Moderation

Yes, we all know we should eat healthy. But even the healthiest of diets can meet their match in an all-too-familiar enemy: stress.

A study published in Molecular Psychiatry "suggests stress can override the benefits of making better food choices." The findings were based on research in which 58 women "completed surveys to assess the kinds of stress they were experiencing" and also were given "two different types of meals to eat, on different days": one meal with plenty of saturated fat, the other a healthier option with plenty of plant-based oils. Some "counterintuitive" results came back from the experiment. According to the study's author, Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, "If a woman was stressed on a day when she got the healthy meal, she looked like she was eating the saturated fat meal in terms of her [inflammation] responses." Over time, high levels of inflammation could potentially lead to "a range of diseases."

Thankfully, NPR's coverage of the study ended on a hopeful note, alluding to "a whole range of strategies that have been shown to help manage stress," including performing kind deeds for others and what they called "perhaps the world's greatest stress reliever"—close, personal relationships.

Potential Preaching Angles: Science is showing that healthy eating may not always win out against stress, and even the best stress relievers may fail at times—but the "close, personal relationship" we have with our Savior is one that has already won against stress, fear, and even death.

Is it possible to play yourself to death? Officials at a Chinese Internet cafe think so ever since a 30-year-old man died after playing a game online for three days. The man collapsed, and paramedics failed to revive him on the scene. About 100 other people using the cafe for Internet purposes left in fear.

China is second only to the U.S. in number of Internet users and is home to millions of online gamers who play for hours in public Internet cafes. Internet addiction has spawned a counseling industry to treat people who cannot stop playing online games or surfing the web for days at a time.

Aldous Huxley's book Brave New World was written in 1932, but Huxley correctly forecast some of the issues of the 21st century. Huxley's premise was that people would come to love the things that enslaved them, and that they would worship the technology that would undo their capacities to think. He believed that by inflicting pleasure upon people, they could be controlled, and ultimately ruined, by the trivia they pursued.

A 21-year-old man was taken to the hospital for treatment of minor injuries after being trapped waist-deep in a vat of chocolate for two hours.

The man, an employee of Debelis Corporation, a company that supplies chocolate ingredients, told police that he stepped into the tank of molten chocolate to unplug it. He became stuck, however, and soon sunk up to his waist in the viscous confection.

The man's coworkers and local police and firefighters tried to pull him loose, but couldn't free him until the chocolate was thinned out. One police captain commented: "It was pretty thick. It was virtually like quicksand."

That's when Lee sat down at a local Internet café in the southern city of Taegu. He logged in on Wednesday, August 3, and spent the next three days playing the game, stopping only for trips to the bathroom and quick naps on a makeshift cot.

When Lee's mother had not heard from him by Friday, she asked some of his friends to find him and bring him home. After reaching the café, they confronted Lee, who told them that he would leave as soon as his game was finished. A few minutes later he collapsed and was taken to the hospital. He died shortly after arriving.

A Taegu provincial official told reporters, "We presume the cause of death was heart failure stemming from exhaustion."

A man should eat and drink beneath his means, clothe himself within his means, and honor his wife above his means.

Old debt accompanied our new marriage. Income from Peter's free-lance job was unpredictable. As Christmas approached and other couples were buying furniture or gold jewelry, we agreed to exchange gifts that had cost no money. A hundred times I forced myself not to buy the perfect jacket for Peter (or the perfect holiday dress for myself). My inner Grinch had stolen my Christmas spirit. I grumbled, "Here it is, our first Christmas together, and we can't even afford to buy a tree."

I awoke Christmas morning to find a large package on the kitchen table.

"You promised you wouldn't spend any money on me," I chided.

"I didn't," he grinned. "Not one penny." Instead, he had sold his racquetball racquet, his most cherished possession, to buy me a blender. I cried. Not because the blender was my dream gift--I could have lived my entire life without one--but because my husband had sacrificed something of himself for me. I went to bed that night praising God: "Thank you for making us 'poor.' Otherwise, I'd never have known how rich I am."

If practiced to perfection, any virtue can become a vice. Prudence creates niggardliness; honesty, cruelty; self-respect, vainglory; knowledge, condescension; justice, heartlessness; temperance, aridity; chastity, barrenness. In fact, there is no virtue that is not potentially an idol capable of reducing its worshipers to abject solemnity. Which is why the angels are so chary of perfectionism.