Food Cults

Because beliefs and practices surrounding food often inspire religious and political fervor, in addition to uniting people into insular groups, it is inevitable that "food cults" will emerge. Studying the extreme beliefs and practices of such food cults allows us to see the ways in which food serves as a nexus for religious beliefs, sexuality, death anxiety, preoccupation with the body, asceticism, and hedonism, to name a few. In contrast to religious and political cults, food cults have the added dimension of mediating cultural trends in nutritionand diet through their membership. Should we then consider raw foodists, many of whom believe that cooked food is poison, part of a food cult? What about paleo diet adherents or those who follow a restricted-calorie diet for longevity? Food Cults explores these questions by looking at domestic and international food communities characterized by extreme nutritional beliefs or viewed as "fringe" movements by mainstream culture. While there are a variety of accounts of such food communities across disciplines, this collection pulls together these works and explains why we gravitate toward such groups, as well as the social and psychological functions they serve. The contributors here describe how contemporary and historic food communities come together and foment fanaticism, judgment, charisma, dogma, passion, longevity, condemnation, and exaltation. -- from back cover.

Year

2017

Language

English

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated

Editions

1

Pages

278

ISBN

9781442251311

Data source: Wikidata