Food
William Skidelsky stands up for gluttony
Published 14 March 2005
Gluttony wasn't a problem for Jesus. Why are we so opposed to it today?
Gluttony, I have always felt, lacks credibility as a sin. Somehow, it is hard to view gluttony in the same light as pride, envy, greed and the rest. Coveting your friend's wife or screwing your employees for the sake of extra cash? Make no mistake about it, that's sinful. But having a second helping of chocolate pudding? It may not be very attractive, or particularly good for you, but the idea that it poses a threat to social order or could act as a gateway to even more sinful behaviour seems, in many respects, laughable.
What I hadn't realised, until I read Francine Prose's intelligent long essay Gluttony (part of Oxford University Press's "Seven Deadly Sins" series), is that gluttony has always been considered a poor excuse for a sin. There are condemnations of overindulgence in the Bible, but most of the feasting that occurs is, as Prose points out, "unclouded by guilt, regret or remorse". Jesus may not have been a particularly intemperate soul, but even he multiplied the loaves and fishes, turned water into wine, and declared that we cannot be defiled by what we eat.
Theologians have always struggled to reconcile gluttony's sinful status with the obvious necessity of eating and, you suspect, their own enjoyment of food. Augustine rather conveniently pronounced it "possible that a wise man may use the daintiest food without any sin of epicurism or gluttony". In a similar vein, Aquinas (who, legend has it, was so fat that a crescent had to be cut in the table to allow him to sit down) argued that it is only inordinate desire that is sinful, not what actually goes into our mouths.
Given the ambivalence so many have felt towards gluttony, it is surprising that it has survived for so long as a sin. And not only survived, but flourished. At a time when lust, the other sin of bodily appetite, has lost its power to shock, and is becoming a requirement for a successful life, our opinion of gluttony appears to be moving in the opposite direction. We may not call it gluttony any more, but when we harp on about the scale of obesity, embrace the latest dietary fad or work ourselves up into a lather about some minor food scandal, it is, I think, the sin of gluttony that we are condemning.
As Prose points out, there is a marked difference between gluttony then and gluttony now. For Aquinas and the rest, it was our desire for food that was sinful. Now, we have stopped seeing ourselves as the problem and have transferred the blame to food itself. Fat, sugar, dairy products, wheat: the toll of what may do insuperable damage, or even kill us, rises steadily. The problem with this attitude is that, when food is seen as the enemy, it becomes all but impossible to take pleasure in it. At least those old-style gluttons knew how to enjoy themselves.
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