How has the perception of food in religion and attitudes towards food in general changed since Biblical times and what may have caused this change?

“In the premodern and early modern periods in England, for example, people often didn’t just “eat together.” Depending on the size and nature of the group, eaters were often arranged together to eat. The root word commensal means eating at or pertaining to the same table.’- Soldiers, for example, ate with men of the same rank. Nonmilitary diners at banquets sat at tables with people of the same social rank. In both cases the different tables received different kinds and amounts of foods. Commensality, then, ordered as well as bound social groups.”

– Trudy Eden, Food and Faith in Christian Culture

As a cultural force, religion, to me, simply signals a means to give people an ethical code of conduct and a commonality. Nowadays, I think we have replaced religion with consumerism. We behave and interact as consumers. If ‘commensality’ (a product of Christianity) dictated medieval Britain, this begs the question who gets a seat at a table in today’s consumerist society?

Dr. Thompson talked about ‘circles of concern’ and how food was a way to both include and exclude people from dominant ‘circles’ in society. Those who our current model of capitalism has decided to exclude from our ‘circles of concern’ are no longer simply people from another culture or a lower social rank (as has been the case historically) but people from a lower tax bracket. This is regressive. We need to completely champion that concern should not be a product.

As a global community, we have made many strides towards making the ‘table’ more egalitarian. However what we have failed to realise is that thinking of food production pre-industrialisation terms is no longer valid. Before, access to food was equivalent to the abundance so, yes, wealthier people could buy concern. That is no longer the case. We have too much food. So it doesn’t make sense that a commodity that is so abundant would be inaccessible for so many people.

Steve, Maria and Rene showed there is a cultural shift towards truly the concept of food as a human right. Their work was very much a product of our time, a reaction to the need for values that understand modern food production. This shift is vital for our progress.

 

 

  • Albala, Ken, and Trudy Eden, eds. Food & Faith in Christian Culture. Columbia University Press, 2011.