SUMMARY

Feeding is a complex and diverse issue. It is a multidimensional phenomenon in which the biology and the adaptive responses developed in every single place and time interact. Also, it is a social, cultural and identifying phenomenon.

Feeding always reminds us of an articulated group of classifications and rules that assort the world and bring sense to it, and it is a privileged way towards the disclosure of the symbolic thought. Religion, on its behalf, has contributed, along with the technology, the economy, the social organization and the learning processes, to the adaptation of the human being to his/her universe by providing him/her with a sense of safety to face strengths that appear to overpower him/her.

The human being has always developed some kind of idea about life and death and the universe he/she inhabits, thus positioning him/herself over daily life issues. In every country or culture, the food choices are very often conditioned, at least apparently or firstly, by a group of religious believes, different kind and range bans, as well as by dietary conceptions regarding what is good and bad for the body. We can assert that all religions or belief systems more or less articulated embrace some kind of food prescriptions, dietary conceptions related to what it is good and bad for the body and/or the soul. Therefore, certain dietary behaviors become mandatory to reach sainthood and others denote perversion or sin. All religions rule the feeding in some sense and, most of times, in a restrictive one; for instance, by limiting the intake amounts, restricting or forbidding some food category and diminishing the pleasure of eating, permanently or at certain moments. Many religions, above all those monotheistic, consider the act of eating as carnal and passionate, opposed to the aims of transcendence and prevalence of the spirit over the matter, aims that use to be the ones of these types of religions. On the other side, it must be taken into account that the framing of the dietary behavior on the part of a religious system tends to embrace other functions, apart from beating the pleasures of the flesh like, for instance, defining the social group, that is, differing from the other (foreigner, unfaithful, heathen…). This way, the different dietary bans allow delimiting the community of believers, while a redefinition of the dietary mode permits to distinguish the different schisms.

From the believes and practices of the diverse religions appearing in this article, we could tell that in every religion the food tend to contribute, to a greater or lesser extent, to three goals: 1) communicate with God; 2) prove faithfulness through the acceptance of the divine dietary endorsements; and 3) to develop some kind of discipline through the fasting. Besides, the religions are generally featured by a certain opposition between the dogma (limitation of pleasure) and the habit (exacerbation of pleasure). For this reason, as long as the act of eating is basically carnal and passionate, and therefore opposed to the aims of transcendence and prevalence of the spirit over the matter, genuine to most religions, these limit both qualitatively and quantitatively, through their commands, the intakes. In this sense, the constrictions of most religions regarding the diet use to relate to: 1) what type of food can be eaten and which not; 2) what to eat at certain moments during the year; 3) the times of the day on which the food should be taken (or not); and 4) when the fasting must be practiced and for how long.