Food historian Sarah Lohman’s interest in food and cults began with a beautiful set of silverware. After spotting the case of cutlery at a thrift store in Vermont, she wondered who made them and turned the box over. The back held one word: Oneida. “I found out that Oneida was a 19th-century cult that, among other things, made flatware to make money for their free-love cult,” Lohman says. “And that sent me down the rabbit hole, because it was from that moment onward that I realized that there are often a lot of connections between food and cults.” When it comes to the role of food and drink in cults, most people immediately think of the tragic mass poisoning at Jonestown in 1978. But diets within fringe communities can be a more complex mingling of good and sinister intentions… (READ MORE)

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