Food consumption, even over-consumption, is frequently portrayed in film in a very sensual or erotic way. Chaucer equated gluttony with filth and as a social evil in the face of scarcity and inequality.
O gut! O belly! O you stinking cod,
Filled full of dung, with all corruption found!
At either end of you foul is the sound.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
Sources: “Eat, Pray, Love;” (2010) “9½ Weeks;” (1986) and “Tom Jones” (1963)
Chaucer continues the passage above by noting that gluttonous behavior also is an abuse of the labor of the cooks.
With how great cost and labor do they find
Your food! These cooks, they pound and strain and grind;
Substance to accident they turn with fire,
All to fulfill your gluttonous desire!”
Elsewhere Chaucer’s Parson notes:
After Gluttony then comes Lechery, for these two sins are so near cousins that oftentimes they will not separate.”
In our time obesity has become an epidemic. Food is cheap and available, especially value-added processed foods that have little or no nuitritional value — leading some commentators to speak of a “food desert.”