So good! Eating is a primal pleasure, and these days, when it is no longer regulated by religion, it is still held in check by social taboos and personal complexes.  But not for everyone, I guess…

A few hundred years ago, in the Middle Ages, gluttony was considered one of seven Deadly Sins: A transgression against God and natural order, so heinous that the sinner would go straight to Hell. Those who kept doing such things were thrown out of the church and shunned by good people.  I guess it is kind of like racism today. It is something you just don’t do if you care at all about your soul, or your reputation, or common decency.

Today, people rarely even say grace as they sit down with a double whopper cheese with fries. As in so many ways, objective measures have replaced the commandments of Heaven. Now, the commandment is “Thou Shalt Not Be Fat!”  In the modern mind, it is the life of the body rather than the soul that is in danger, but you still face the threat of excommunication – not from the Church, but from your circle of friends, or at least polite society. (Your friends will generally forgive you if you grow fat at roughly the same rate as they do.)

Now for the “carbohydrate” part. Regular readers may remember that humans really suck at making fat from carbohydrates (or “carbs” as they are known these days – sugars and starches). The only notable exception is fructose (as in “corn sugar”), which can be transformed into fat in the liver. This is a slow process though, and in practice the difference between the carbs rarely matters. Normally we all eat a mixture of carbs, fats and proteins.  In this situation, the body has the foresight to burn most carbs, which are hard to store in the body.  (It can be stored in the liver and muscles as glycogen, but only enough for about a day’s use. Fat, in contrast, can be stored for years.)

Basically, the more you shift the balance of your diet toward carbs, the more your body burns carbs and stores fat.  If you go the other way, eating almost only fat, the body can use fat as a substitute for sugar too. Even the brain can run on fat in a pinch, although it usually uses only sugar.  But during normal life, we burn carbs quickly and fat slowly.

Of course, not all of us are normal. I, for instance, fall ill if I eat more than tiny amounts of fat. But I can eat lots and lots of carbs with no ill effects, or at least none that I can discern. And I don’t become fat. If I eat more sugar than I need, I just burn it off harmlessly, at least as long as it is “real” sugar and not fructose. So unless you actually watch me work my way through the cola, candy and sweet desserts, there is nothing to betray my gluttony.

Today my conscience is pretty good, though. According to my pulse watch, I burned some 1060 calories (kcal in Europe) on shoveling snow and walking to the grocer’s.  That will take its SWEET time gaining back – carbs have only half as much energy as fat, and 1000 calories is quite noticeable: That’s half as much as an average woman burns in a whole day (24 hours). Imagine eating 12 hours’ worth of food extra, and having to avoid anything fatty. No cakes, nothing with cream, no sauces, only tiny specks of chocolate. Do you think you could do it?