Overeating and Control of Appetite
365
Entire cities have been swept from the face of the earth because of the
debasing crimes and revolting iniquity that made them a blot upon the
fair field of God’s created works. The gratification of unnatural appetite
led to the sins that caused the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
God ascribes the fall of Babylon to her gluttony and drunkenness.
Indulgence of appetite and passion was the foundation of all their
sins....
When the God of Israel brought His people out of Egypt, He
withheld flesh-meats from them in a great measure, but gave them
bread from heaven, and water from the flinty rock. With this they
were not satisfied. They loathed the food given them, and wished
themselves back in Egypt, where they could sit by the flesh-pots. They
preferred to endure slavery, and even death, rather than to be deprived
of flesh. God granted their desire, giving them flesh, and leaving them
to eat till their gluttony produced a plague, from which many of them
died.
Example after example might be cited to show the effects of yield-
ing to appetite. It seemed a small matter to our first parents to transgress
the command of God in that one act,—the eating from a tree that was
so beautiful to the sight and so pleasant to the taste,—but it broke their
allegiance to God, and opened the gates to a flood of guilt and woe
that has deluged the world.
Crime and disease have increased with every succeeding genera-
tion. Intemperance in eating and drinking, and the indulgence of the
baser passions, have benumbed the nobler faculties of man. Reason,
instead of being the ruler, has come to be the slave of appetite to an
alarming extent. An increasing desire for rich food has been indulged,
until it has become the fashion to crowd all the delicacies possible into
the stomach. Especially at parties of pleasure is the appetite indulged
with but little restraint. Rich dinners and late suppers are served, con-
sisting of highly seasoned meats, with rich sauces, cakes, pies, ices,
tea, coffee, etc. No wonder that, with such a diet, people have sallow
complexions, and suffer untold agonies from dyspepsia.
Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 51
It is possible to eat immoderately, even of wholesome food. It does
not follow that because one has discarded the use of hurtful articles of