Starving yourself is undoubtedly morally bankrupt, especially so if you have elderly parents or young kids or random loved ones or dependants in general. Not by accident killing oneself is considered a primary sin in many mainstream religions.

Oh, well if the mainstream religions think it’s bad surely it must be.

I've always liked this line, even after becoming quite wealthy:

And again I say to you: It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. --Matthew 19:24

When I first heard this as a kid, I immediately thought about a real life camel attempting to fit through the hole for thread in a sewing needle. That seemed like a very odd comparison as to who would try to do such an odd thing?

As an adult, I heard someone talk about one of the gates in the wall to Jerusalem was named the "eye of the needle" because of its shape. If a camel was loaded up that exceeded a certain height, the camel could not fit through the gate. It was this situation that the biblical passage was supposedly referring. So as with most things, context really helped. </random_tangent>

My understanding is that it's more hyperbolic than that. There are gates around Jerusalem called "Eye of the Needle" (St Alexander Nevskys Church for instance, its supposedly the location of a 1st century city wall) and a man can barely fit through these himself.

I could be totally wrong, of course. Maybe they started naming holes in dilapidated walls that to bring tourists/pilgrims.

Did a quick google for pic examples; https://patmcinerney.wordpress.com/2014/06/30/the-church-of-...

There is no historical evidence for this, its pretty clearly apocryphal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_a_needle