Jeremy Clarke Jeremy Clarke

Is gluttony no longer a sin?

My fellow journalists on the press trip seemed to regard it more as a virtue – a mark of cultural sophistication

I’ve no interest in food. None. But for the three other journalists on our press trip, eating was a consuming interest. In one Bahamian restaurant after another, I sat while they examined each other on their knowledge of this or that London or Bangkok or New York restaurant or lovingly described memorable meals. Celebrated chefs’ careers were discussed with devotion. When a dish was placed in front of them they photographed it and posted the image on social media. (Their mobile phones were as integral to dining as knives and forks.) Between meals they described how uncomfortably empty their tummies felt; after meals how uncomfortably full. They were gluttons, but saw gluttony not as a sin but as a virtue and a mark of cultural sophistication.

I wondered whether any other sins had been upended into virtues while I wasn’t looking. From time to time I ran past them a selection of anecdotes illustrating other categories of sin committed by me in the past — sin motivated by lust, greed, anger, cruelty or grandiosity. To make them more interesting or amusing, I chose ones with adverse consequences for myself, such as loss of liberty, fines, termination of employment or medical problems. I can report that these other sins are still thought of as bad, but are easily forgiven in those with the misfortune to have lived through the medieval 1970s.

One day, after a brief cerebral interlude at Nassau’s pirate museum, where we learnt that in the 18th century the pirate community was noted for its democratic principles and gender equality, our party of six were taken on a walking, eating and drinking tour of Nassau’s ‘Old Town’. I would sooner have been lying on a white beach. But as we trod the crowded pavements of the capital in single file between bar, restaurant and food stall, I enjoyed looking at the quaintly dilapidated and colourful old town houses and what remained of the British civic colonial architecture.

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