Illegal, Immoral or Fattenng

TITLE: Illegal, Immoral or Fattening
DATE:  August 24, 2019
TEXT: Matthew 26:41 - Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
To tell the truth, I had never heard of the Center for Science in the Public Interest before I read their article on food.
The Center started out by saying that two out of three American adults and one out of three children and teens are overweight or obese. Then they asked if restaurants are reducing the calorie count of their offerings.

The answer to that was an obvious “no.” And the rest of the article shared the 2019 winners of unhealthy restaurant food. Most importantly the Center didn’t just define food by calories, cholesterol and sodium. No each disastrous dish presented also came with an equivalent substitution meal. Here’s an sample...
Sonic’s Oreo Peanut Butter Master Shake is “real ice cream mixed with rich peanut butter and Oreos into a thick and creamy shake, finished with whipped topping and a cherry. The shake tops it at 1,720 calories which is like eating 15 Oreos blended with half a cup of lard.

Cracker Barrel’s Country Big Boy Breakfast features three eggs, fried apples, hashbrown casserole, grits,  sirloin steak, two pork chops or country ham, biscuits, gravy, butter, and jam. Equivalent meal: 3 McDonald’s Egg McMuffins plus 4 hash browns.

The Cheesecake Factory Cinnamon Roll Pancakes which is 3 pancakes tipping the scale at 2,040 calories. Is that a lot? It’s like eating 11 Krispy Kreme Original Glazed Doughnuts.

I could continue and mention Dave & Buster’s Chicken and Waffle Sliders. That’s  2,340 calories’ of fried chicken, bacon, mini Belgian waffles, maple syrup, and tater tots. Which is what you would get if you ate 8 Eggo waffles, 8 Jimmy Dean sausage patties soaked in ½ cup of maple syrup.

Now you may rightly gather that none of these concoctions are especially good for you.

The fat, caloric content, the amount of salt and the sheer size of those meals ought to have them be delivered to you with some kind of government warning sticker.  

Nor could you also rightly assume that nobody will eat those meals when they go out? No, you could not do that. You could not do that because many people will order those meals because they taste good. They shouldn’t but they will.

Which is usually the way temptations are presented to us. They are something bad which have been made up to look like something good, or tasty, or fun, or exciting, or something which is going to override our common sense.
Which, my friends, explains why we need to keep the Holy Spirit with us. He is the One Who gives the discernment to tell good from bad, to know what will build up from that which will tear down; and then give us the strength to glorify the Savior by making  right decisions in regard to those temptations and, finally, sticking with those right choices.

 THE PRAYER: Dear Lord,  Alexander Wolcott was not far off when he said, “All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal or fattening.” Sadly, and all too often, that is the human condition. Help us distinguish and avoid the evil and embrace the good. To that end we pray the presence of the Holy  Spirit so our lives may glorify the Redeemer Who sacrificed Himself for our forgiveness and eternal life. In Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen.   

The devotion for today was inspired by various recent news articles. For further reading you may wish to go to this address: https://cspinet.org/xtreme-eating-2019 and the article written by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
The music which introduces and concludes our devotions was written by Guy Baumann. He along with three of his brothers perform on the album: The Baumann Brothers which may be ordered here: http://thebaumannbrothers.com/index.html