Mary Louise Bringle is chair of the humanities division of Brevard College in Brevard, N.C. She wrote of her eating disorder in “Confessions of a Glutton” in the Oct. 25, 1989, issue of The Christian Century.

Ravindra S. Khare is a professor of anthropology at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He has written about Hindu gastrosemantics.

Francine Prose is the author of 10 books, including Gluttony, part of the “Seven Deadly Sins” series (Oxford University Press, 2003). She is a distinguished writer in residence at Bard College in New York. She lives in New York City.

Jualynne Dodson is a visiting professor at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Michigan State University in East Lansing. She has written extensively about African-American Christians and food.

Kenneth Ferraro is a professor of sociology and psychological sciences at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. In 1998, he published the findings of a study that showed that religious participation is associated with higher body weight. His study of 3,600 people found that Southern Baptists are heaviest, with Jews, Muslims and Buddhists less likely to […]

Ashram Vrajabhumi is an organization in Brazil that offers resources for “simple living and high thinking” through Hindu meditation and prayer.

Theodore C. Bergstrom holds the Aaron and Cherie Raznick Chair of Economics in the economics department at the University of California in Santa Barbara, Calif., and is the author of On the Economics of Polygyny (University of Michigan, 1994), which is available online.

Armand L. Mauss, a professor emeritus of sociology and religious studies at Washington State University who now lives in Irvine, Calif., has written extensively on Mormonism. His most recent book is All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage (University of Illinois Press, 2003).

Jenifer Kunz, an associate professor of sociology at West Texas A&M University, has researched the attitudes of 21st-century members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints toward polygamy.