The Food Movement, Culture, and Religion : A Tale of Pigs, Christians, Jews, and Politics

Schorsch gives a number of examples of Jewish foodies and their
attraction to eating pig, which is forbidden by Jewish law. He then out-
lines the argument of this book, which attempts to understand this pat-
tern. Jewish foodie talk about pig, as exemplified particularly in the work
of Michael Pollan, on whom this book focuses, signifies more than a mere
transgressive fetish, but rather a deep structure of contemporary foodie
discourse, which might be identified as acculturation to dominant major-
ity omnivory. This democratic conformism derives from a modernist,
materialist, and rationalist lack of interest in and attention to culture and
religion, an unfortunate irony, since the food movement depends on and
glorifies so many particular cuisines, especially of non-Western origin.