The Role of Ritual in Eating

Abstract

Rituals of eating refer to the behaviors regarding what, with whom, when, where, how, and why people eat. They are patterned, repeated, sometimes automatic, sometimes intentionally mindful, often talk-enhanced practices that humanize the ways people nourish themselves. Rituals of eating might be, but are not necessarily “religious” in that they are associated with specific religious traditions. The difference between religious and nonreligious rituals of eating is better understood as between “rituals in a strong sense” and in a “weak sense” (Kripal et al. 2014). On one hand, they may be intentional “reenactment of myths - sacred stories - that make worlds come into being” or they may be something like the daily cycles of breakfast, lunch, and dinner with appropriate foods at appropriate times. Eating rituals also can be classified more specifically according to their form and sequence, their function, the emotions they evoke, and their meaning. This chapter addresses the roles of ritual in eating in the following: (1) as types of behaviors (order of meals, seasonally cued practices, table etiquette, taboos, eating, and reading); (2) as rituals of different kinds of relationships (to nature, to other humans, and to the supernatural); (3) as components of meals besides eating (preparation, acquisition, and cooking of food); (4) in the emotional affect they encourage (rituals of disgust, elevation, and gratitude); and (5) as the different strategies and contents of meaning they create. The role of ritual in eating is to make it meaningful to people - affectively, cognitively, socially, culturally, and religiously.