Nourishing the Soul. Food and Religions
Contribtions by G. Filoramo, M.C. Giorda, K.Rhazzali, P. Stefani, D. Zoletto 14 June 2015

These questions are destined to be posed with increased frequency in a plural in society in which religious beliefs and customs coexist, coming into contact – and often into conflict – with one another on a daily basis. The series of conferences entitled “Nourishing the soul. Religion and food”, linked to Expo Milan 2015 and organised by Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations in collaboration the Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Foundation and Milan University, was the result of the need to outline processes providing answers to these and other questions.

Preparations 2015 universal exposition bringing 130 countries to Milan to address the subject “Feeding the Planet. Energy for Life,” started over year ago with a series of initiatives coordinated by Salvatore Veca, within the framework of ‘Expo Workshop’. Presented as one of Expo 2015 and the Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Foundation’s projects, this workshop was envisaged as preparation for the 2015 event, an incubator for ideas, proposals and initiatives developed in four themes, Agriculture and Food, Sustainable Development, Anthropology and Urban Sociology, all leading straight to the exposition.

The anthropological, cultural and social reflection on Expo’s themes began in March 2014, when the issues of food, culture and rights were addressed together in Milan’s three conferences entitled “Nourishing the Soul. Religion and Food”. These conferences were coordinated by Professor Silvio Ferrari, a professor of Ecclesiastic and Canon Law at Milan’s State University – where he now teaches a course on the subject of the link between food and religion – with academics Giovanni Filoramo, Maria Chiara Giorda, Gianfranco Marrone and Mario Ricca holding lectures on the centrality of food in religion and the manner in which the law and the institutions address religious and cultural pluralism.

Italy’s apparently positive reaction to food consumption, still mainly based on the Mediterranean diet, but increasingly open to experimenting diversity, reveals a significant lack of knowledge. What leads Italians to overcome their scepticism of food from other cultures and religions and paves the way for culinary multiculturalism is curiosity and globalised fashion that often, however, neglect the at least theoretical importance that food has within these same cultures and before that, in the religions on which they are founded.

Leaving aside trends and distractions, the fact, of course, remains that the emergence of different cuisines is evidence of Italian society’s openness, effectively a small crack, providing hope for a future pluralist Italy. For those arriving in our country, it is more than just an opportunity when they rediscover their own culture and begin to feel at home here too. Ignorance, however, evident also in the report on religious illiteracy in Italy, curated by the historian Alberto Melloni, undermines the development of policies supporting integration starting from the dinner table.

On this subject, data emerging from European research entitled À table avec les religions, provided by Maria Chiara Giorda and concerning the manner in which school cafeterias have reacted to the need for different menus requested by students and families, is explanatory. Among the Italian cases involving acceptance and rejection (at times ontological and at times linked to culture and identity) there was an emblematic case in Turin where, faced with classrooms in which the ratio between Italian and foreign students is increasingly close to 50-50, in spite of many initiatives aimed at educating the children to eat healthily, there are instead none centred on the relationship with different eating customs dictated by religion.

This is an attitude that basically reflects that of most Italian canteens and cafeterias – among which there are positive exceptions (such as in Sesto Fiorentino, where there is a special menu for Muslim children) and negative one (as in Adro, in the province of Brescia, where excluding meat from the menu is only admitted when presenting a medical certificate).

JUNE 2015: SUMMERSCHOOL IN MILAN:
EATING, WALKING, THINKING. FOOD IN DIALOGUE

(Written by Elisa Gianni and translated by Francesca Simmons)

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