and long-time reader and friend of MavPhil, John Farrell, in Flagstaff Friday evening. He was in town for a conference on the origins of the expanding universe, as he reports in Forbeshere. Flag is a lovely dorf sitting at 7,000 feet amongst the pines and home to the Lowell Observatory. It is an excellent retreat from the heat of the Valle del Sol where you would never catch me this time of year in long pants, jacket, and beret.
John and I are standing in front of an excellent Mexican eatery on old Route 66. I first heard about this joint on Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. As luck would have it, Farrell the Irishman is enthusiastic about Mexican chow. Our tequila-fueled conversation was so good that I failed to clean my plate, a rare occurrence as my companions (literally those with whom one breaks bread, L. panis) know.
Perhaps the best thing about maintaining a weblog is that it attracts like-minded, high-quality people some of whom one then goes on to meet in the flesh.
One who lives to eat is almost as ridiculous as one who drives a car to pump gas into its tank. In both cases a vehicle; in both cases fuel; in both cases means-end confusion.
I have honestly never eaten a Chick-Fil-A sandwich. So tomorrow I am going to try one. This is in keeping with my maxim, 'No day without political incorrectness.' Each day you must engage in one or more politically incorrect acts. Some suggestions:
Smoke a cigar
Use standard English
Practice with a firearm
Read the Bible
Enunciate uncomfortable truths inconsistent with the liberal Weltanschauung
Read Maverick Philosopher
Think for yourself
Patronize Chick-Fil-A
Give your baby baby formula
Read the Constitution
Cancel your subscription to The New York Times
Find more examples of politically incorrect things to do
