Religious Food Taboos and Ideology - Essay Example

Religious Food Taboos and Ideology of Almost every religion with strong ideology has its own special prohibitions of food; even if some religions don’t have food rules they anyway have at least their opinion on what is good to eat and what is bad. As far as food is one of the greatest needs of human beings it is the kind of tool religions can control people with and make them obey their ideology. Most of these food taboos are not about health or nutrition but about pure ideology and religious obedience. For the most of the people the problem of what to eat isn’t problematic at all, such people don’t consider food through religion and its ethics. The point is that normally people think about food through the aspect of its feeding value or harmfulness of products. Religious principles concerning food and prohibition of certain products deal mostly with ethics, which in fact means that people consider food in different aspects analyzing essentially different prohibitions. We can’t read about what kind of food is healthy or harmful in sacred books, they mostly focus, for example, on what is meat and why people can’t eat it or what meat people are allowed to eat etc. but nothing about actual utility of meat. It turns out that discovering the rules of nutrition in different religions we always face with ethics that cannot be considered as the rules of nutrition and healthy dietary laws, because ethics deals mostly with morality and religious obedience. This means that obviously food must be considered through the point of view that the world must be analyzed on sacred and profane levels1, so talking about religion and its food taboos we discover the sacred aspect of the problem (in other words, we discuss religious ideology which is called sacred). One of the most significant prohibitions that exist in almost every huge religion is meat taboo. The problem of meat is rather contradictory, because some religions like Islam and Judaism allow it with several exceptions, Buddhism, for example prohibits its usage. The point is that all these religions have different reasons why their followers shouldn’t eat meat. Anthropological researches show that in religions food is symbolical and to understand the meaning of its prohibition we should realize what food is considered to be for human beings2. First of all, consumption of food is the way humans satisfy one of the most significant needs of their bodies – they still their hunger. The need and its satisfaction are the most primitive actions of human body, but with intellectual and cultural growth people become able to choose which food they decide not to eat for some reasons – that’s where the ethical aspect of food consumption appears and food starts being a symbol which has several semantic meanings. Considering the problem of meet in different religions it is important to note that meat means that some living creature was killed or has died for any other reasons for human to eat. The statement causes most of ethical problems with meat consumption in religious ethics, because in fact semantically consumption of meat means consumption of death3. This is one of the reasons why Buddhists don’t eat meat. The point is that one of the main principles of the religion is to do no harm, but in addition Buddhists believe that there are such things as Samsara (the circle of life and death) and reincarnation (in which animals and humans can switch their bodies)4. That’s why their claims about not killing animals are rather logical: who knows whose reincarnation you ate, maybe in the next life it can be some of your relatives. In order not to gain bad karma it’s better not to kill animals for food. Islamic religion has more complicated nutrition rules about meat. Muslims can eat meat, but there are several nuances like some exceptions of the animals that allowed to be killed for food and the way of killing them. The most famous food prohibitions in Islam are taboos on pork and alcohol usage. When alcohol has something in common with healthy nutrition (but still in Islam it’s forbidden not for health reasons) pork problem is purely ideological: the meat is impure. Although Muslims are allowed to eat cloven-hoofed mammals, the meat of swine is forbidden according to the Old Testament and Koran. Researches show that this prohibition in some way has no reasons; they argue that swine flash may be prohibited because of pigs’ promiscuity in food or their “dirty” lifestyle5. In addition, it is crucially important for Muslims that the slaughter of animals for food must be dedicated to the glory of Allah, and the blood of the animal must flow with an invocation to Him, because the food is a gift of Allah and His people must show to Him how grateful they are for His gifts. So the animal can’t be dead beforehand, because carrion is prohibited food, because it also is considered to be impure6. In Judaism the food taboos are very alike to the Islamic ones, the special food the Jewish people can eat are called kosher food. The list of the products can be found in the Old Testament, and the religious food traditions are highly important for orthodox Jewish. In Christianity the explanation of the nutrition prohibitions is the following: food brings physical pleasure, which can alienate soul from the perception of God7. That’s why surfeit in food is one of important sins. In fact it is very important to consider such thing as abstinence from food and even drink that exists in ideologies of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam for their followers in order to have an opportunity to be purged from their sins. Each religion has its own taboos for the fasting, but obviously all of the prohibitions are nothing about healthy diet or “right” nutrition – they solely deal with ideology of a single religion and directly proclaim their ideological religious purposes. The discussion about religious prohibition of some products has existed for a long time, especially with appearance of nutrition science. Scientific researchers have various opinions on the topic, because in some situations religious food prohibitions may fit the rules of healthy nutrition, for example, the prohibitions are pertinent within vegetarian and vegan diets and even religious and vegan ideologies in some cases may be similar. But the point is that healthy nutrition doesn’t deal with actual ideology or metaphysical beliefs, because God didn’t send the knowledge of healthy or unhealthy food – his taboos are concerning ethics and food as a special symbol. Therefore, consideration of food as something that staves off hunger (like in the nutrition science) is totally different from the religious point of view on food and prohibited products, which is solely ideological. Bibliography Feeley-Harnik, Gillian. “Religion and Food: An Anthropological Perspective”. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 63(1995): 565-582. Lecso, Phillip A. “To Do No Harm: A Buddhist View on Animal Use in Research”. Journal of Religion and Health 27(1988): 307-312. Lobban, Richard A., Jr. “Pigs and Their Prohibition”. International Journal of Middle East Studies 26(1994): 57-75. Miles, Margaret R. “Religion and Food: The Case of Eating Disorders”. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 63(1995): 549-564. Rouse, Carolyn, and Hoskins, Janet. “Purity, Soul Food, and Sunni Islam: Explorations at the Intersection of Consumption and Resistance”. Cultural Anthropology 19(2004): 226-249. Read More