Muzzle guzzle!

Gluttony is supposed to sit uneasily in the company of the seven deadly sins: for starters (pun intended), as Orson Wells said, it is not a secret vice. Nor does it hurt anyone else! It was Socrates who hinted at the dissatisfaction that propels gluttony, which St Aquinas also described as “an inordinate desire that defiles a man spiritually”.

So, he who is not contented with what he has would not be contented with what he would like to have, Socrates explained, “which is why worthless people live only to eat and drink while people of worth eat and drink only to live!”

The health benefits of the Epicurean ideal of moderation have been endorsed by other traditions as well: eastern sages, for example, say yoga is destroyed by six causes, chief among which is overeating and eating wrong sorts of food. Similarly, mitahara, or sparing diet, was held to be foremost among yogic restraints (Yama-Niyama). But curtailment refers only to quantity, not quality.

Yogic food is full of life-sustaining rasa. The same idea is reflected in some insights of gerontology: the acronym Cron, for instance, talks about caloric restriction with optimal nutrition; which also resonates in Sage Svatvarama’s yogic endorsement of desirable/mouth-watering foods! Recently, caloric restriction got an unexpected boost: animal studies have shown that a drug used to treat Type 2 diabetes may delay the effects of ageing and increase the lifespan by mimicking some of the effects of calorie restriction.

But what is good for mice may not necessarily be so for men! That is why experts advice moderation while the jury is still out.