"chosen to eat and drink what they pleased and when they pleased. They are injuring their systems in this way. Not only this, but they are injuring their families by placing upon their tables a feverish diet which will increase the animal passions of their children and lead them to care but little for heavenly things. The parents are thus strengthening the animal, and lessening the spiritual, powers of their children. What a heavy penalty will they have to pay in the end! And then they wonder that their children are so weak morally! 2T 365.1"
"This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh."
The EGW passage discusses the impact of diet on spiritual life, which aligns with the Galatians verse about walking in the Spirit and not fulfilling the lusts of the flesh. The connection is thematic, focusing on the conflict between physical desires and spiritual growth.
Parents have not given their children the right education. Frequently they manifest the same imperfections which are seen in the children. They eat improperly, and this calls their nervous energies to the stomach, and they have no vitality to expend in other directions. They cannot properly control their children because of their own impatience, neither can they teach them the right way. Perhaps they take hold of them roughly and give them an impatient blow. I have said that to shake a child would shake two evil spirits in, while it would shake one out. If a child is wrong, to shake it only makes it worse. It will not subdue it. When the system is not in a right condition, when the circulation is broken up, and the nervous power has all that it can do to take care of a bad quality of food, or too great a quantity even of that which is good, parents have not self-command. They cannot reason from cause to effect. Here is the reason why—in every move they make in their families they creat…
"And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord."
EGW's passage directly addresses the principle of not provoking children to wrath, which is the core message of Ephesians 6:4. She provides practical examples of how parents can fail in this regard.