The Divine Taste of Nature: The Natural Preference in Tibetan Buddhists’ Appraisal of Food Products

Abstract

Across cultures, individuals exhibit a preference for items labeled as “natural,” particularly in the food domain. Although religiosity and specific religious beliefs have been found to moderate this naturalness bias, the existing sparse literature has mainly focused on drug choices and evaluations of lighting. It is unclear whether this effect extends to the domain of food. Here, we leveraged Tibetan Dege printers, whose religious duties require exclusive reliance on natural lighting, as a testbed for this question. In Study 1, we found that printers exhibited a greater propensity to choose natural apples compared to other local Buddhists, despite their similarities across numerous sociodemographic characteristics. Expanding upon self-report measures, Study 2 revealed that printers were more likely to select natural apples than other Tibetan Buddhists in a real-life context. Thus, the results suggest that Dege printers’ preference for natural light can transfer into the domain of food. Moreover, we found that perceptions of morality associated with natural foods may account for the observed differences between the two religious groups. Taken together, these findings underscore the importance of considering cultural and religious contexts when examining preferences for natural foods, which suggests that such biases may vary significantly across populations.