About this episode

Andrew Camp interviews Liz Bucar about the intersection of wellness culture and religious practices in food ethics.

Host Andrew Camp interviews religious ethicist and Northeastern professor Liz Bucar about her book, " Beyond Wellness: How Restoring the Religious Roots of Spiritual Practices Can Heal Us. " Bucar shares her path into religious studies and explains how “spiritual salad bar” approaches—popular among Gen Z and driven by personalization and algorithms—can miss religious context, community, and ethical depth, sometimes causing harm. She critiques wellness culture’s individual optimization and “toxic diet culture,” including moralizing food, ascetic restriction, and valorizing thinness, tracing these in part to mainstreamed strands of Christian theology. Bucar highlights religious resources for healthier food ways, using Ramadan to show fasting as communal, virtue-forming, and bounded by exemptions, and discusses Ayurvedic balance as an alternative to rigid good/bad food categories. The conversation emphasizes communal eating, hospitality, and flourishing beyond personal control. Liz Bucar is a religious ethicist and professor of religion at Northeastern University, as well as a certified intenSati and Kripalu yoga instructor. Her popular writing has appeared in The Atlantic , the Los…

People in this episode

Host: Andrew Camp

Guest: Liz Bucar

Topics covered

• wellness culture
• food ethics
• religious practices
• communal eating
• spirituality
• diet culture

Keywords

• wellness
• food culture
• religion
• spirituality
• diet
• community
• fasting
• Ayurveda

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Northeastern University, The Atlantic, Los Angeles Times, Teen Vogue, The Wall Street Journal

Books & works: Beyond Wellness, Stealing My Religion, Pious Fashion

Places: Brookline, Massachusetts

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