Totem and taboo in the grocery store: quasi-religious foodways in North America

Authors

• Benjamin Zeller Lake Forest College (USA)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67444

Keywords:

Food -- Religious aspects -- Comparative studies, Eating and meals, Diet, Cooking, Food habits, Nutrition, Vegetarianism, Vegans, Implicit religion, Everyday life, Health, United States

Abstract

This article focuses on food proscriptions such as veganism and gluten-free eating, and prescriptions such as the Paleolithic diet, focusing on the North American context. These quasi-religious foodways serve as means for individuals to engage in discourses of community, personal and group identity, and boundary-marking. Through the daily practice of eating, those who follow quasi-religious foodways mark their identities, literally consuming who they are. These quasi-religious foodways therefore function to allow contemporary consumer-oriented individualistic Americans to engage in discourses of community, identity, and meaning in a highly vernacular manner, that of the marketplace. They also point to the manner in which identity and community have expanded well outside of religious categories.