Religion comes from the root ligere, which means to join, to bind. So to re-ligere would be to rejoin with that which is truly ourselves. The vessel in which this binding can take place is your body. It follows that every religion of the world has said something about what to eat or when to eat and how much to eat. A lot of our conditioning around food is religious, the good the bad, why we eat what we eat is deeply culturally embedded and to reform this aspect of our lives implies challenging our other cultural and religious beliefs as well.
just think about any religion in the context of food, and you’ll find something having been said. all world religions considered food very relevant to their teachings. It is a topic that has been explored in it’s breadth and depth.
Hinduism has a Shravan mahina (month of July-August) where no meat is consumed. It aligns with the breeding season of livestock. Jainism has elaborately laid down a set of intelligent rules on what our diet should constitute of. Most practicing jains do not eat any food after sunset. There are also certain dates where the food eaten is further regulated to exclude certain food in sync with the tides and the moon cycles. Islam has its own practices with a month long fast. All world religions consider food very relevant to their teachings, they have gone into its depth and breadth. What to eat, when to eat, how to eat, why to eat- food is an intrinsic part of practiced religion.
