Americans in the 21st century are far less religious than their parents’ or grandparents’ generations, at least as far as formal, organized, traditional religion is concerned. In the place of old-fashioned religion, many have adopted a replacement that functions very much as religion used to:
Muslims eat halal. Jews eat kosher. Devout Catholics and Orthodox Christians abstain from meat on Friday and certain holy days. Hindus are vegetarian. But you will never see food practices take on religious intensity like they do in the more politically blue/left-wing bastions of the United States. This food intensity has been a gold mine of joke material for comedians like JP Sears.
Spend some time with vegan, gluten-free, and paleo devotees and you will realize that a fish filet on Friday can never match the cultlike seriousness these food fads take on. (And if you should ever be trapped at a restaurant table with somebody who is both vegan and gluten-free, run like the wind.)
Studies show left-leaning individuals are less likely to identify themselves as religious. But the truth is they have merely replaced well-known western religious traditions with more rigid ones. If you move to a politically blue part of the country, you will experience the cultural shift the minute your kids enter preschool. School picnics, snack time and birthday parties can become an anxiety-inducing strain as you try to determine what you can bring that all the children can eat. The parents are generally nice people who would never expect you to consider their dietary rules, but you will nonetheless feel a twinge of guilt if you bring that batch of traditionally-made cupcakes and accidentally feed it to a kid who is not allowed to experience it.
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The popular food fetishes of these cultural enclaves often go hand-in-glove with a neo-pagan mishmash of Gaia-worship, 4th century Gnosticism, and rejuvenated new age/occult practices. Every religion has its food rituals. The left is no exception.
Now I know there are valid reasons to be concerned with the mistreatment of animals on factory farms and there are legitimate medical reasons that some must reduce gluten. Paleo eaters can have points about unnecessary additives in contemporary foods. But the reality remains that the food habits of contemporary leftists have the ritualistic feel of dogma, with many of its followers being far more rigid than the most fundamentalist religious believer.
We tend to have a lot of gluten-free meals here, but it’s a medical necessity, not a food-religion observance, as two of the three of us suffer from gluten-intolerance. One outcome of the “fashionability” of gluten-free dining, there has been a substantial increase in the availability of gluten-free foods which has been welcome. Unfortunately, as a lot of the demand has been due to fashion rather than necessity, some restaurants have been remarkably casual when gluten-free dishes are ordered, where the main dish may be safe, but it’s been covered with a sauce or glaze that isn’t gluten-free.
