Healthy Eating and the South Gate

MooseWizard

Is maintaining a healthy diet good Masonic behavior? One of the duties of the Junior Warden is to supervise the craft during refreshment, and see that non pervert the purpose of refreshment to temperance or excess. Further, we are taught to "circumscribe our desires and keep our passions within due bounds." Would this not lead one to believe that overeating would be almost unmasonic? Discuss!

Parson_M

I remember my Masonic training to indicate that the means of refreshment was wine and it was up to the JW to ensure that in the necessary refreshment, things didn't go too far. I had never moved out of that model, but I like the direction you are going regarding food: food is a necessary refreshment and in taking it too far, we can be considered gluttons and thereby selfish or functioning against harmony. I would, however, add in this thought: what if the excessive weight comes not from overeating, but continuing to eat the same whilst activity level is dropping. In my mind, that is completely different than taking refreshment to excess.

heberlonghurst

An overly simplistic but highly aplicable definition of virtue and vice is that if it causes you harm it is a vice and if it benefits it is a virtue. Under that definition I can say that my eating too much is a vice as it makes me feel sluggish.