7 deadly sins: Gluttony

Inspired by the name of this blog, I decided to pay some attention to the legendary seven deadly sins. I’m going to start with the one that I consider the most despicable of them all – gluttony. Defined in Wikipedia as “the over-indulgence and overconsumption of anything to the point of waste”, gluttony is usually taken to mean excessive consumption of food. It is the sin that is behind the rapidly spreading epidemic of obesity.

Gluttony is closely connected to greed. Nothing is ever enough, we’re never satisfied. Nowadays we have a surplus of almost every kind of food and to talk of over-consumption of it would be an understatement. This is the least trendy and yet the most common of the seven sins – visible everywhere but yet people do their best to hide it and are ashamed of it.

Gluttony is the one sin I have no desire of trying. It disgusts me more than I can even express with words and I’m sure that everyone who is as obsessed with beauty as I am can understand what I mean. Overconsumption of food is what makes you fat. It is, like said in Wikipedia’s definition, a waste. Obesity brings with it so much negative consequences – both social and even economical – that I’d say that it’s no wonder some of us decide to go for the other extreme, meaning the admiration of skinniness. Not that it’s completely risk-free or anything, of course not, but I’d rather be extremely skinny than extremely fat.

It’s just that in these days gluttony is made too easy. While before being fat was a sign of wealth, now it’s a sign of a lack of self-discipline. It is no longer the sin of the privileged, it has been brought down to the common people and like everything commonplace – it has become crude and lost its glamour. Which is good. What I find strange, though, is that how can obesity be so common even though it is so despised?