Now, after the devil, the cause of the passions is the impassioned eating of the most delectable kinds of foods. For if, as Scripture testifies, simply the sight of the tree was enough to make the serpent an acceptable and trustworthy counselor, how much more would the taste of the fruit have the same effect?
And if this is true for the taste, how much more is it so for the eating to repletion? Thus is it not clear that it was not yet profitable for our ancestors to eat of that tree through the senses? and because they did eat of it at the wrong time, was it not necessary for them to be cast our of paradise, to prevent them from making that divine land a council-chamber and workshop of evil? And should they not have undergone bodily death immediately after their transgression? But the Lord was long-suffering and patient with them.
~St Gregory Palamas (Philokalia, vol.4, p.370)
Prayerful Life 