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

Andy was asking about a specific cultural phenomenon that took off
in the twentieth century, not food taboo violations in general. My
mum used to make bacon sandwiches for the kids next door since they
came from a Seventh Day Adventist family and would never otherwise
have tried them, but a counterculture figure she was not.

The things this newsgroup makes you dream about. I came up with a
recipe in my sleep: take one smallish Bible, lard it with rashers
of bacon, wrap in puff pastry and bake in a hot oven. Pity I was
too late to get that into the Futurist Cookbook.


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.

For this particular shift, the soya business is the most relevant one
(though they didn't get into the act until after WW2 and started in
the US, whereas countercultural food started decades earlier in Europe).

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