This should be a rhetorical question...

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Amras Oronar

And af course, people living in that days had too do a lot more then people nowdays. Overweight wasn't really a problem untill cars and stuff (1900+?) came arround I believe.

What about Friar Tuck? And Hobbits lazy? It takes a lot of work to make all that food and ale you know. And to harvest pipe-weed. Hobbits were just too short for their weight.

Seriously, this thread is a sign of the times, equating sin with things like eating, drinking and smoking, when sin used to be things like lust and avarice and blasphemy. I doubt Tolkien would have thought food, drink and smoking were sins as he was a committed smoker, enjoyed a beer (the Inklings used to meet in the morning, and morning drinking would alarm today's health freaks) and loved his food. The only thing keeping him from being very overweight will have been that he rode a bike and walked a lot, and he was not slender anyway.

Gillian McKeith would've had a field day with him and he'd be classed as an incredibly evil sinner by today's standards.

[The Saucepan Man]

I'm most definately with Lal on this one. Vegetarianism is not a healthy diet as it generally requires vitamin and mineral supplements and the like (or some revolting meat substitute) to replace those lost through lack of meat (part of our natural diet). And slender does not equal perfection. Beauty is not skin deep and resides in the eye of the beholder.

Hobbits weren't lazy. they just appreciated the finer things in life.

Give me a Hobbit for company any day, rather than one of those dreadful goody-two shoes, too perfect for their own good, wonderful slim, fair and healthy Elves. How insufferable they would be.

Oh, and I believe that Elves hunted from Rivendell. I suspect that even those ultimate teacher's pets, the Vanyar, hunted in Valinor ...

... with Orome.

Sign of the times indeed.

Hmm, I am obviously having ME Survivor withdrawal ...

[Formendacil]

What's this? A dozen posts, and no mention of Salgant of Gondolin, lord of the House of the Harp?

Mind you, we are talking "Book of Lost Tales" here, but he's most definitely described as fat:

Originally Posted by Tolkien, in the Book of Lost Tales,

but Salgant bore [a shield with a harp] of gold, and he alone rode into battle of all the sons of the Gondothlim, and he was heavy and squat.

Whether or not Tolkien had this idea of Elves in the LotR or post-LotR era (Galion is a possible proof for the Hobbit era), he clearly did in the Lost Tales era.

[Anguirel]

Curse you, Formendacil, I was just about to post that!

[Mithalwen]

To save me repeating myself....I will link this .

Also remember that to an extent ideas of health and beauty are culturally influenced. It is ony recently since food has become abundant in the west, due in part to modern agricultural methods, that to be thin has been regarded as desirable.... before it was a mark of poverty (and a suntan marked you as a peasant).....

And there is plenty of evidence for elves enjoying a party ... I am sure even Sauce wouldn't mind propping up a bar with dear old Galion and suspect Esty may well be right about him .....


As for the Might's quote ... it says desires of the body only..... not that they don't have desires of the flesh.... it is quite clear in the rest of that essay that they enjoy the desire that it mainly refers to ... just that the enjoy it with one other only at a ceertain point in their lives........ .... and so with drinking/ eating ..... just because they don't go in for Rabelaisian levels of indulgence it doesn't make them ascetics.

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

And there is plenty of evidence for elves enjoying a party ... I am sure even Sauce wouldn't mind propping up a bar with dear old Galion and suspect Esty may well be right about him .....

Ah, Galion. Yes indeed. He's my kind of Elf.

[Lalaith]

I think that due to the special link between their bodies and their souls they were not so easily ifluenced by such pleasures such as food, drink, or..,you know what I mean

I think this is true up to a point. Remember Legolas not needing to sleep unless he wanted to, and elves choosing not to have children if the parents were going to spend time apart during the offspring's formative years. I imagine elves just had more control over their bodies than we do - they enjoyed good food, good wine and all those other pleasures. They were just able to enjoy them without *needing* them, or them having the same effects on them as they do on us humbler folk.

Come to think of it, I know some people who are pretty elf-like in this way - they stuff their faces with good food and never get fat, drink fine wine all night and wake up the next morning bright-eyed...jolly annoying they are too. I begin to understand Saucie's anti-elf viewpoint....