Variety, the Spice of ....... Gluttony?

Yesterday I talked about appetite versus hunger, where hunger is the general desire for nourishment, and appetite is a specific craving for a particular food.

When we are truly hungry we will eat anything offered to us. Not so when we are craving something - we might think we are hungry, but our reaction to what is offered us will reveal which it is.

Also, that growling in your stomach has nothing to do with being hungry - it does have to do with having gas! True hunger is a sensation at the back of the throat, something most of us blessed to have been born in this country have never really felt.

Today I'd like to touch on the dangers of an overabundance of variety in our meals.

When I was eating the disease-producing Standard American Diet, my very favorite place to eat out at was at a Chinese buffet. Boy, all you can stuff into yourself for about $8, what a deal!

I had to sample most of the dishes, and of course load up on the ones I knew I really liked. And I did want to get my money's worth!

And of course everyone else there was doing exactly the same thing, so it was easy to excuse and ignore my greed and gluttony.

Our great country offers a plethora of buffets, from breakfasts to dinners, with Chinese to Indian to American cuisines, so I'm guessing I was not the only one who loved to partake of them.

There is also the concept of food combining, more of which I will speak at a later time. For now, I'll just say that eating all those different kinds of foods one right after another was doing horrible things inside my poor body.

Thanksgiving is particularly noted for the (over)abundance of food. When the early pilgrims originally gave thanks to God for His blessings and provision, part of their gratitude was for the food He provided them.

They were far more limited in the foods they celebrated with, by necessity, of course. We are so blessed in this country that the vast majority of us know no such limitations. Most of us go all out at Thanksgiving, doing our best to be sure there are plenty of foods to offer that everyone will like.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this! One way we tend to show love is with food, which can be a problem, of course, if that is the only way we can show it, but I'm not talking about that here.

Those of us who cook for our loved ones want to please them. That is a good thing!

But there is danger to our health in wanting to try everything at the table, because it's just too much for our bodies to handle, in variety, content, and quantity. So maybe use some self-control and try to limit what you want to sample this Thanksgiving. Your body will thank you for it!

More "food" for thought...

Phyllis Towse