The Sacred Meal. Religion and Secularism, Amidst Need and Desire

In this chapter, we are going to show how our relationship with food and drinks encompasses not only material elements but also cultural and symbolic values. Such features shine out not just in secular contexts but mainly in the religious worlds: in the experience of the sacred meal. In this respect, this chapter provides two kinds of insights. First, it shows that the cultural and symbolic elements of the relationship with food stem from the fact that food and drinks are not merely intended to fulfil a need but can, quite often, be an object of desire. The difference between need and desire is precisely the one that distinguishes the material approach from the symbolic approach to the relationship with food. Then, based on this, the chapter explores the ways in which, when speaking of need and desire, a clear distinction appears between the experience of feeding oneself that develops in a religious context (with specific reference to the Jewish-Christian sphere and the biblical prohibition to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil), and the relationship with food that takes place in a secularised world (where pride of place is given to the way such relationship develops in the contemporary world, again with a focus on the notion of “taste”). Phenomena such as consumerism, advertising and fashion are briefly analysed in this connection. After an in-depth rundown of the different ways in which the need to set restrictions and lay down rules on human eating and drinking is perceived and implemented from a religious standpoint and from a secular perspective, the chapter ends by working out an ethics of consumption and pointing to the need to truly revolutionise the human mindset in a relational direction, for such ethics to be effectively accomplished.