Eating Ethically: Religion and Science for a Better Diet

254 Pages·2019·7.107 MB·English

by  Jonathan K. Crane

EATING
ETHICALLY

JONATHAN K. CRANE
EATING ETHICALLY
Religion and Science
for a Better Diet
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW YORK
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup . columbia . edu
Copyright © 2018 Jonathan K. Crane
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Crane, Jonathan K. (Jonathan Kadane), author.
Title: Eating ethically : religion and science for a better diet / Jonathan K. Crane.
Description: New York : Columbia University Press, 2018. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017019389 (print) | LCCN 2017046619 (ebook) | ISBN
9780231545877 (electronic) | ISBN 9780231173445 (cloth : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Food consumption— Moral and ethical aspects. | Food— Moral
and ethical aspects. | Food— Religious aspects.
Classification: LCC TX357 (ebook) | LCC TX357 .C68 2018 (print) | DDC
178— dc23
LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2017019389
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent
and durable acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca
Cover design: Milenda Nan Ok Lee
Cover images: © Shutterstock
And know indeed that
what kind of a person is,
is determined at the table,
for there his qualities
are revealed and made known.
— Bahya ben Asher ibn Halawa,
Shul(cid:1858)an Shel Arba (Second Gate) (1255–1340)
The Vulture eats between his meals
And that’s the reason why
He very, very, rarely feels
As well as you and I.
His eye is dull, his head is bald,
His neck is growing thinner.
Oh! What a lesson for us all
To only eat at dinner.
— Hilaire Belloc,
More Beasts for Worse Children (1897)

CONTENTS
Preface ix
PART I: EATING UNWELL
1. FULL OF OURSELVES 3
2. DEPRIVATION AND GLUTTONY 16
PART II: I EAT THEREFORE I AM
3. THE EATER 41
4. THE EATEN 52
5. EATING 75
PART III: EATING WELL
6. EATING’S GENESIS 101
7. SATISFACTION 122
8. JUST RIGHT 136
VIII CONTENTS
PART IV: I EAT THEREFORE I AM TASTEFUL
9. SAVORING 151
10. SACRIFICING 171
11. SHARING 187
PART V: CONCLUSION
12. GO AHEAD, REFRAIN 207
Notes 215
References 231
Index 243
PREFACE
S
everal years ago, I was looking around in the field of bioethics for
discussions about eating- related ailments. I was surprised to find
that, compared to other bioethical topics such as beginning- and
end- of- life interventions, relatively l ittle had been written on this one.
This was true in the field of religious ethics, too. Curious about this gap
in the conversation, I dug around in the tradition I know best: Judaism. I
soon found a few classic resources suggesting that good health stems
from eating well. I was not surprised, because that opinion is well known
t oday. What did surprise me, though, was that the eating well t hese
sources envision differed dramatically from the eating strategies I was more
familiar with in the cont emporary food environment. They inverted eat-
ing’s orientation. Intrigued, I dug around some more and found that t hese
were not isolated positions: other religious traditions encouraged similar
eating strategies. Phi los o phers throughout history thought t hese strate-
gies reasonable; and even con temporary physiology and the scientific study
of eating corroborate these old ideas.
I pulled together some preliminary thoughts on t hese topics into an
op-ed piece for the New York Times, which was published in March 2013
under the title “The Talmud and Other Diet Books.”1 That brief piece
caught the eye of Patrick Fitzgerald, the editor at Columbia University
Press, who called me with a s imple query: Could this very brief column be
made into a book? Ever since that initial conversation Patrick has been a
stalwart enthusiast for this proj ect, and for this I am extremely grateful.
I soon found myself reading in such fields as food studies, physiology,
satiety studies, religious history (of food), philosophy (of food), cultural
X PREFACE
studies, medicine, and more. I also observed that dramatic shifts in atti-
tudes toward food and practices in eating w ere occurring in society
generally. A veritable explosion of interest in all t hings food has hap-
pened: just think of the incredible growth of food- centered TV shows
and channels, documentaries, book- length journalistic investigations,
food clubs, community- supported agriculture, sustainable and organic
restaurants, and more that have emerged in the past few years.
I offered an undergraduate class at Emory University on the topic; it
was overenrolled. Encouraged, the next year I flipped the classroom so
that we were in a kitchen: the students w ere to plan menus, shop for food,
and prep, cook, and serve meals based on weekly themes. By turning the
acad emy on its head, we literally ate our subject matter, whether com-
modity crops or farmers’ markets produce, w hether from the Supple-
mental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or religious consumptive
rituals. That class had a waiting list of over fifty students. When I offered
that class again the next year, any student at Emory could take it. Nearly
150 students from every school in the university applied for the twenty
spots. I was fortunate to collaborate on those courses with incredible col-
leagues from across the university: Amy Webb Girard, Mindy Goldstein,
Peggy Barlett, Laurence Sperling, Sam Sober, Linda Craighead, Jennifer
Frediani, Simona Muratore, Craig Hadley, and Peter Thule, among
others. Their wisdom has been invaluable to this proj ect.
Interest in this intersection of food and eating- related ethics, religion,
and science has been palpable off campus, too. Over the past several
years, vario us communities around North Ameri c a have asked me to
pres ent on these topics. This proj ect has benefited from the insights, ques-
tions, and provocations of audiences at St. John’s University, University
of St. Thomas, Case Western Reserve University, Mercer University,
Georgia Institute of Technology, the Judaism, Science and Medicine
Group, the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities, the Commis-
sion on Social Action of Reform Judaism, the Chicago Board of Rabbis,
Religious Action Center, Temple Beth Am of Seattle, Yom Limmud in
Houston, and Congregation Shearith Israel in Atlanta.
I emerged from these conversations convinced that this proj ect should
not be merely academic. While of course it should be grounded in solid
research, I wanted it to reach a larger audience. I have thus written it for