"Care for an Entrée With Your Entrée?" Gluttony, the Forgotten Sin

Patrick Madrid.blogspot.com ^ | June 4, 2009 | Patrick Madrid

[GonzoII]

Catering to gluttony is big business these days. Practically every restaurant — including all the popular chains that you and I and every other American dines at, now and then — goes way overboard in the super-sized portions they dish up and the bad-for-your-health ingredients in the food. For example, check out what one recent scientific study discovered about some dishes served at a very popular Italian food restaurant chain.

[MEGoody]

We need to really examine what "gluttony" means from a biblical perspective. I don't think it merely means someone who eats too much and is overweight, because the there are scriptures that talk about "fatness" in a good way. (Nehemiah 9:25 for example.)

Perhaps gluttony has more to do with being more consumed by food than by consuming food.

I would venture to say that thin, fit people can be as guilty of gluttony as fat, out of shape people.

[savedbygrace]

Here’s my question: Why does it really matter?

Why does it really matter if proof is given or not to support the statement that it is a proven fact that if customers stop ordering large portion sizes, then the restaurant will stop offering them?

Or, what does it matter whether the customers are following the restaurant's menu choice changes or the restaurant is following the customers' ordering patterns? (The chicken or the egg?)

[marshmallow]

The opposite of gluttony of course, is fasting. Scripture tells us that fasting is a discipline which has immense spiritual benefits. Jesus himself fasted for 40 days in the desert prior to his public ministry. He also told us that certain demons do not come out except through "prayer and fasting".

Likewise, the great saints and desert fathers all fasted and mortified their senses. This is because they all saw the flesh as an enemy which needed to be subjugated and disciplined.

Conversely self-indulgence, whether it be with food or some other means of gratification is behavior which separates us from our main purpose on this earth. St. Paul makes reference to this in his Letter to the Phillipians when he refers to those "whose god is their belly" (Philippians 3:19).

[Billthedrill]

Ah, gluttony. The sin you wear. A matter of degree, really, inasmuch as it consists of eating more than you need to eat. It constitutes sin when you eat more than God thinks you need to, not when you eat more than somebody else thinks you need to, especially if that somebody else happens to be a celery-chewing food nazi. Apart from that it really doesn't differ much from any other self-inflicted wound, or rather it didn't up until now.

However, with the advent of socialized medicine I'm gonna have to pony up fer yer bypass surgery, buckaroo, so drop that Twinkie and gimme twenty. That's the great thing about socialism - it turns every one of your neighbors into that bossy little girl you could never stand in grade school. Who needs freedom? She'll tell you how to live. She listens to NPR so she knows.

Personally I control myself by imagining my reflection in a mirror with a big, nasty gut and knowing how hard it is to get rid of it. Fortunately, vanity isn't a sin.

Oh, wait...

[Minn]

To 'enjoy' a much shorter, and more difficult life maybe?

So, where's your evidence that people that eat out have shorter, more difficult lives? Ninny much?

[Larry Lucido]

Well, to me at least, I have very little stake (or steak) in the outcome of lack of outcome in any empirical study of customer dining habits. If I owned a restaurant I would certainly have more interest.

As to your second statement: As long as I can order what I want, or choose not to order at all, then I don’t care whether the restaurant is secretly trying to manipulate me. I know how to say “No, I don’t want you to jumbo-size my order.” Alternatively, maybe I want them to jumbo size it for an extra 50 cents or whatever, and save half for later. It’s win-win.

To paraphrase Bill Murray, “It just doesn’t matter!”

[Minn]

It’s awful

Yes

[savedbygrace]

That is true, in general. In this case, there are multiple factors involved, and SJSAMPLE has asserted that when one of the factors, portion sizes, has been proven to be the deciding factor in customers rejecting food items, THEN the restaurants stop selling them.

If that factor could be isolated from all the others, then his point could be proven. So far, there has been no proof of that single factor being isolated as a singular cause of customer rejection of food items.

That’s the point.

[savedbygrace]

There you go. A sensible response. I agree.

Well argued.

[Minn]

Restaurant food is unfit for dogs.Generalize much? You obviously never had a Taco Burrito at Zantigos years ago before they were swallowed up by Taco Bell. Nobody that did, would ever make such a ridiculous pronouncement.

[razorboy]

so you think portion size is somehow different from other aspects of business?! It’s simple capitalism that’s been around forever and was eventually written down by Adam Smith, if your stuff isn’t selling you figure you start asking questions, hire surveying companies, go through the archives of articles about your business, find out what people are complaining about and change it. If the complaints are portion size then you shrink them. Now it might or might not have happened yet, but the basic rules of capitalism say it CAN and WILL, at some point (especially now that the anti-fat crowd is turning large portion size into a negative) large portion size will (and possibly already has) driven away enough customers that the restaurant will change it.

Your demand for “proof” is just silly pointless arguing for the sake of arguing, either you don’t believe in basic capitalism or you know this can and possibly has happened. Just that simple.

[savedbygrace]

I agree mostly with your first paragraph. Your second paragraph makes use of the logical fallacy of False Choice, so it is rejected on that ground.

How is asking for proof silly when the original statement was that it was proven fact? Frankly, I haven’t seen evidence of American consumers rejecting restaurant food items strictly because of portion size. Have you?

[razorboy]

It’s not false choice at all. Either you agree with capitalist concepts enough to understand that indeed portion size (like any other aspect of the business) can drive away customers, or you don’t.

It’s silly because the proof has been available for at least 230 years. Since Smith took the time to write Wealth of Nations (and really before him since none of what he wrote was really that revolutionary, just nobody had bothered to write it down before) we’ve known how businesses draw and repel customers. Being a frequenter of Yahoo Health which web publishes the Eat This Not That column from Men’s Health ( http://health.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AgOMLMK2WRLaWGuEkC4uEJh1kIV4?p=eat+this+not+that )yes indeed I see consumers rejecting large portion size (and other unhealthy factors). Now will it be enough to change any menus? I don’t know. But the remains, and remains proven for over 2 centuries that if enough people reject large portion size (or any other aspect of business) there WILL be change. That’s a simple known quantity of capitalism.

[SJSAMPLE]

Any more info and you’ll have to pay me for the education.
I’m glad you’re finally comprehending both the theory and the proofs.

[GonzoII]

“Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man: but what cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.”

Eating with unwashed hands and gluttony are two different issues.

[savedbygrace]

That is a non sequitur. You still haven’t made your original point. Now you’re not even addressing it.

[savedbygrace]

The reason you are in error with your argument is because you have misunderstood the question. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt, because another possibility is that you are intentionally misrepresenting it.

The issue does not actually involve capitalistic concepts much at all. The issue is that, so far, there is no evidence that the theory (customers reject food item choices strictly because the portions are too large first, and not as a result of restaurants changing the portion sizes first) has actual documented proof.

The issue is not whether restaurants will respond to changing customer purchasing choices. Of course they will, or they will go out of business.

[Judith Anne]

My daughter and I are a prime example. We occasionally eat out when she’s working in my town, and we split one dinner salad and a philly cheese steak sandwich. The restaurant knows us and is happy to do it.

We enjoy each other’s company over a meal, say grace publicly, and tip well because the service is excellent.

Many restaurants, including chains like Applebees, will cheerfully serve half portions, some even have it on the menu.

[Oatka]

Oh, for the good ole days.

From Elaborate Toltec Club Society’s Gathering Place in Early Days:
"Those were the days of the nickel beer, with a free lunch thrown in.
The customer who spent as much as five cents for a glass of beer—standard price in those time—was entitled to size up the large assortment of cold food stuffs and help himself. The layout resembled the stock in better delicatessen stores.
The man who wasn’t bothered by any qualms of conscience could stand before the food counter, holding a glass of beer where everybody could see it, and stuff himself.
Then, there were the timid soul who believed that, for $2 worth o free eats, he should, at least, spend more than a nickel for beer. So, he gave the bartender another nickel for a second glass, loosened his belt and waddled back to the food."

[savedbygrace]

Great and admirable. However, the original statement by SJSAMPLE was:

It’s a proven fact that these restaurants will stop offering/selling these items if the customers stop buying them.

Has that restaurant STOPPED offering the full size salad and sandwich? If not, then your example, fine as it is, does not provide proof of SJSAMPLE's assertion.