Eating Like a Bird
“Foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods, but God will destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” [1.Corinthians 6:13]
You have probably heard the expression before: “he (or she) eats like a bird.” Well, you might think again before using this phrase to describe a petite eater. A study of bird eating habits has exploded the popular idea that all birds have tiny appetites. For example, it showed the average parakeet eats nearly 100 times its own weight annually in seed, cuttlebone, gravel, and water. Because the parakeet weighs only about 3 ounces, this means that it consumes about eight pounds of food a year. To eat at the same rate, a man would have to devour some 16,000 pounds of food annually instead of his normal consumption of 1,300 pounds. Daily “bird rations” for a man would consist of about 45 pounds of food. An average hummingbird eats half its weight in sugar each day. Just imagine if a 100-pound woman ate 50 pounds of sugar a day. (On second thought… let’s not imagine that.)
Of course, there are always those exceptions of people who, at times, can even eat more than a bird. Take, for example, the famous athlete Milo of Crotona, a giant of a man who lived in ancient Greece. Milo was a top wrestler, crowned six times at the Olympic Games for wrestling, and was famous throughout the civilized world for his feats of strength – such as carrying an ox on his shoulders through the stadium at Olympia. This powerful man seemed always hungry, and devoured everything in sight. Once, when he was unusually hungry, he outdid himself and captured the world’s record for big eating. Milo managed to polish off a whole calf weighing 150 pounds in one day.
Unfortunately, modern medical research indicates more and more people are eating like birds. Harmful high-fat and high-calorie diets reign in most households. But Scripture tells us the “drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty…” (Proverbs 23:21), and gives this caution: “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?” (1.Corinthians 6:19). Ultimately, we are responsible to God for the way we treat our bodies. “Eating like a bird” is something we should all try to avoid!
