Food and Religious Rituals

Food rituals, whether articulated intentionally or performed unconsciously in our biologically necessary acts of eating, do nothing less than construct and maintain our fundamental relationships in the world, and define who or what we are in it. In that sense, one might say that all food rituals are religious, though that depends on very specific definitions of “ritual” and of “religion.” One should distinguish between rituals in the weak sense (habitual patterned behaviors performed unconsciously) vs. rituals in the strong sense (performed with explicit, conscious intention). However, all rituals are performances of myths, that is, the basic stories we live by, whether or not one practicing them makes their intentions explicit. Food rituals are religious in that they govern and express the fundamental relationships we have in the cosmos: who or what we eat; with whom we eat; and for whom we are “food.” Food rituals create and sustain worldviews, and so are all fundamentally religious or religion-like. To distinguish between the way critical comparative scholars of religion use the terms “religion” and “religious” and their use in common parlance, it makes sense to underline that “religious food rituals” normally refers to food rituals in the strong sense. Thus, religious food rituals often involve specific words or scripts (eating and talking, eating and reading), as well as other nonverbal cues and modes of paying attention: music, costumes, special props, accentuated or exaggerated gestures, and designated authoritative officiants. For example, the Jewish Passover seder, Christian communion and Lenten fasting, Aztec human sacrifice, Muslim observance of halal rules and Ramadan fasting, Jain or Buddhist vegetarianism, and many forms of Hindu puja are rituals in the strong sense. Examples of food rituals in the weak sense are secular veganism; shopping for food in grocery stores; Weight Watcher dieting; or eating meals in a breakfast, lunch, and dinner sequence (Mary Douglas). These rituals imply certain assumptions about our relationships to animals and plants, capitalist consumer culture, ideals of beauty and well-being, and our identification with special social groups (e.g., family, national cultures, geographic regions). In other words, they too are enactments of the stories we live by.