Description
Book SynopsisFood Faiths: Diet, Religion, and the Science of Spiritual Eating explores how individuals internalize scientific knowledge regarding health and diet, and then incorporate that information into their lives as the basis of a personal spiritual practice. In this book, Catherine L. Newell examines how science is used to justify a dietary lifestyle and investigates the world of “spiritual eating,” which is comprised of practitioners who identify themselves not by a religion but by their diet. These diets are based in diverse sciences such as anthropology, ecology, systems biology, nutritional studies, biomedicine, and physiology; adherents view their diet as a lifestyle, a path to enlightenment, and a nebulously defined point of “health.” This, in turn, enables the practitioner to locate themselves in relation to other members of their community, to older traditions suffused with religious practice, and to understand their praxis in relation to the entire biosphere. While on one level this project explores how food, health, and diet can be a source of spiritual fulfillment, on another level "Food Faiths" illustrates how science and religion are subsumed into a culture and merged to form the basis of an individual’s lived spiritual practice.
Table of ContentsSeries Introduction
Introduction: “Nothing New Under the Sun”
Chapter One: The Theory and the Theology of Diet, Science, and Religion
Chapter Two: Health Reformers, Vegan Farmers, and the Nineteenth Century Religious Roots of Scientific Diet Culture
Chapter Three: The 20th Century and Beyond: How Health Became a Science, and How Science Became a Religion
Chapter Four: Converting to Food Faiths: Veganism, Paleo, and the Landscape of Spiritual Eating
Chapter Five: Sacred Ancestors: Veneration, Generations, and Getting in Touch with Our Roots
Chapter Six: Virtue: Perfecting the Moral Self through the Ritual Embodiment of Science
Chapter Seven: Community: Defining What is Sacred Through Food
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Author
