Food Porn

God is so good, He makes the necessary joyful. We must eat to live, but God encourages our eating by making it pleasurable. Children must learn not to eat only for pleasure, lest they retain immature palates or become slaves tot food.

Gluttony is as deadly a sin any other lust. Healthy desire and licit pleasures can easily come apart. The false gourmet, the foodie, and the food pig, who will eat anything as long as there is a great deal of it are equally off.

The foodie will sacrifice greater goods for the perfect cup of coffee while the food pig will swill down any drink as long as it comes in a big gulp. Nutrition is lost and the purpose of food is gone: our natural desire for food, an eros, has taken charge.

Eros is demonic or divine and moderating desire allows spiritual progress.

Gluttony is a besetting sin for me, but what is commonly called “food porn” is not my particular problem. Seeing good food, well prepared, makes me want to eat better not more. My family loves the “Food Channel,” but seeing better food, more creative food has actually helped me.

My particular food vices are thoughtless eating for comfort and excess. The Food Network celebrates fine food and helps end my desire for yet another Big Gulp or bag of Salt and Vinegar chips.

I don’t want to replace one misuse of food with another.

It i possible, I assume, to become picky instead of swinish. I pay too much attention to food by eating any I can get, a food libertine, but it would be not improvement to become a foodie.

The food critic in the brilliant Pixar film Ratatouille, who has forgotten the pleasures of simple foods, is a warning to me but perhaps one I am far from needing to hear.

What is God teaching me? Food is good, but not out of context. Food is for nutriment, but it such a primary pleasure that it can compliment other goods. Fellowship between people in the “breaking of bread” is one secondary use, but the primary purpose must not be forgotten.

Gluttony is not good, even if it promotes seeming “goo cheer” on a holiday!

Moderation, at first, seems endlessly rigorous. Can’t I ever eat or drink excessively? No, I cannot, though amounts will vary in context.

In this context, fasting would seem questionable. Isn’t it a defect? Shouldn’t we always eat something? And it is true that there will be no fasting in heaven, but we are not yet in heaven. Most of us kid ourselves if we think food has no illicit power over us and fasting can point this out. It is freeing.
Not eating is different from overeating if it is used to break food’s power over me. Of course, fasting that is disordered is just another way of messing up a good thing.

Is there a place for gourmet food?

Absolutely, just as there is role for great architecture. Just as Paris needs one, and no more than one, Eiffel Tower, standout meals give the rest context. Beauty is a good and some cookery is the creation of edible beauty.

Food porn exists, but not when we are called upwards. Food porn is the gas station ad shouting that we need…more. Food porn is the diet ad associating eating and fat. Food porn is the tv ad saying bad food is good.

I reject Food Porn. Instead, I am learning to delight in the home cooked, healthful meals of the wife of my youth.