South Beach and Food as a Religion

Religious Studies 335
Michelle Newcomb

South Beach and Food with Religion
Since I’m at CNU and live away from home I communicate with my parents via phone and email but only get to see them in person over the holidays. I’d heard from them for a few months now about this new diet that they’re trying called South Beach and going home for thanksgiving I got to see how serious they actually are. My family has never really been one of unhealthy eaters but we’ve never really done strict diets before now either. When I arrived home after a few months of being away the first thing I noticed was the churned soil that took up most of our already small backyard and after questioning what was going on – I found out that my parents had decided to stop buying vegetables form the store, they were going to grow them themselves when this spring rolls around. Our thanksgiving this year was anything but traditional – we all had to follow south beach rules and that meant no carbs and no sugars. So instead of mashed potatoes we had mashed cauliflower, instead of turkey we had pot roast and for desert, we had a sugar-free, carb-free pumpkin pie. (It was just as bad as it sounds).
The diet itself is extremely difficult to stick to – simply because your cutting all good foods out of your life, that means keeping them out of the house and out of their temptation as well. Foods that were allowed could be located in the all-encompassing South Beach Diet book that soon became a pseudo-bible in our household. After living with it for a few days it was nice to come back to school and eat the food that was disallowed at home during the break. Once I got home I noticed something that I didn’t when I had time off – that I now spent much more time thinking about what food I was going to eat and its effect on my body. I can see now what kind of a lifestyle change this diet became (even though the food wasn’t too great) the focus shifted from indulging whatever craves I had to what my body needed and how it would effect me in the next few days.
This just reminded me of our discussion in class the other day about food as a religious or a ritual and I feel like that definitely applied to me, food wasn’t necessarily a religion but it is a ritual and was shifting into a big priority after spending that long weekend at home.