<p>What is the meaning of conversion? What meaning do individuals find in their own conversion?<br />And what truths lurk withing the depths of the conversion experience? One might assume<br />these questions are related to a new book on spiritual formation. However, Food Faiths<br />manages to acknowledge such questions while pointing the reader to new considerations of<br />spiritual authority. Touting science based justifications for eating as a centralizing force<br />organizing people’s lives, Newell repurposes religion for scientific practices of food as true<br />spiritual practices themselves. Vegan and Paleo diets are framed here as primary examples of<br />“food faiths.” Assessing the transition to these dietary lifestyle choices, Food Faiths reveals the<br />extent to which conversion to a way of eating can ground us into spiritual practices based on<br />science rather than religion. In the end, diet is understood as a systematized way of living that<br />draw on spiritual practices of deep reflection for the good of the body. Clearly crafted, the<br />primacy of Newell’s intervention is its ability to expand our understanding of spiritual practices<br />and their ability to enhance life while creating ultimate meaning.</p>

- Derek S. Hicks, Wake Forest University’s School of Divinity,

Food Faiths brilliantly links US healthy eating trends with flavors of religious conversion. With agile prose and kitchen table familiarity, Newell delivers humorous and research-rooted insights on how embodied, virtuous foodways demonstrate “a faith in the science.” Go ahead, taste and see!

- Sarah E. Robinson, University of Victoria, Canada,

Food Faiths: Diet, Religion, and the Science of Spiritual Eating explores how individuals internalize scientific knowledge regarding health and diet, and then incorporate that information into their lives as the basis of a personal spiritual practice. In this book, Catherine L. Newell examines how science is used to justify a dietary lifestyle and investigates the world of “spiritual eating,” which is comprised of practitioners who identify themselves not by a religion but by their diet. These diets are based in diverse sciences such as anthropology, ecology, systems biology, nutritional studies, biomedicine, and physiology; adherents view their diet as a lifestyle, a path to enlightenment, and a nebulously defined point of “health.” This, in turn, enables the practitioner to locate themselves in relation to other members of their community, to older traditions suffused with religious practice, and to understand their praxis in relation to the entire biosphere. While on one level this project explores how food, health, and diet can be a source of spiritual fulfillment, on another level "Food Faiths" illustrates how science and religion are subsumed into a culture and merged to form the basis of an individual’s lived spiritual practice.
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Food Faiths explores how individuals use scientific concepts about food and diet as the basis for a spiritual practice. The book examines how science filters through popular culture to affect the spiritual inclinations of individuals and investigates the influence of science, biomedicine, and nutrition on contemporary spirituality.

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Series Introduction
Introduction: “Nothing New Under the Sun”
Chapter One: The Theory and the Theology of Diet, Science, and Religion
Chapter Two: Health Reformers, Vegan Farmers, and the Nineteenth Century Religious Roots of Scientific Diet Culture
Chapter Three: The 20th Century and Beyond: How Health Became a Science, and How Science Became a Religion
Chapter Four: Converting to Food Faiths: Veganism, Paleo, and the Landscape of Spiritual Eating
Chapter Five: Sacred Ancestors: Veneration, Generations, and Getting in Touch with Our Roots
Chapter Six: Virtue: Perfecting the Moral Self through the Ritual Embodiment of Science
Chapter Seven: Community: Defining What is Sacred Through Food
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Author

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Understanding religion and science as a critical discourse means building on theoretical issues and concerns in order to address social transformation, issues of justice, and global concerns. It also means questioning the modern and western understandings of both 'religion' and 'science'—as well as the current disciplinary structure that developed in the 19th century—from multiple contexts and perspectives. Contributions to this series may employ multiple standpoints and trajectories with the aim of decolonizing 'science' and 'religion,' as well as the Science and Religion Discourse, in order to open up other ways of thinking. This might mean explorations of non-dominant discourses within the modern western framework that challenge the anthropocentric and reductive understandings of humans and nature. It may also mean finding new concepts, common grounds, and ways of thinking about the world from indigenous perspectives and those perspectives that fall outside of what we commonly call the modern west. It may mean asking questions about how we translate between different knowledge systems in a way that does not privilege one over the other, in search of new common grounds. Finally, it may also mean challenging notions of objectivity, and revealing that all knowledge-making systems are contextual and political. In other words, scholarship and activism are not as divided as we modern western types like to think. Our overriding assumption is that transforming the modern western disciplinary framework will require decolonizing that framework from within, in order to shake up assumptions, challenge givens, and open up space for new questions and new perspectives. This will make it possible to engage with voices outside this framework, enabling us to address pressing planetary problems in a more productive and inclusive way. To submit a proposal for this series, please use the below guidelines.Author/Editor:Title:Projected Submission Date:Projected LengthIn addition to the regular submission guidelines at Rowman and Littlefield (found here: https://rowman.com/Page/RLAuthRes), please write a brief, one-page cover letter that highlights the ways you think your contribution will add to the series.In that cover letter, please pay attention specifically to how your addresses one or more of the following: addresses issues of social transformation / justice and/or addresses issues of global concern;engages in critical discourse (Frankfurt School, critical race theory, feminist theory, queer theory, affect theory, indigenous perspectives, queer theories, decolonial and/or postcolonial theories, deconstruction, the new materialisms, etc.);engages multiple perspectives; Though your project may not engage all of these points, it should engage at least some of them. Please do not hesitate to contact us for further clarification.Please submit your proposal and queries to the co-editors here: srcdseries@gmail.com

Series Editors: Lisa Stenmark, San Jose State University and Whitney Bauman, Florida International University

Advisory Board: Zainal Abidin Bagir, University of Gadjah Mada, Indonesia; Anindita Baslev, Independent Philosopher, India and Denmark; Arvin Gouw, Cambridge University; Elaine Nogueira-Godsey, Methodist Theological School in Ohio, USA; Mary Jane Rubenstein, Wesleyan University, USA; Donovan Schaeffer, University of Pennsylvania, USA; Kocku von Stuckrad, University of Groningen, The Netherlands; Renny Thomas, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, India; Carol Wayne White, Bucknell University, USA

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Product details

ISBN
9781793620064
Published
2023-08-29
Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Weight
513 gr
Height
239 mm
Width
160 mm
Thickness
20 mm
Age
P, 06
Language
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Number of pages
264

Biographical note

Catherine L. Newell is associate professor of religion and science at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.