Taste Preference in Religion

Just as cultures have their own unique preferences when it comes to what people consume, Religions apply preferences to what tastes please their god(s). This is especially noticeable in polytheistic religions and religions that use food as offerings.

While reading Elizabeth Pérez's Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions, I was struck by a passage involving how the practitioners of Lucumí decide what food to prepare for the orishas, their form of gods or divine spirits. "By offering food in addimú to the orishas, whether on a festive occasion or somber ones, practitioners today attempt to cross the divide thought to separate divine other from human self. The food does not merely communicate a desire to build a relationship with the gods, it ‘can be held to constitute objects of devotion.’ Practitioners come to recognize the orishas through learning their preferences. They materialize the spirits by repeatedly trying to anticipate their desires and preparing food in the manner defined as proper by elders" (Pérez, 2016). Pérez describes how it is up to the practitioners to learn the taste preferences of their orishas. These tastes are not fixed and can change depending on the orisha's will. The practitioners display their dedication to the orishas by working to accommodate their tastes and please them.

photo by Dave Linabury (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

I imagine there to be countless examples of religious deities having preferences for certain food offerings, but one example I can go into detail on comes from Shinto practices in Japan. Offerings of food, referred to as shinsen, are a key component of religious practices in Shinto to please kami, their form of gods or divine spirits. The food, or at times multiple courses of food, that shinsen consist of varies between kami, the practicing shrine that is offering the shinsen, and the purpose for shinsen - whether it is a daily rite, or a rite involved with a particular festival or holiday, but shinsen usually consist of a rice product, rice wine, and seasonal products ("Shinsen", 1998; Iwai, 2005; "Procedures of a Worshipping Rite", n.d.) At one shrine, Ise Jingu, shinsen is offered twice daily, in the morning and evening as if providing daily meals for the kami that Ise Jingu houses. The shinsen provided to Ise Jingu's kami is only made from the best local ingredients, and consist of "three servings of rice, dried bonito, fish, seaweed, vegetables, fruit, salt, water, and three rounds of sake" ("The Sacred Food Offered to the Deities at Ise Jingu", 2018).

(CC0 1.0)

I see great parallels between the effort and care that the Lucumí practitioners put into preparing food offerings for their orishas and that the Shinto priests put into their food offerings for their kami. Through preparing food offerings the practitioners of religions show how devoted they are to the god(s) or divine spirit(s) of their religions.

left photo by Dave Linabury (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) & right (CC0 1.0)