From KCRW, I'm Evan Kliman and you're listening to good food.

Whether it's Catholics not being allowed to eat meat on Fridays,

Halal and kosher restrictions for Muslims and Jews, or Pythagoras telling his followers

to avoid fava beans, both because they caused gas and because he thought they contained the souls of dead people, rules have always

existed around what foods humans should and shouldn't consume.

And while religions and food may seem like unlikely partners, doctrine defining

what followers can and can't eat has had a profound role in shaping American identity.

Why do these rules exist and to what extent do they have a practical intent, as in preserving food or trying

to prevent illness versus a spiritual one.

Christina Ward, author of Holy Food,

how cults, communes, and religious movements

influence what we eat is here with the answers.

I think when you look back to the serious the origins and the prehistory a lot of it is

comes from both the safety aspect it was easier to couch some of that in the holiness and the spirituality

because the end result is if you followed some of those food safety things that are

inherent in the Khashrut in some of the very early Jewish food

rules that you will end up with a pretty good hygiene and food safe

environment and then on top of that in those pre-science days, people weren't

sure where the food was coming from. You knew you could eat some plants, you knew you

could eat some animals. And that's kind of a miracle if you don't know how those

plants and animals came to be and so that's also part of the origin of the

kind of the spiritual beliefs is you thank God you think the creator of the world around you for the food you're eating.

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