Undisciplined Lifestyles (Part 1) — Mose Stoltzfus

Hello, this is Brother Denny. Welcome to Charity Ministries. Our desire is that your life would be blessed and changed by this message. This message is not copyrighted and is not to be bought or sold.

You are welcome to make copies for your friends and neighbors. If you would like additional messages, please go to our website for a complete listing at www .charityministries .org. If you would like a catalog of other sermons, please call 1 -800 -227 -7902 or write to Charity Ministries, 400 West Main Street, Suite 1, AFPA, 17522.

These messages are offered to all without charge by the freewill offerings of God's people. A special thank you to all who support this ministry.

It's been good. I just thank God. You know, we always just tremble at the beginning of a series, five messages to preach, three of us here and all of us tremble. Still trembling, but I couldn't believe what happened in two days.

Thank God. We are not worthy to see these things that we see and to experience them that we experience. We are never, never worthy. Shall we just bow our heads for prayer? Father in heaven, thank you, Lord.

Thank you deeply from the bottom of our hearts, Father. That a group of men could get together and behave themselves in such a way as this. To seek the face of God. To repent of their sins. To confess them.

To edify one another. Encourage one another. Bless and just be open and transparent. God, it is so wonderful. And I want to thank and bless you. Now I do pray, God, that you would again break the word of blight.

And help us to apply it in a practical way in this message. After the tremendous truths that were given this morning, God. I do pray, help us to know how to put it into practice in a very literal and practical manner.

Thank you, dear God, for your spirit. I pray that you only give me utterance, Father, for the things that you would want to be said here. As I seek not my own message, Lord, but only to break that which is true and right according to the Scriptures.

Undisciplined Lifestyles and Obedience to Christ

We pray in Jesus' name, Amen. Brother Daniel hit the nail on the head here when he talked about fighting and warring against the flesh, sin and the devil. Well, we all know that the flesh is an enemy.

A great enemy. And that is the reason that I would like to speak the next two sessions or this one and tomorrow, the Lord willing, on undisciplined lifestyles. I've noticed for a long time that people have tried to put right theology in an undisciplined lifestyle and it doesn't come out right.

You know, they seem to have, sometimes we think that we only go about halfway. You know, we say we believe it, we love the Lord, we believe His word. But we're not willing to carry it on out to where it has a direct effect upon how we live.

And then, of course, there is a blockage there. Jesus says, and I often view it with great compassion and concern. He says, why do you call me Lord and don't do the things which I say? Why do you do that?

If you call me Lord, you should do the things which I say. And that's very true to be able to say the word Lord and mean it. If He's the Lord Jesus Christ, then He's the Lord. He's in charge. He's in control.

And we should seek to do the things that He would say. Well, let us turn to Ezekiel chapter 16 for our beginning verses. Three verses we'd like to read here. Ezekiel 16, 48 through 50. As I live, say of the Lord God, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done thou and thy daughters.

Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom. Pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters. Neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty and committed abomination before me.

Therefore, I took them away as I saw good. I suppose before I would have read that scripture, if I would have asked the question, what was the sin of Sodom? I could pretty well guess what most of the answers would be.

But I would like to at least suggest that if you go ahead of the abominable things that were committed there in Sodom. Which we normally talk about homosexuality or sodomy. What we really look at here according to this, which we don't have much of that detail given to us in Genesis.

But here the prophet Ezekiel seems to have a revelation of God of the greater difficulty or problem in Sodom's life. Or in the people of Sodom. And what it really is, as you look at this, is an undisciplined lifestyle.

And the problem, and we probably often do not make the connection, but you know there is a connection. There is a connection between an undisciplined lifestyle ending up where Sodom ended up. It is because you have this mentality, you just let go, let her drive, you do whatever you want to do.

If it feels good, that's fine, you just help yourself. There are no laws or limits. And that is the way America and the way many people even in Christendom are beginning to sound those kind of statements and words.

And it is totally scary, totally scary when people talk about that. And they just say, no laws, no legalism. Now that sounds like legalism to me. And as soon as you start talking about restricting and you talk about the temperance of a flesh.

And you talk about bringing your body under. And you talk about submitting yourself under the rule of Christ. Then everybody gets very upset and nervous and all that. And because we have bought into the lie again from the devil in this whole matter that grace is freedom to do what we want to do.

And God will somehow just overlook all that is going on and bless us. And I'll tell you, this nation is filled with that theology. Literally filled. A loose and condoning attitude concerning sin and ungodliness that are clearly spoken of in the written Word of God.

And we say that grace of God overshadows it, covers it all, takes care of it all, we don't have to worry. And this big thing that is out today, which maybe Brother Denny, I just got a little bit again of his message, might have spoken of before.

Is the fact that all future sins are all taken care of too. Not only the past, but everything we're ever going to do is already atoned for and taken care of and forgiven. In other words, there's just nothing we can do that would ever jeopardize our eternal salvation.

Christian Liberty Within the Bounds of Christ's Commandments

A lot of that around. Oh my, so many things. I just would like to read a little bit from A .W. Tozer concerning the dangers of too much liberty. Because it will reflect both of these messages, I'd just like to read a little article here, or just a portion of an article.

Freedom is priceless. Where it is present, almost any kind of life is enjoyable. When it is absent, life can never be enjoyed, it can only be endured. Though millions have died in freedom's defense and through her praise, though her praise is in everyone's mouth, yet she has been tragically misunderstood by her advocates and sorely wounded in the house of her friends.

I think the difficulty lies with our failure to distinguish freedom from liberty, which are indeed sisters, but not identical twins. Freedom is liberty within bounds. Liberty to keep the commandments of Christ.

Liberty to serve mankind. Liberty to develop to the full in all the latent possibilities within our redeemed nature. True Christian liberty never sets us free to indulge our lusts or to follow our fallen impulses.

The desire for unqualified freedom caused the fall of Lucifer and wrought the destruction of the angels at sin, as we have in Jude, 2 Peter 2. These sought freedom to do as they willed, and to get it, they threw away the beautiful liberty that meant freedom to do the will of God, and the human race followed them in the tragic and moral blunder.

To anyone who bothers to think a bit, it should be evident that there is in the universe no such thing as absolute freedom. Only God is free. It is inherent in creaturehood that its freedom must be limited by the will of the Creator and the nature of the thing created.

May I add my own words, or it will destroy itself. The glory of heaven lies in the character of the freedom enjoyed by those who dwell therein. That innumerable company of angels, the General Assembly, the Church of the Firstborn, and the spirits of just men made perfect, are at liberty to fulfill all the broad purposes of God, and this liberty secures for them an infinitely greater degree of happiness than unqualified freedom could ever do.

Unqualified freedom in any area of human life is deadly. In government, it's anarchy. In domestic life, free love, it's called free love. And in religion, it's called antinomianism. The freest cells of the body are cancer cells, but they kill the organism where they grow.

A healthy society requires that its members accept the limited freedom. Each must curtail his own liberty, that all may be free. And this law runs throughout all the created universe, including the kingdom of God.

End of article there. Well, when we talk about lifestyle, you know we could talk on this for all week, but again, I would like to zero in, as I did yesterday, to what I believe is the most untouched or unspoken subject on the matter.

And I don't mean to be too hard on you. I recognize that there are many variables when we look at lifestyles that affect people in different ways. One person can live a certain way and get by and live to be 82 years old, and you can point to all kinds of relatives that did that and got by.

But there are all kinds that don't get by. And they're dying in their 50s, and they're dying in their 40s. I recently met a nurse from the Lancaster General Hospital here, who worked in the intensive care or cardiac unit.

She got so frustrated that she quit her job and began to teach nutrition because of the people coming in with massive heart attacks in their 30s and 40s. And she finally recognized that something is way out of whack.

Fullness of Bread, Gluttony, and the Sin of Excess

Well, I'm going to speak predominantly today on that sin of Sodom called fullness of bread. Now, this is not only... When we think of fullness of bread, we might think, well, that means that there was an abundance of bread.

Well, there's an abundance of bread in America, without a doubt. But we just throw away about 10 ,000 tractor-trailer loads every day that we waste. This is something in the neighborhood of 200 ,000 tons.

A child takes two bites of food and says, Mommy, I don't like it, and the rest gets thrown away. At the end of the fast food restaurants and all the other, everything that happens to be left over is going into the dumpster and into the landfills.

And I tremble to think of the judgment of God and what could happen with that type of a lifestyle. Fullness of bread. One writer gives it this way, It's the American way to die. It's the American way to die.

In parentheses, following that, I say, in short, gluttony. Gluttony, the American way to die. High blood pressure, or rather called hypertension, is the single most common risk factor for heart, blood vessels, and kidney disease in the United States.

There are approximately 50 million people in the United States that have some form of high blood pressure. Consequently, they go to the doctor. The doctor says very little, most of the time, about lifestyle.

Rather, he'll give them a prescription, and that causes side effects, which causes a later visit for another prescription, and most times a third in order to balance out the first one that he gave in order to combat this disease.

Heart bypasses are taking place like an assembly line in many of the major hospitals in America, including here in Lancaster, at about $35 ,000 to $45 ,000 a crack, only because of our lifestyle. There are about, and this is unbelievable, but there are about 100 million people in the United States who are having problems with constipation.

Someone has called it the constipated nation, with 1 ,000 different products. Listen to this. 1 ,000 different products to get and to keep things moving. America is drunk on food. America is drunk on food.

There's too much feasting and not enough of fasting, and that is true in many, many Christians' lives. In fact, there's not a lot of difference. As you look at professed Christendom, there's not hardly any difference.

The whole concept of temperance is like the prophet says, truth is fallen in the streets and equity cannot enter. We refuse to look at it. We refuse to face it. It's been a constant struggle in the last, I don't know how many years, in my own life, and I battle it, but by God's grace, it is my firm conviction that for myself, that I need to get a hold of this in a greater measure than I ever have up to this point.

I'm 51 years of age and people are dropping over dead of heart attacks at that age, and I just had that rude awakening of the other day that a friend of mine was telling me that she sat in the living room with a friend of hers who was sitting there 52 years of age, huffing and puffing and short of breath, overweight, smoked and drank, and she sat there and looked at him and turned to his wife and said, if you want that man around for any length of time, because the children are yet small, fairly small, you'd better go to the doctor pretty quick.

Well, she heard her, but four days later she tried to crawl into bed with him and he wouldn't move, and he was gone at 52 years of age. And yet, if you look at a man like that, without a shadow of a doubt if we have any common sense, we hear that and see that, we know of a certainty that he's committing partial suicide.

The Rich Man, Lazarus, and the Consequences of Indulgence

You know, the Bible says that the rich man in Luke chapter 16 verse 19 fared sumptuously every day in history, and I'm not going to preach vegetarianism here today, as you think I might or are afraid maybe I'm going to.

I'm going to tell you right now that I believe that meat-eating is in the Bible all the way back to Abraham and beyond. Maybe not before the flood, but at least afterwards. But the problem is, there was an occasionally, a calf was killed, a fatted calf was killed, and man had a feast.

The problem today is, we're faring sumptuously every day, and our bodies can't handle it, and we're breaking down, and it's killing us. And it's the American way to die. I looked at that scripture over in Luke chapter 16 verse 19, and it's one of those that I actually feel the way it is handled many times by preachers, that it is preached upon and quickly run away from.

Because it says there, nothing to do, and I don't understand all this, but it has nothing to do with what this, because it kind of gives an Old Testament setting. There was a certain rich man, and we know he had Moses and the prophets, so it's kind of an Old Testament picture and setting that is given there.

But the Bible says that the rich man fared sumptuously every day. And then the poor man, Lazarus, was laying at his gate full of sores, and was, how does it say there, desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table.

If you go back to Ezekiel 16, you will notice that even though that Sodom had fullness of bread and abundance of pride, fullness of bread and abundance of idleness, neither did they care about the poor.

You see, and so that was also part of the curse of the sin of Sodom. Well here, likewise, we have this rich man faring sumptuously every day, not caring about the poor, but then the Bible says that when he died, he went to hell.

And in hell he lifted up his eyes and was in torment, and he began to cry to Abraham, and what was he told? He was told, thou in thy lifetime receiveth the good, and Lazarus the evil, but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.

And I say, that's a scripture that makes me shudder sometimes. Thou in thy lifetime receiveth the good, and Lazarus evil, but now things are turned around, and justice has come. And that causes me to tremble when I look at the American way.

Training the Body Through Self-Control

I'd like to look at a few more scriptures. And again, if I can refer to the Amplified. This, I'd like to turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 9, verse 24 through 27, and read it in the Amplified. Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize?

So run your race that you may lay hold of the prize and make it yours. Now every athlete who goes into training conducts himself temperately, and restricts himself in all things. They do it to win a wreath that will soon wither, but we do it to receive a crown of eternal blessedness that cannot wither.

Therefore, I do not run uncertainty without definite aim. I do not box like one beating the air and striking without an adversary. But, like a boxer, I buffet my body, handle it roughly, discipline it by hardships, and subdue it for fear that after proclaiming to others the gospel of things pertaining to it, I myself should become unfit, nor stand the test, be unapproved, and rejected as a counterfeit.

I have heard of people sitting in restaurants making a joke out of Paul's testimony, I buffet my body. You know, I sit at a buffet, I buffet my body, and laughing about it. It is an awesome thing. Gluttony.

Ecclesiastes 10 .17. Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy princes eat in due season for strength, and not for drunkenness. Solomon is speaking about princes eating, and he's talking about drunkenness.

Once again, we have that word. America, and many of us, have been drunk at times with food. I believe that if you will look through the scriptures, drunkenness by strong drink, and gluttony go hand in hand through the scripture.

However, if we as ministers of the gospel would be staggering to the pulpit in drunkenness, we would be totally appalled. But when we do it drunk with food, we just wink our eye and look the other way, or just laugh about it.

Luke 12 .19 -21. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years. Take thine ease. Eat, drink, and be merry. I often say with that scripture, you know, and you hear these statements.

Have you ever heard them? Oh, come on. You deserved it. You hear those statements like, Come on, let's take it a little easy. We've worked hard. We've deserved it. Let's live it up a little bit. You know, those kind of things are often spoken in our day.

But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee. Then whose shall these things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.

The awesome thing about that whole scripture in the account there, is how that you can tell it, I can. I can so easily tell that there's a spirit of the whole thing. It's just an attitude. It's a frame of mind.

And many, many people have it today. And I just grieve many times when I go into a public eating place, and I see exactly what the people are doing. Senior citizens sitting there, you know, who have nothing better to do, with plates piled full of food.

They're out of the hard work and the exercise category, and there they sit, stuffing themselves at smorgasbords and buffets, where they can eat all they want to. And not only them, but many others likewise, and many a working man who doesn't work that hard, with a plate piled full of meat, fried in oil and fat, to a peak.

I mean, it's piled to a peak on his plate. Luke 12, 45 -46,. But, and if that servant say in his heart, My Lord, he layeth his coming, and shall begin to beat the men, servants, and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken, the Lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour when he is not aware, and he will cut him in summer, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.

Now, we can look at a scripture like that, and we can certainly pick out the part that seems to click well with us, that he shall begin to beat the men, servants, and the maidens. You know, but when it says that, and to eat and drink and be drunken, you know, then we're not so sure, it seems like, what he's trying to say there.

But the Lord Jesus is putting it all on a package. To delay, say, well, the Lord's not going to come, you see the spirit again, you see the attitude, God isn't coming yet, we're living in prosperity, let's enjoy life a little.

Everything's going to be alright. Eat and drink, and be merry. But it says, and this is why I call it drunkenness, it says that that man will be unattended, that man will be dull spiritually, and the day of the Lord is going to come, in an hour, or in a day, it says, when he looketh not for him, and in an hour when he is not aware, and that's not because he beat the men, servants, and the maidens, servants, that's because his whole lifestyle and whole demeanor has dulled his senses concerning the spiritual time factor in which he's living in.

And he doesn't understand that the Lord is coming soon. And I wish I could speak on the subject along with this as to why I believe the Lord is coming soon. And go into Daniel and some of the prophets to explain that.

But I see that we are in the midst of a very, very dangerous time to live because we have such prosperity, which is prophesied in the book of Daniel, that should come in the end, and is causing people to relax and to be drunk, and to live lifestyles that further dull their senses concerning Christ's coming.

Luke 21, 34 -35,. Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and cares of this life, so that that day should come upon you unawares. For, and here's the prophecy, for as a snare shall it come upon all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth.

That's probably talking about the coming of the Lord and the people will be unprepared. But that word, surfeiting, or surfeiting, however you pronounce it there, in the Greek, is taken from drunkenness, or a debauch, or actually a glut, is what it means.

Romans 13, 13,. Let us walk honestly in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, which is what I was speaking about yesterday. Chambering and wantonness, I believe has to do with fornication and adultery and sexual immorality.

Not in strife and envying, which is also a major matter of lifestyle. Not living in peace, and we'll speak more of that tomorrow. Perhaps not in strife and envying. 1 Peter 4, 3 and 4,. For the time past of our life may suffice us to have brought the will of the Gentiles when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revelings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries, wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speak evil of you.

But today, the church doesn't have any problem anymore with being spoken of, evil of, because they don't run with them to the same excess because they do the same thing. And they have their parties all together, sinners and saints alike, many times.

And there are reunions and there are feasts and suppers and what have you. And there's hardly any difference. But here in Philippians, you know, or in Peter, they thought it strange that the individual said, I cannot.

And I won't do it. And then they stormed and carried on and said, Oh, who do you think you are? You know, that you won't even come to us and do this and drink this or eat that. Philippians 3 .19, which is somewhat the crux of the matter again in the New Testament, where he says, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and who glory in their shame, who mine earthly things.

Now for myself, in my Bible, I wrote down this. Food, sex, and materialism. Whose God is their belly, who glory in their shame, the things that they should be ashamed of and who mine earthly things. And if I have any understanding at all of the Word of God concerning that verse, that is what we're talking about.

Undisciplined lifestyles that affect us so greatly today. Whose end is destruction. Let's look at it a little bit. That is, they have no true religion. They must perish in the same manner as all sinners.

And their profession is not going to save them. Unless these people are converted and become true friends of the cross, they cannot enter heaven. Whose God is their belly, who worship their own appetites.

A people who worship eating or worship their appetites and who live not to adore and to honor God, but for self-indulgence and selfish gratification. Just recently, we read in a very common church newspaper about a youth group that put on a supper for their young people.

They had a little extra equipment there for everybody and then some missing. They gave them all gloves and aprons to put on and no utensils and served them spaghetti as a youth activity. They can be glad I hope that I wasn't there.

I don't know how I could endure that. To see a bunch of young people sit at a table like pigs in the name of a youth activity. It's awesome. Absolutely awesome. And that's only the tip of the iceberg for all that stuff.

And who glory in their shame. That is, they glory in the things which they ought to be ashamed of. They indulge in modes of living that they ought to be ashamed to even mention. And who mind earthly things.

That is, whose heart is set on earthly things or who live to obtain them. Their attention is directed to honor, gain, pleasure, chief anxiety, is that they may secure these objects. This is mentioned as one of the characteristics of enmity to the cross of Christ.

And if this be so, my, what will God do with His church in our day? What will He do? On the local scene here, it is something, you know. The plain people in this area seem to be known more for their food preparation or their delicious meals that they serve than for about anything else.

Of course, we have so much hypocrisy and so, you know, people are farming tobacco and known for all their sweets and sours and all the different food they make, but nobody virtually hears or learns of Jesus Christ when they come here as a tourist.

But rather, they are competed with for being lured to the biggest smorgasbords and buffets, up to 80 items and all that that we have that try to get them in. And of course, many of the local people likewise.

And I think in many of your cities you have the same things. We call them the food strips like we have over here on Route 30 where restaurants are nearly against each other for miles down the road. And everything is just prepared commercially but this is the problem, you know.

And they just make the food because it tastes good and people eat it and never care. They never care the effect that it has on them. One of the major problems, I won't have time to speak about this too, is the fact that there is no fasting today.

I talked to a minister of the Gospel just a few weeks ago and in the course of my conversation I asked him, have you ever went on a three-day fast? He looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language and he shook his head, no.

Never would have done such a thing. I said, I encourage you to do it and I think maybe God will open some things up to you that you haven't known before. And so not only are we faring sumptuously every day like the rich man, we never give the body and our organs any rest and therefore we are in trouble because of that many times.

We overload our systems to the point and never give them any rest and they can't heal themselves or correct themselves and then we go to the doctor and sit under the knife to try to make the corrections but you know that that is only so much can be done.

Total health care costs from one end to the other. America is costing America somewhere over 980 billion dollars a year which is virtually 1 trillion dollars. Not only, and a lot of it is set to correct this horrendous lifestyle that we are living.

Abundance of Idleness and the Health Consequences of Prosperity

Abundance of idleness is another one that I could speak about. It's this faring sumptuously every day and then no exercise. Like I said, for the man who is a hardworking farmer or carpenter many times he can eat this kind of a lifestyle and doesn't have much problem with it maybe and he does okay with it.

But for the most part you eat like that and you sit in front of a computer all day you are headed for trouble. Big time trouble. Well, I'm just going to continue to give you a few facts here. America is becoming increasingly aware that it is really unnatural to die from heart disease, cancers, strokes, diabetes, liver cirrhosis and kidney disease.

And yet these are the very diseases we find so abundantly in our western culture. These diseases are largely related to lifestyle choices. How we eat, how we drink, how we smoke and how we relate to other people.

Meaning the anxieties and the fears and the bitternesses and all that. Maybe we'll speak about it a little more tomorrow. For years we have believed that with the right amount of money, research, manpower and time scientists could find the right cure for anything.

But we understand the limitations of the medical high-tech approach to be taking care of these western killer diseases. Instead we have learned that they are the result of how we chose to live. They relate to lifestyle.

They relate to the good life that we have. We don't really want the good life because it's killing us. Instead we want the best life and the best life will happen to be found in a simpler life. What is the result of the good life?

7 out of 10 deaths are now due to cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Imagine 70 of all the deaths are due to heart disease and stroke and to cancer. Though on the rise, these killer diseases are still rare in some 70 of the world's population.

It has been interesting for scientists to try to study and try to figure out why that in Japan a lot of these diseases never existed. Japanese men, there were no arteriosclerosis or arteriosclerotic plaque in their veins.

That was until the fast food industry came into the major cities. And people, they tell me, today even in China will spend a month's wages to take their son or daughter to McDonald's on their birthday because it all at once becomes the world thing to do.

Now Japanese sons are dying before their fathers. And if you bring the Japanese men to the United States, they have the same cardiovascular problems that the United States does. Doesn't matter the culture, doesn't matter the birth, doesn't matter where they come from, it only is because they have come into the American way to die.

What we need is not more bypass surgery. After all, 15 to 30 of those grafted vessels will close up again within about 12 months after the surgery with fat-filled, cholesterol-laden, arteriosclerotic plaques.

And that is the plaque that closes off the arteries and forms on the inside of the blood vessels of which we are now needing to assembly line these heart transplants where a person goes in and cuts open his leg, takes out some veins, cuts open the heart, puts in these veins to surround the arteries that are clogged there by this plaque.

And some of them totally shut off, others at 90 -95 closed off and again get blood to the heart. The only problem is that if the lifestyle isn't changed, pretty soon the new veins that you just put in will have the exact same problem and they will clog too in a year or two or five.

But we just go to the doctor and lay down our $35 ,000 or $40 ,000 or have hospitalization that will cover it and keep on going. The magic formula for weight loss is to eat more food, but of course the right kind.

Refined foods pack in the calories. Natural foods, as grown, dilute the caloric density and you can actually eat more food with fewer calories and you can lose excess weight even without trying just by the lifestyle that you live.

Let me give you some, well, for instance, in some of these problems that we're facing with processed foods versus what God has given us. Did you know that it takes 14 ears of corn to yield one tablespoon of corn oil?

Did you know that it takes seven pounds of sugar beets to extract one pound of sugar? Adding these extracted and concentrated calories to the food we prepare or to the processed foods we eat greatly increases the caloric density of our diet.

For example, the simple potato has about 100 calories, been the nutritious stable for many years in America, saved Russia from mass starvation in the 30s and again in the 40s when they had such a great famine.

Most of the people who stayed alive stayed alive by the lowly potato. About 100 calories to it. Put it in a can of Pringles, that same potato is now 1 ,000 calories. Take the humble nutritious apple, about 75 calories, and convert that thing into a out-of-this-world piece of pie a la mode and the 75 calories have skyrocketed to over 500.

Take the 100 calorie banana, add fudge, nuts, ice cream and some gooey topping and all of a sudden we have a 1 ,000 calorie disaster, nutritional disaster. Take a large candy bar, has about 500 calories, can be eaten in two minutes flat.

You take the same calories in fresh fruits and you'll have to eat a banana, an orange, an apple, a pear, a bunch of grapes, an apricot and half a papaya. We're ashamed to name it for what it is but it's called obesity, gluttony in America.