Gluttony in the Age of GLP-1s

Our story begins with a monster: the Gila monster, to be specific. Back in the 1980s, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health noticed this lizard eats only once or twice a year, a fact highly interesting to science. In 1992, another group of researchers isolated a substance from the Gila monster’s venom known as exendin-4, which they noted was very similar to GLP-1, a substance that had proved helpful to diabetic mice. Exendin-4’s half-life was longer than the original GLP-1, and thus the future of diabetic medication was lizard venom. By the 2010s, glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (hereafter simply GLP-1s) were proving highly effective with diabetic humans, but they had an odd side effect: they were causing people to lose weight.

Fast forward to today. After decades of stories about the obesity epidemic in America, Gallup polling has revealed something astounding: the obesity rate peaked in 2022 and is now declining. All those stories about poor eating habits, the superiority of the European food system, and the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle have met their match in drugs that can do what gym memberships often cannot: substantially reduce a person’s weight.

For many, the main question is, how can I afford these drugs? I have a more theological query: How should we think about the sin of gluttony in the era of GLP-1s?

Gluttony in Historic Theology

Scripture does not contain a lengthy discussion of gluttony, nor does it mention the term often. There are references that suggest gluttony is a negative thing, such as “Do not be with heavy drinkers of wine, or with gluttonous eaters of meat,” (Proverbs 23:20) and “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard.” (Deuteronomy 21:20) However, Scripture contains no outright prohibition of gluttony. We would have to infer one from other commands against covetousness, hoarding riches, and being overly concerned with worldly matters. Alternatively, we could consider gluttony an example of failing to care for the body God has created or failing to care for our neighbors.

Despite not being mentioned in the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, gluttony gained a place among the capital vices from the earliest centuries of Christian history. It is possible these early theologians were influenced less by the words of Scripture than by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics. The inclusion of temperance on his list of virtues suggested an opposite vice: gluttony.

This does not mean gluttony should not be considered a vice. Rather, it means the term is somewhat open to interpretation. Does it refer to overindulgence in food and drink alone, or could it be extended to include any material thing or even immaterial things? For that matter, does it only include overindulgence, or could it also include underindulgence? Is it a sin we commit chiefly against others by hoarding things they lack, or do we commit it chiefly against ourselves through the rotting of our souls?

In chapter thirty-one of his Confessions, Augustine of Hippo distinguished between the natural drive to nourish our bodies for the sake of good health and the sinful desire to take pleasure in food. “And health being the cause of eating and drinking, there joineth itself as an attendant a dangerous pleasure, which mostly endeavours to go before it, so that I may for her sake do what I say I do, or wish to do, for health’s sake,” he lamented. “And oft it is uncertain, whether it be the necessary care of the body which is yet asking for sustenance, or whether a voluptuous deceivableness of greediness is proffering its services.”

However, Augustine did not set a hard and fast rule for what or how much we should eat. He considered it a matter of personal conscience, referencing the Apostle Paul’s teaching about debatable matters. 

Thou hast taught me, good Father, that to the pure, all things are pure; but that it is evil unto the man that eateth with offence; and, that every creature of Thine is good, and nothing to be refused, which is received with thanksgiving; and that meat commendeth us not to God; and, that no man should judge us in meat or drink; and, that he which eateth, let him not despise him that eateth not; and let not him that eateth not, judge him that eateth.

Gregory the Great built upon this foundation in his Moralia, warning his readers that a sin of the flesh such as gluttony could prevent one from properly waging battle in the spiritual realm.

The mind also of the combatant is itself kept back, by the grievous disgrace of confusion, from engaging in the spiritual contest, when, feeble in its battle with the flesh, it is wounded and overcome by the swords of gluttony. For when it sees itself defeated by trifles, it is ashamed to engage in greater dangers.

Gregory was the first to suggest five different types of gluttony: 1) eating before the proper time, 2) seeking overly luxurious foods, 3) being too particular about how food is prepared, 4) eating too great a quantity of food, and 5) giving one’s self over too much to the unbounded desire for food. We do not tend to think in terms of these distinctions today, viewing gluttony only in terms of quantity.

Thomas Aquinas’ chief contribution was to provide the language of disorder. “Gluttony denotes, not any desire of eating and drinking, but an inordinate desire,” he wrote in his Summa Theologiae, clarifying that desire becomes inordinate “through leaving the order of reason, wherein the good of moral virtue consists: and a thing is said to be a sin through being contrary to virtue.” It was not gluttonous merely to eat too much food, but only to engage in “a desire for the pleasures of the palate.” In other words, binging for the fun of binging.

Like Gregory the Great, Aquinas described gluttony both in terms of the food consumed and the manner of eating. He repeated the distinctions of quality, quantity, timing, and manner of consumption. But despite the writings of these luminaries, Christians throughout most of history have thought of gluttony in terms of an amount of food eaten unnecessarily. Given the lack of food security that most people experienced before the rise of modern agricultural methods, this makes sense, for gluttony was seen not merely as proof of greed but also proof of oppression.

However, given that over the past century most people in most parts of the world have had their bellies filled most of the time, few of us sense that having an extra helping at dinner will actually keep someone in Africa from eating, regardless of what our mothers claimed. The world grows plenty of food to keep everyone full, and starvation is therefore due to problems of distribution. This has allowed Christians to conclude that gluttony is no longer a sin against one’s neighbor, but only a failure of self-control. Given that Protestant reformers such as Luther stressed the righteousness of enjoying God’s good gifts contra the extreme asceticism encouraged by some medieval monastics, it was perhaps inevitable that modern Christians in countries such as the United States would stop talking or thinking about gluttony.

The very absence of gluttony in our sermons, books, and casual discussions has caused some Christians to reconsider their approach. You may now hear about the gluttony of doomscrolling or a friend’s social media fast. Some may point to eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia as the result of equally disordered desires. Yet, for most of us, the word gluttony still conjures images of an overweight person scarfing down copious amounts of unhealthy fare. 

The GLP-1 Moment

The belief that thinness is next to godliness and obesity is something one foolishly (or even sinfully) chooses has long been rampant in our culture. For a brief period, around the 2010s, public attitudes began to shift as research revealed the role of genetics, environmental factors, and food additives in driving obesity. Advocates decried body shaming and fat phobia, and companies were forced to reconsider how they market to people of different shapes and sizes. The days in which Kate Moss declared that, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” were seen as a product of outdated (and dangerous) thinking.

The public was willing to slowly, painfully begin accepting some variation in body types as long as losing weight was incredibly difficult. But with the mainstream debut of GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy, the game has changed completely. Celebrities who once celebrated their curves are suddenly shrinking, and those who were already thin are now positively skeletal. The equation has changed: society no longer applauds people for losing weight, but questions how they did it so rapidly and whether they are simply “cheating” by using drugs. Celebrities such as Ariana Grande have been deluged by comments from concerned members of the public who suspect them of being anorexic.

But GLP-1s do not actually burn fat. They work by affecting the way the brain perceives hunger. Specifically, they remove the desire to eat by affecting the brain’s reward circuitry. Back in the 1980s, a neuroscientist at the University of Michigan named Kent Berridge ran a study whose findings suggested the neurobiology of wanting something is distinct from that of liking it. As Shayla Love wrote for The Atlantic back in 2024,

Wanting is the motivation to pursue a reward, whereas liking is the enjoyment we get from that reward. This wanting is different from a cognitive plan, like wanting to stop by the library later; it’s an urge to act. Berridge and others have shown that wanting involves different chemicals and areas of the brain than liking does.

According to a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, one in eight American adults is currently taking a GLP-1 medication, meaning this may well be one of the largest health experiments ever performed on the American public. What began as a bid to regulate insulin has now called into question how we think about desire. To what degree is it a matter of free will, and what happens if you start to tinker with it? Millions of people are quickly finding out, as detailed recently in The New York Times.

Marie Spreckley, a researcher at the University of Cambridge studying these medications, said some patients have said they feel emotionally flatter without the delight they once found in food, and less connected to the social element of eating. She said that those experiences warrant further research. Other people have said their personality felt duller on the medications, or that they felt more lethargic.

Aquinas warned against an inordinate desire for food, but GLP-1s have the power to eliminate the desire for food altogether, and as some users are discovering, the desire for anything at all. In a recent episode of his podcast for The New York Times, Ezra Klein described his experience with one of these medications.

It made me feel like there was this level of experience that I hadn’t even recognized I had, which was around desire. I would taste something, and it would be good. Or I’d smell something, and I hadn’t noticed that the thing would then trigger another feeling, which was desire, because the feelings were so connected for me. But all of a sudden, I would have that same experience, and then the desire wouldn’t trigger. I would walk by the candy bowl and not stop, or I would leave half the burrito on my plate. It was, in a way, revelatory. The problem is, it made me quite depressed and anhedonic.

That last sentence should give Christians pause. What would Augustine, Gregory, and Aquinas make of this? In describing gluttony, none of them focused on the possibility that a person could have too little desire for food. If used appropriately in consultation with physicians, GLP-1 dosing can be adjusted to help balance out desire. But if used wrongly, a person who is already thin could avoid food altogether, sending themselves down a dangerous path in the name of looking good. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia have long been recognized as complex conditions that fall under the category of mental illness. Is it now possible to give yourself an eating disorder with a pill or an injection? Should we think about an eating disorder facilitated by GLP-1 use any differently than we do a naturally occurring one?

What is clear to me is that the Church has not yet devoted substantial time to these questions, and it must begin to do so given the number of people who are taking these medications. 

A Problem of Desire

If we stop thinking about gluttony as a food problem and start thinking about it as a desire problem, we will find more guidance in Scripture. In those pages, we read that desire is not evil in and of itself. It is virtually synonymous with the will, which though created pure, has been bent in a sinful direction since the fall of humanity. To once again desire the good, our spirits must be resurrected by the regenerative power of the Spirit.

The Scriptures have much to tell us about desire. When the ancient Israelites were wandering in the wilderness, they began to have “greedy desires” and demanded to know, “Who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish which we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic, but now our appetite is gone.” (Numbers 11:4-5) Think about the way Augustine differentiated the necessity of food for satisfying the body’s legitimate appetite and the desire one has to take pleasure in food. Here, the Israelites have the manna of God from heaven, but they say they have no appetite. Instead, they desire the tastier foods of Egypt. The Psalmist rightly characterizes this incident as a rebellion against God.

Yet they still continued to sin against Him,
To rebel against the Most High in the desert.
And in their heart they put God to the test
By asking food according to their desire.” (Psalm 78:17-18)

God was not opposed to his people desiring food, for he told them when they entered the Promised Land that they were permitted to eat other meats. “When the Lord your God extends your border as He has promised you, and you say, ‘I will eat meat,’ because you desire to eat meat, then you may eat meat, whatever you desire.” (Deuteronomy 12:20) So, the problem was not that they desired meat, but that they desired meat contrary to God’s command and their own good. The desire they ought to have had—their healthy appetite for food—was gone, and they instead longed for the luxurious foods of Egypt. This implies that they preferred to live in slavery to an oppressive ruler than be free to serve the King of Kings who provided for all their true needs. 

The eyes of all look to You,
And You give them their food in due time.
You open Your hand
And satisfy the desire of every living thing.” (Psalm 145:15-16)

Aquinas was right to warn against inordinate desires, but we should note that desires may be inordinate in different ways. An eating disorder is something inordinate, even as binging is something inordinate. Both situations are often attributable to multiple factors, and I do not condemn those who are suffering. Still, we can understand that disordered relationships to food—whether the bulimic who cannot digest it, or the binger who eats their self into unhealth, or even the foodie who wastes their savings on luxurious experiences—are all forms of slavery to inordinate desire, a seeking after comfort and fulfillment from sources that cannot satisfy.

The biblical answer to our desire problem is this: “Delight yourself in the Lord; And He will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4) Which is to say, our greatest good is God, and he is the one who will satisfy us. So, if our desires are ordered toward him and he is our source of joy, he will never deny us what we desire. Therefore, we read, “The desire of the righteous is only good, but the expectation of the wicked is wrath.” (Proverbs 11:23)

What is good except God alone? The righteous desire God, and thus their desires are good. Oh, that we could say with the Psalmist, “Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth”! (Psalm 73:5) C.S. Lewis put it well in his sermon, The Weight of Glory.

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

This has profound implications for our understanding of GLP-1s, for while muting desire may provide health benefits, the Christian life is not meant to be lived without it. Rather, it is a thing of powerful desire, more profound and pure than the trillion earthly desires that drive us into slavery. The Christian is free to use a GLP-1 or not use one, depending on his or her specific health situation, but the Christian is never free to stop desiring.

It remains to be seen whether GLP-1s can truly make the brain stop desiring anything. Those afflicted with clinical depression have long known the feeling of drifting along listless, unable to take joy in much of anything. Here it is important to make another point: desire is not simply what you feel in the moment. For example, I desire to raise my son well, but there are days when I do not feel like getting out of bed to attend to him. What a person ultimately desires is what they choose to do with their precious time on earth, not what they happen to feel at the moment. Our choices reveal what is most important to us and the things to which we bow in worship.

We must therefore choose to desire the King of Kings and Lord of Lords above all others and find our ultimate comfort in him. We must desire him over a particular body shape and the physical comfort of the moment: over any and all comers. 

For My people have committed two evils:
They have forsaken Me,
The fountain of living waters,
To hew for themselves cisterns,
Broken cisterns
That can hold no water.” (Jeremiah 2:13)

How on earth can we hope to purify our desires and break out of this enslavement to our sinful flesh? Not through self-improvement, but only with the help of heaven. The Spirit of God contends with our flesh to conform us to the image of Christ. "But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.” (Galatians 5:16-17) It is always the Spirit which purifies and resurrects.

What is gluttony in the age of GLP-1s? Just what it has always been, but manifesting somewhat differently. We must learn to see idolatry for what it is: the search for salvation anywhere but in Christ, the seeking of satisfaction from broken cisterns. We are pilgrims on the narrow way pursuing our delight in the beatific vision. For we shall behold him face to face and know fully as we are fully known. Then we will drink from the cistern of infinite goodness, a fountain ever flowing in which we are truly found.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. (Matthew 5:6)

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.