A first essential dimension is the connection to land, along with link to natural environment generally and relationship to climate. Until the industrialization period with the mass move to towns and cities, the sight of food and drink stuffs growing and familiarity with its processes were routine to people. To countries still developing, the intimacy with agriculture remains, but in the developed world this is not so generally. This has meant food and drink being rather distanced among modern society from being regarded as items linked to natural and agricultural processes and rather only seen in their roles of items for sustenance, and to use in link with celebration and ritual. Food and drink’s associations now, therefore, are less with effort and more with pleasure and indulgence, and this fits food and drink to be items of focus for that contemporary ritual and matter to be enjoyable, tourism. Agriculture’s arrival brought larger groups of people together engaged in production, intensification, a propensity for states to be created, and the delivery of hot spots of strength such as the Nile Delta in contrast with others. A stage was set for places of expertise, and ascendancy of some over others, to emerge. The Mediterranean basin generally was an area naturally equipped for particular development and the Egyptian, Greek and Roman civilizations are testament to the dimension. This basin is also an area naturally advantaged for relatively short distance travel and goods and information exchange. As examples are these. Due to early being invaded by Greeks and Romans, Provence in France shows to this day strong Greek and Roman cultural presences. Similarly, from occupation by Muslims, southern Spain still manifests a Moorish (Islamic) cultural flavour as part of its make-up. With centres of activity and organization arising, a circumstance is produced for practices and ways of thought in common to emerge as consequences and necessities. Group cultures emerge. Food and drink can be deployed to make corporate statement and display, to show distinction from others, and to manifest superiority over them. Type and distinctiveness of religion is one kind of main activity for which food and drink could be adopted. This is from the fundamental feature to Christianity of the Human Sacrament of bread and wine, to the privation from food of the fast, to religious days’ special feasting, and rites of fertility such as the Harvest Supper. Ground-lines of Western civilization to the present day have been much laid by Greek and Roman culture and with considerable movement across land and sea of plants and commodities of food and wine. With this, religious houses have played an enormous role in civilization’s march, as communities needing to maintain themselves and who overall have put a focus on developing knowledge. In the Western world, without these foci of information existing and developing – most especially in the Anglo-Saxon and Medieval periods – many food and drink items and certain food and drink production and preparation information would have been lost or not been able to increase.
Food Tourism and Halal Concerns: Prohibited Cuisines in Islam
