Food culture in a religious context: food, prohibitions and symbolic meanings

Abstract

This academic article examines food culture in religious contexts, focusing on three major dimensions: (1) food as a system of religious and cultural meaning, (2) food restrictions, prescriptions, and dietary regulations within faith communities, and (3) the symbolic meanings of food in rituals, identity formation, and social organization. The study employs qualitative documentary research by synthesizing Thai scholarly works indexed in the TCI database alongside key concepts from anthropology, sociology of religion, and cultural studies.

The findings indicate that food in religious contexts should not be understood merely as sustenance or a material necessity. Rather, it functions as a “cultural language” through which beliefs, values, notions of purity, boundaries of permission and prohibition, and collective identities are communicated. In Buddhism, food is closely connected with merit-making, almsgiving, and symbolic ideas of virtue, blessing, and auspiciousness. In Islam, halal food is not simply a dietary standard; it also operates as a discursive mechanism shaping piety, religious legitimacy, and identity communication in multicultural societies. Furthermore, several studies reveal that ritual food carries profound symbolic meanings, including prosperity, blessing, remembrance of the dead, advancement, and mediation between the human and the sacred worlds.

The article proposes a new synthetic framework suggesting that food culture in religious contexts should be interpreted through three interrelated dimensions: moral order, social boundary-making, and symbolic communication. This framework helps explain why food simultaneously functions as an object of consumption, a site of power, and a medium for constructing collective identity within religious communities.