Wednesday November 5, 2008
Eating disorder
Last spring, Joan planted a bed of carrots. During the summer, young carrots came up thick and lush. In September, the carrots fattened up, pushing orange crowns out of the rich garden loam.
But did we get a good harvest in October? Not a chance! Our dog Phoebe ate most of the carrots.
We watched her. She trotted into the garden, carefully clamped her jaws around the carrot greens, wiggled a plump and crunchy carrot out of the ground, and carried it out onto the lawn to eat.
Until then, we had wondered why we found carrot greens littered around the yard.
She also slurped all the blueberries off our bushes. And as many raspberries as she could reach off our vines. We even caught her standing on her hind legs to pluck apples off the lower branches of a neighbour\’s tree.
But that\’s not all. An acquaintance has walnut trees. She dropped off a big bag of walnuts for us. We spread them on the laundry room counter to dry before we cracked them open.
We came back from an evening out to find the floor littered with fragments of walnut shell. The nuts were already processing their way through Phoebe\’s digestive system.
Our vet says Phoebe is gaining too much weight. He wants us to cut down on the amount of kibble we feed her.
I suspect that Phoebe would still gain weight if we fed her nothing at all.
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As one of those people who needs to understand things, I\’d like to know whether Phoebe\’s eating compulsion is a personal choice, or if she\’s a victim of genetic programming.
In human genetics, for example, women carry the X chromosome; men have a Y chromosome. A few men have two Y chromosomes; early research suggested they tended to be macho to the extreme.
I wonder if our dog inherited a double dose of some obscure eating gene when the original Labrador mated with a Newfoundland to launch the Chesapeake Retriever line.
The question matters, because it relates to human behavior.
Christian theology teaches two things. On the one hand, God gave humans free-will, to choose between right and wrong. On the other hand, St. Augustine of Hippo maintained that a propensity to sin was genetically passed along from Adam and Eve\’s original act of disobedience in the Garden of Eden.
Augustine lived long before biologists discovered DNA. We now know there is no “sin gene.” We can\’t simply blame flaws and failings on legendary ancestors.
But we also know that we have no choice about some attributes. Eye and hair color, right- or left-handedness, cystic fibrosis and Huntington\’s chorea – these do get handed down through the generations.
But are verbal skills inherited or learned? Shyness? Sexual orientation? Intelligence? Musical ability? Empathy?
It would help me to know whether Phoebe\’s compulsive eating results from genetic inheritance or the exercise of free will. Because then I might better understand why we humans act the way we do.
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Copyright © 2008 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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