Irregular verbs for Thanksgiving

I came across the following recitation in an article on Thanksgiving gluttony:

I am a gastronome. You are a gourmand. He is a glutton.

It’s funny, because a couple of weeks ago I found a link to a BBC article on using the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person as a way of examining perspective, or as the writer put it: “It helped me to become the open-minded and sensitive old fart I am today.” The link to this article came from a Crooked Timber post calling comments made by the president of the Christian Coalition (a working mother) hypocritical:

I am out there making a difference;

You should really be at home with the kids;

She is undermining the moral foundations of our society.

Which kinda leads me right back to the Thanksgiving gluttony story, which led off with these propositions:

1) The United States is a deeply religious country. 2) Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins. 3) Americans are the fattest people in the world…

 

According to a 1998 Purdue University study, obesity is associated with higher levels of religious participation. (Broken down by creed, Southern Baptists have the highest body-mass index on average, Catholics are in the middle, and Jews and other non-Christians are the lowest.)

Well isn't that interesting! The article is a pretty good read. Some good points on how we came to the state we’re in, with 61% of American adults overweight. Yet we spend very little time on actual meals, instead constantly noshing on junk. In countries that we might consider gluttonous because of their obsession with food, people tend to be thinner. For instance, in Europe, “the countries with the nicest food – Italy, Switzerland, and France – also have the lowest adult obesity rates, below 10 percent” whereas “the countries that have, shall we say, less nice food – Greece, Finland, and Britain – have the highest adult obesity rates, in excess of 20 percent.”

Things to contemplate over your Thanksgiving feast.

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