Living food diet and veganism

Abstract

The article compares two distinctly modern dietary movements of the 20th century: the living food diet and veganism. It shows that, although food is one of the principal areas where nature and culture converge, in modern society eating is no longer a mere problem of classification (edible/non-edible); it has also become the object of strong emotional and moral investments. Both living foodism and veganism emphasize the importance of ‘natural’ foods, yet both are very much products of modern individualistic culture. Moreover, both diets involve rather extreme forms of denial that can make everyday life difficult (rejecting cooked produce, rejecting all animal products), even though the two stem from rather different motives. The data on living foodism is based on face-to-face interviews and a postal questionnaire, both conducted in Finland in 2006, whereas the data on veganism is based on existing Finnish theses, interviews from which are used selectively in this paper. The differences and the similarities between the two diets are analysed in light of the motives for following the diet, the assumptions concerning the purity and the impurity of the food, and the attitudes towards prohibitions and rules. The article shows that the stronger the role of community in the dietary movement, the more pronounced is the moral aspect of the diet and the stricter the rules defining the boundaries of the forbidden.