“They have not yet learned that God has provided for his creature (man, I mean) food and drink for _sustenance_ not for pleasure: since the body derives no advantage from extravagance in viands. On the contrary, those _who use the most frugal fare are the strongest and the healthiest, and the noblest_: as domestics are healthier and stronger than their masters, and agricultural labourers than proprietors, and not only more vigorous but wiser than rich men. For they have not buried the mind beneath food. Wholly unnatural and inhuman is it for those who are of the earth, fattening, themselves like cattle, to _feed themselves up for death_.[68] Looking downwards on the earth, bending ever over tables, leading a life of gluttony, burying all the good of existence here in a life that by and by will end for ever: so that cooks are held in higher esteem than the tillers of the ground. We do not abolish social intercourse, but we look with suspicion on the snares of Custom and regard them as a fatal mischief. Therefore daintiness must be spurned, and we are to partake of few and necessary things.... Nor is it suitable to eat and drink simultaneously. For it is the very extreme of intemperance to confound the times whose uses are discordant. And ‘whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God,’ aiming after true frugality, which Christ also seems to me to have hinted at when he blessed the loaves and the cooked fishes with which he feasted the disciples, introducing a beautiful example of simple diet. And the fish which, at the command of the Lord, Peter caught, points to digestible and God-given and moderate food....
We must guard against those sorts of food which persuade us to eat when we are not hungry, bewitching the appetite. For is there not, within a temperate simplicity, a wholesome variety of eatables--vegetables, roots, olives, herbs, milk, cheese, fruits, and all kinds of dry food? ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ said the Lord to the disciples after the resurrection: and they, as taught by Him to practice frugality, ‘gave him a piece of broiled fish,’ and besides this, it is not to be overlooked that those who feed according to the Word are not debarred from dainties--such as honey combs. For of sorts of food those are the most proper which are fit for immediate use without fire, since they are readiest: and second to these _are those which are the simplest_, as we said before. But those who bend around inflammatory tables, nourishing their own diseases, are ruled by a most licentious disease which I shall venture to call the demon of the belly: and the worst and most vile of demons. It is far better to be happy than to have a devil dwelling in us: and happiness is found only in the practice of virtue. Accordingly the Apostle Matthew lived upon seeds and nuts, (Ακρόδρυα--hard-shelled fruits) and vegetables without the use of flesh. And John, who carried temperance to the extreme, ‘ate locusts and wild honey.’”