in article , bogus address at
wrote on 6/11/03 11:01 AM:



Counterculture food groups have many divergent interests, but many
cluster around the following overlapping issue areas:

1. environmental and sustainability issues
2. health and nutrition issues
3. legal/political issues
4. ethical/moral issues
5. science/technology issues
6. globalization issues
What obvious issue areas have I left out?

Religious ones. The whole Western "alternative" lifestyle-politics
movement, and its nutritional wing that started as "food reform",
came out of the importation of Hindu ideas into Europe in the late
19th century, in Germany and Austria in particular. James Webb's
"The Occult Establishment" will give you an idea of the cultural
matrix, though it says relatively little about food per se. This
stuff is still very much alive in certain subcultures, the Rudolf
Steiner cult in particular ("biodynamic agriculture") and, over here,
the Findhorn crowd (invoking Indian tutelary deities to boost the
growth of your vegetables).

The issues you list developed historically as secular rationales for
practices that started out motivated by pure blind religious dogma.

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Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760
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Sure, how about those Christians eating pork? I know Jews who like Bacon so
I bet there are Moslems who do to and maybe some of either Abrahamic sect
who actively promote it. There might even be Hindus who like a good rare
fillet steak.

I'd also like to add to the economic side. What about the spice trades? What
about Marco Polo? What about South America? Economics may judge what the
poor eat but the chance for merchants to make cash by introducing foreign
ingredients to a domestic market would have influenced dramatic shifts in
some cultures. Think about the introduction of the tomato to italian
cuisine. I mean, just how did one ingredient alter a cuisine and how
quickly?

J