Food as religion

[jackal10]

On the Kosher Questions thread, I said

I was trying to make the not very good point, and maybe start a discussion that foodies subscribe to a set of beliefs (fresh = good, manufactured=bad; foam = good, starch based sauces= bad) that are in their way just as irrational and received beliefs as any based on religion.

They go to temples (called restaurants) to worship, and listen to prophets (media chefs), to have their beliefs re-inforced...There are sacred rituals (decanting wine with a candle, for example), and special festivals ( first seasonal foods and drinks)

Maybe this should be a seperate thread, if anyone wants to take it up

So, at the risk of offending several sacred cows (or perhaps in order to) here is the seperate thread. Its about irrational food beliefs, and the way some elevate food to religion rather than the foods of any particular religion; maybe its also about the the human need for received beliefs, either as religion or food (this is not just any burger, but a 100% Angus burger etc as one current advert has it), and how this need can be, and is exploited

[Fat Guy]

Jack, I'd view this from the perspective of what seems to be a near-universal human need to couple food with religious and quasi-religious beliefs. It's not just foodies who have a quasi-religious relationship with food. It's vegetarians, low-carb dieters and even seemingly normal people -- their food religion seems unremarkable because it's mainstream, but think of all the restrictions and taboos at even the most typical dinner table.

One thing I've also noticed is that people who grow up in traditionally religious households but reject religion as adults very often sublimate their religious dietary practices into quasi-religious food behaviors: you take someone who grew up in a kosher household but no longer observes the laws of kashruth and I can guarantee you that person has a significantly higher percentage chance than the general population of subscribing to one or another variety of rigorous dietary regimen.

[Gifted Gourmet]

One thing I've also noticed is that people who grow up in traditionally religious households but reject religion as adults very often sublimate their religious dietary practices into quasi-religious food behaviors: you take someone who grew up in a kosher household but no longer observes the laws of kashruth and I can guarantee you that person has a significantly higher percentage chance than the general population of subscribing to one or another variety of rigorous dietary regimen.

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I would suspect quite the opposite to be true. If I had had such tight restrictions in my youth, I would opt for the most *trefah and permissable of options ...Ham and oysters and all types of shrimp .. cheeseburgers, etc. all of which I had missed in my upbringing.

but I may be completely off-base in my assumptions ...

* Forbidden food is called trefah

[Daniel Rogov]

That food has godlike qualities is demonstrated in that many cultures have had or, in some cases, still do have their specific gods of food. By various names, Inari, Tonachatechuhtli, Haumia-tikitiki, Ugajin, Daikokuten and Ru are all considered in one culture in another to fulfill that role.

Of course, the actual worship of food might be thought to be akin to gluttony and in every religion that I know of that is considered sinning against God or the gods as the case may be.

Me, I adore food. The day I start to worship it is the day I'll finally buy my Lambhorgini. Well….at least if my banker allows that much of an overdraft.

[Carrot Top]

If you believe, as Jean-Francois Revel wrote, that "To as great a degree as sexuality, food is inseparable from imagination", then the suggestion that you are making could certainly hold aspects of truth.

Personally, I can not think of anything else in the world that people become so consumingly and definitively sure of how and what and where they want for themselves, than food.

And of course, staying alive requires that we eat. So the ritual must be played out each day, unendingly till. . .well, till the end comes.

Indeed, I cannot think of a single subject that rouses people's passions as much as food. Except maybe politics and football. And religion, as you say.

I do subscribe to Revel's idea.

[bookluvingbabe]

One thing I've also noticed is that people who grow up in traditionally religious households but reject religion as adults very often sublimate their religious dietary practices into quasi-religious food behaviors: you take someone who grew up in a kosher household but no longer observes the laws of kashruth and I can guarantee you that person has a significantly higher percentage chance than the general population of subscribing to one or another variety of rigorous dietary regimen.

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I would suspect quite the opposite to be true. If I had had such tight restrictions in my youth, I would opt for the most *trefah and permissable of options ...Ham and oysters and all types of shrimp .. cheeseburgers, etc. all of which I had missed in my upbringing.

but I may be completely off-base in my assumptions ...

* Forbidden food is called trefah

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But they may substitute something differently rigid into their lives--no salt; no fat; nothing non-organic; no carbs....

That type of thing....

[Gifted Gourmet]

But they may substitute something differently rigid into their lives--no salt; no fat; nothing non-organic; no carbs....

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I would think that the rigidity of living by "tight" rules would be even more confining as an adult and that the individuals who grew up with those restrictive rules would not want to force that restriction upon their progeny ...

[Carrot Top]

Do you think perhaps, Jack, that the current and burgeoning interest among people that live the US, (and perhaps in Britain too). . .both places where food has not traditionally held such interest as opposed to some other cultures and places. . .do you think this interest has become a sort of substitute for the traditional religions that have supposedly lost followers?

I might agree with this if so. . .but then again, I don't really know. Somewhere recently I read that membership in organized religion of all sorts is growing in the US.

Maybe we are just hungry for all sorts of things that might be fulfilling. That certainly has always been a great tradition in the US, its hunger for more and better. And one might say so of Britain also if one goes back to considerations of the British Empire.

We do live in an age where anything that is thought of, or created, as an idea. . .must be hyped to be successful. A quiet idea is an unknown idea. Media makes reality, and the bigger and bolder the better seems to be the motto.

Food is no longer just a personal thing we partake of in our homes every day. It is emblazoned across our culture in bright and bold colors to create excitement, and we define ourselves by whether we dine at McDonald's or at El Bulli or at "wherever".

Perhaps this need to be big and bold leads to the translation of food into a quasi-religious sort of thing, at least superficially. It seems to me that many things today have taken on this semi-religious quality in our lives. Everything is named and defined. We are straight or gay, and often seemingly religiously so. We are "this" political way or "that" political way, and again, seemingly religiously so.

It is not a quiet nor a subtle time in history. Perhaps food is just one of a variety of things that have taken on this look and feel. I do think I know what you mean, though. There is not much of the understatement about it any more. And that makes one think of bible-thumpers or their ilk.

P.S. I have tried in this post to stay away from the specific things that are banned on eGullet in terms of writing on these subjects. I hope I have done so. It has been difficult to even attempt to answer what I think Jack was writing about without skating rather close to the edge, though, as this IS the connected subject.

Edited July 11, 2005 by Carrot Top (log)

[Abra]

Great topic, Jack! I also think that it's at least partly because ours is an era full of disillusionment and despair. People are longing for something that is real, true to what it seems, understandable, beautiful, nourishing, life-affirming. Nothing readily obtainable fulfills those promises like food, in a time when there's not a lot else one can count on.

[Carrot Top]

That is a very beautiful way of looking at it, Abra.

Another idea came to mind in terms of this. This sense of high imagery and detailed ritual that Jack speaks of. . .two factors also seem to be in place that might answer for parts of it.

The study of gastronomy and the ability to practice it on a daily basis have become much more easily available to many more people due to better distribution of fine foodstuffs "everywhere". . . and the economic conditions that would allow more people to partake of this world of fine food are also in place.

Add to that the fact that this study and life is new to many people. Their families did not do this before them, nor did they live in a culture where the majority of people viscerally lived it and knew it (again, I am speaking of the US here).

This seems to me to perhaps be part of the answer, for when I look at people who have known fine food as part of their lives in a visceral, quiet way. . .going back to their upbringings. . .they do not seem to have the attitude of chatty reverence that others may have to whom the whole thing is "newer".

People I've known whose families have had the ability to experience fine food as a daily part of life, who have grown up with a good knowledge of fine food and wine, don't fuss about it as much as the ones I've known who are just learning it now.

Doesn't really matter whether we're talking about perhaps old-money people who dined at Lutece at Daddy's knee from the age of four on upwards, or whether we're talking about people who grew up in an atmosphere of growing and producing and cooking the bounty of the land in their family homes, without pretense.

And this thing of formalizing and giving more importance to a subject when "newer" is natural. When learning a new subject, most people have to try it on this way and that, forming postures that they hope will work for them along the way, then maybe discarding them and trying on another. Learning something new can be awkward, usually is awkward, and because of that sense of awkwardness even more rules and rituals and fussiness can seem to be inherent in the practice of the new thing.

If this is a part of the whole idea that you are talking about, Jack, then I imagine it will wear off somewhat as people become more comfortable and settled in their ways with fine food and gourmandism.

Anyway, just another thought.

Edited July 11, 2005 by Carrot Top (log)

[Corinna Dunne]

Do you think perhaps, Jack, that the current and burgeoning interest among people that live the US, (and perhaps in Britain too). . .both places where food has not traditionally held such interest as opposed to some other cultures and places. . .do you think this interest has become a sort of substitute for the traditional religions that have supposedly lost followers?

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I was thinking exactly the same myself. In many ways, food has become one of the new religions, along with football as you mention and yoga.

And Jack, what you seem to be talking about is the 'food fundamentalist' sect, the fresh food, foam and new gastronomy brigade. And yes, they have their followers,. and yes, I'm one. Maybe some of us food fundamentalists are too evangelical and effusive about the ecstasy experienced (yes, tongue in cheek) when we taste the sweetness of a young pea plucked from the garden and released from its perfectly formed pod (tongue still ifirmly n cheek), but it is a joy, and if you don't believe in God, you can at least pay homage to mother nature. Enjoying food is like enjoying the simpler things in life... although I'm the first to admit that some food is far from simple.

Edited July 11, 2005 by Corinna Dunne (log)

[Adam Balic]

I'm not sure that the increased interest in food in the USA and UK can be put down to a simple substitute for the traditional religions, unless it is a very shallow take on religion (although Christ knows there is enough of that).

I think that before religion some of the aspects of food interest that are been spoken about here are about aspirational desires and prestige factor.

Lobster is interesting in this respect. It has high prestige factor and very good lobster is found in Scottish waters. At the moment they are not at their best, but the demand is such that most of the live lobster I see sold in Edinburgh are imported from Canada. There is nothing wrong with these lobsters really (same species as you get on the rest of the eastern N.A. coast), except that due to the transport and time of the year they are not at their best.

If the desire for a lobster was a substitute for a religious experience, then surely you would wait until they were in season or eat something that was at its peak now? Why build a meal around a second rate lobster when for a fraction of the cost you could have some of the worlds best soft fruits for instance?

Having said that I guess that aspirational desires and prestige factor are not exclusively mutual from religious participation.

[Carrot Top]

If the desire for a lobster was a substitute for a religious experience, then surely you would wait until they were in season or eat something that was at its peak now? Why build a meal around a second rate lobster when for a fraction of the cost you could have some of the worlds best soft fruits for instance?

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Ha, ha, ha, ha! Wonderful lines, wonderful question.

[Adam Balic]

If the desire for a lobster was a substitute for a religious experience, then surely you would wait until they were in season or eat something that was at its peak now? Why build a meal around a second rate lobster when for a fraction of the cost you could have some of the worlds best soft fruits for instance?

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Ha, ha, ha, ha! Wonderful lines, wonderful question.

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Worship me puny mortal.

[jackal10]

I had in mind the way some people make food (and the next grand meal) the centre of thir lives. Some derive comfort from it; some obsess about detail, others ritualise it.

Much of this, like religion, is received wisdom. We are told that X tastes better than Y, or that P is the only way of preparing Q, and mostly we accept and come to believe it and pass it on. Few test the proposition ourselves.

[Carrot Top]

Okay, Jack. I see your drift. Two things run through my mind in response. The first is a question: Is there something in particular that made you think of this, some particular incident that was the straw on the camel's back, the impetus that brought this notion of food as religion into your mind? Just curious, you know.

The second is the thought that indeed, it would be much easier to test the tenets and beliefs one has been given in terms of food than it would be in what we generally consider a religion. Much easier access to the stuff the stories and beliefs have been told and taught about, and it sure takes less time to dissect a lobster than it does to dissect any set of spiritual beliefs, (if that even can really be done). And though dissecting a lobster might be messy (let's change it to boning a chicken here so that all can participate). . .(no, wait a minute. . .let's change it to cutting a pineapple instead so even more can participate). . .anyway. The dissecting process is messy on all of these things, but not as messy as dissecting any set of spiritual beliefs!

Along these lines there is something written by Gary Taubes, originally printed in The New York Times Magazine then reprinted in "The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2004". It is called "What If It's All Been A Big Fat Lie?". It is specifically about the fact of how the consumer believes what they are told about what to eat to be healthy, and how and where this has gone terribly wrong in the recent past. Good article with great back-up research.

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Adam, that is indeed how I imagined a Scottish lobster to look. Quite craggily frightening. Is he waving his scary little feet at the photographer in an attempt to get him to move away from his bank account?

The photo reminded me of my first thought upon reading Jack's original post.

Which was. . . what a great idea for a science fiction story!

[godito]

I think food has been a part of religion forever, and it mostly tells you how to eat and what to eat (from Kosher to no meat on fridays or Buddhist vegetarianism) In many places of the world, religios is still a huge way of life, and food plays a big role in that way of life. Most of Asia, for example.

However, in our "western world", we don't participate in religion as much. We have other "cults". The cult of the body is one of them, and the real reason for diets (low carb and in some cases vegetarians) And then there is also the cult for food and its foodies. But don't think that this kind of obsession over food is something new. It mught be new in the US (wait, let me say the Americas, because we are all the "newer" continent... although I'm sure that the Aztecs, Mayas and Incas had a high religious respect for food), but it has been around ever since there has been civilization.

Just look at Apicius, the Roman Gourmand. He wrote extensively about food during his time and his banquets were legendary. I mean, c'mon, he killed himself when he was running "short" of money because he realized that with the money he had left he couldn't live the life he was leading...

And maybe some people do view food as a sort of religion, but like Adam said, it would be a very diluted view of religion. As organoleptic a meal can be for you, it is not as inspiring as, say, the sistine chapel's ceiling. What inspired Michelangelo and other religious artists (many of them known today only for their work) cannot compare to the inspiration of any foodie. Not even Apicius.

[Adam Balic]

Adam, that is indeed how I imagined a Scottish lobster to look. Quite craggily frightening. Is he waving his scary little feet at the photographer in an attempt to get him to move away from his bank account?

The photo reminded me of my first thought upon reading Jack's original post.

Which was. . . what a great idea for a science fiction story!

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Actually, this is an Australian lobster (Crayfish or Langouste to the French), no claws. I saw it on my honeymoon. The Scottish (European) lobsters are the same genus as the North American lobster.

[Carrot Top]

Agreed, godito.

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And (in thinking about some of the other posts made upthread) perhaps there is something about the very essential-ness of food that makes it lend itself to this sort of reaction.

After all, when a baby is born the first thing it seeks to do is to suckle, to eat, to nourish itself.

You don't see it heading right out the door to buy a Jaguar. Not right away, anyway. And though a Jaguar can seem to give many benefits to one who owns it, it still can not keep one alive.

Food is a very essential need and has great emotional content riding within it.

[Adam Balic]

I had in mind the way some people make food (and the next grand meal) the centre of thir lives. Some derive comfort from it; some obsess about detail, others ritualise it.

Much of this, like religion, is received wisdom. We are told that X tastes better than Y, or that P is the only way of preparing Q, and mostly we accept and come to believe it and pass it on. Few test the proposition ourselves.

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Ah I see. But sure this has more to do with having the the time and resources to obsess about food (or wine, or hill climbing or stamp collecting etc), where as religion isn't dependent eing able to question this? The religions that I have any knowledge of make a point of not being testable, by definition it is a question of faith.

There are aspects of this in food and wine, but ultimately a high priest of food or wine can only lead you so far. If you stick it in your mouth, yet can't form an opinion of your own about it (Do I like this? Do I like it after tasting it 100 times? are pretty basic) then that is foolish.

No matter what the motivations of an interest in food are, I believe very firmly that is about increasing knowledge, not a matter of faith.

[Busboy]

I don't want to get all literal here, but people have been surprisingly earnest in likening "foodism" to a religion, which is a fairly egregious overstatement.

A religion is a system of beliefs that provides moral guidance, explains the physical and metaphysical nature of our existence, and generally, provides hope for an afterlife. Food has been linked with religion through sacrifice, dietary restrictions, feasts and fertility rituals probably forever. And diners have been describing meals as religious experiences (particularly in circumstances where the phrase "food orgasm" would be considered déclassé). But few people actually think of their Safeway as housing the Supreme Being, or expect to find moral virtue in the words of St. Julia. Food comforts and nourishes, but it doesn't explain or guide.

"Obsession," "vice," "hobby," yes. "Religion," no.

[Carrot Top]

Could be called that, yes, culiary bigotry. But consider this:

When Adam mentioned above that the lobster was not Scottish but Australian, and that Scottish lobsters were like the lobsters "here" that I know, and grew up eating once in a while in Maine, I said to myself, (and I consider myself to be without culinary prejudices nor religious prejudices. I tell my children that people eating roasted bugs in other places is just a fine thing to do, and that if I were there, I'd try it). . .I said "Well then! I will be so happy to go to Scotland and eat a lobster, for it is what I know!"

This is how it begins. With "what we know". Every human being wants to be a part of something, some group, some defining safe comforting category for him or herself. Happens with food as well as with other things, without even thinking about it too much, as just happened with me!

Then there is the connection that happens with the next generation, just naturally. My children, of course, will want to eat lobsters like I eat, for they seem comforting and happy things to them, and the "others" are the unknown. One can verbally argue against this, but it does happen naturally.

Here is an incident that happened in my past that made me aware of the flip side of sticking to the things one knows, and not wanting to turn away from them to other ideas or concepts.

I was dating a Jewish guy whose parents had survived the holocaust in concentration camps. We were getting close to being serious about each other. I am half-Jewish, but was not raised in any religious tradition, and the Jewish side is from my father not my mother, so in Jewish traditional law, I am not really Jewish at all. We had a conversation about "where we were headed". He was worried. I could not understand why. He said that he could never marry a girl that was not considered, in all ways, to be Jewish. I thought that to be a rather limiting concept, thought it was the sort of concept that kept the world further apart and that was sort of a bigotry in itself. But then he explained further. If he were to marry someone that was not Jewish, his parents would consider it a form of betrayal. It was important to them, vitally important, that the traditions they held, and that he followed also, (as he was a good and loyal son in this way as in many other ways) be upheld. To separate himself from these traditions would be a bitter betrayal of his family, and he would not consider doing it. And considering the history of his family, I could understand this.

Another way of looking at things. Now this example is extreme, and it is focused on the way family loyalty and feelings enter into something other than "food as some sort of religious icon", but it is another way of looking at things.

So I say, allow people their own definitions and limitations on what they will eat or do, as long as no harm is coming to others through it. I can completely respect the ways of honor that are shown in these acts, whether small ones of what is put into one's mouth, or whether larger ones, as in deciding a path to take that may not seem totally all-encompassing of the world, but which defines a honest and sometimes sacred way of being.

[cdh]

Busboy's comment strikes me as right on. What Jack's original post was observing and talking about is more dogmatism than religiousity. While dogma comes hand in hand with religion, dogmatism alone is not religion.

While food is one of life's great pleasures and provides from comfort to ecstatic sensory pleasure, it doesn't approach the metaphysical. Nobody here has talked about the waffle that created the world, or the karmic habaneros that will afflict the wicked when they're least expecting it.

Edited July 12, 2005 by cdh (log)

[Toliver]

Every human being wants to be a part of something, some group, some defining safe comforting category for him or herself.

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Do the Dew.

A masterful example of Madison Avenue marketing that is now defining an entire sub-culture. The Mountain Dew brand of soda pop is now almost synonymous with the Xgames/Extreme Sports crowd. It's culture identification and being defined by what we consume. The "In crowd" of that extreme sports culture drinks it so if we drink it, too, we associate ourselves with them, become part of them. Association by consumption.

Are the Foam Eaters any different?

[cakewalk]

... Nobody here has talked about the waffle that created the world ...

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Wow. Talk about a theme for a movie.

I agree with your assessment of Busboy's post. I was actually relieved to read it, there's really no other word for it.