You Can Learn a Lot About Religion From Food

You Can Learn a Lot About Religion From Food. Adam B Cohen. Current Opinion in Psychology, August 6 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.07.032

Highlights
• Religions have a lot of rules about food and fasting, such as what foods are acceptable for which people to eat, and when.
• Understanding food practices can provide insight into religion, such as what it means to obey God, and the social order and worldview.
• Thinking about religious food practices can generate testable psychological hypotheses, such as whether caste- and gender-based food practices make people more attuned to class, hierarchy, and sex distinctions.
• Religious food practices provide basis for theorizing about the evolution of religious cultures, and about group and individual differences, which likely interact at multiple levels of analysis (individual motivations and dispositions, with ecological and cultural level influences).

Abstract: Religions’ food practices can illustrate a lot about religions, and can raise new research questions. I will give examples of ways in which religious food practices are reflections of broader religious ideals. Foods contain essences and are religiously symbolic; foods are a window into how people understand the necessity to obey God; food practices relate to health outcomes; and food practices reflect and inculcate social structures and worldviews. The article will go on to consider some broader questions raised including the origins and cultural evolution of food rules, and how food practices relate to group differences and individual differences.