How Religions Shaped the Foods We Eat

Food for Thought: The Joys and Benefits of Living Vegan

Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

Arts, Education, Self-improvement, Health & Fitness, Zerowaste, Eating, Recipes, Vegan, Humane, Society & Culture, Meat, Food, Vegetarian, Colleen, Cook, Animals, Patrickgoudreau, Ethical, Cooking, Sustainable, Compassionate, Compassion

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2025

⏱️ 82 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Religious traditions have played a significant role in shaping many familiar dishes. Over the centuries, abstaining from eating meat and other animal products for spiritual reasons led to creative, plant-based recipes that have since become cultural staples. I think this matters because it helps legitimize plant-based eating as something deeply rooted in cultural and historical tradition—not a fad or modern invention. It reminds us that meatless eating has long been a meaningful, creative, and essential part of human food culture, shaped by values, ethics, and necessity. And by centering these stories in our collective memory, we reclaim a rich legacy—and challenge the idea that animal products must, or always have, sat at the center of every meal.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It has been a long time since I have recorded.
0:18.8	Welcome to Food for Thought, providing real world inspiration for living compassionately, sustainably, and healthfully, for humankind, animal kind, and the ecosystems we all depend on. Thanks for listening. If you're new, thanks for listening. If you've been listening for years, we are in our 18th year of food for thought today's episode is popular plant-based foods with religious roots how religions have shaped the foods we eat hi everyone i can't believe how long it's been it's possibly the longest i've ever taken between episodes. I can't believe how long it's been. It's possibly the longest I've ever taken between
0:56.1	episodes. I was looking back at the last episode, which was about losing Charlie, and it probably
1:04.0	looks like I just fell off the face of the earth after that. But there had just been different reasons.
1:12.3	I was hosting a joyful vegan trip in France that ended in Bordeaux. And then my husband and I, after hosting the group,
1:19.4	we went off on our own to Ildoray, which is a little island off the west coast of France. Highly
1:24.8	recommended, if you're looking for a place to vacation in France, it was,
1:29.0	it's not car-free, but it was just really made for bikes. So we just parked our car for two days,
1:35.0	two and a half days, and we just cycled around the island. So highly recommend it. Il-Durray is what
1:40.1	it's called. So we enjoyed some R&R together alone, just the two of us, which was really
1:45.0	nice since we do so many trips where we're with 20 other people. And also it was really special
1:50.8	because it's where his ancestors lived before his great, great, great, great, whoever left in the
1:58.7	1600s to come to North America, to French Canada. And it was pretty
2:03.7	awesome. We went to a church where there's a plaque to his ancestor, but, well, two of them,
2:08.9	there were brothers who left to go to Quebec. And we went to the cemetery. It was just, it was
2:14.4	really lovely to see kind of the origins of my husband's father's father's side.
2:19.4	And then there's a whole other story of my husband's father's mother's side, also in France.
2:24.6	But that's for another time.
2:26.1	That's in Montpellier, which is a different part of France.
2:28.3	But now you can see the origins of Goudreau in his name and in my name.
2:38.0	Then we spent a few days in Brittany to celebrate a friend's 50th birthday with other friends and it was absolutely lovely. So I have lots to share with you and I will be
2:45.1	doing so here. I will also be doing so on substack and I'm also doing more on YouTube so please don't forget to get over
	...

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