An attempt to elucidate the concept of "folk dietary tradition"

Nutrition is a complex interdisciplinary science. It is an intersection point of a number of other sciences such as biology, economics, technology, ethnography, medicine, history, linguistics, politics. Folk dietary tradition is a normative nutritional system that is used by an already formed community. As no definition is available we analysed the term and, on the basis of our extensive research, came to the following conclusion: folk dietary tradition is constituted together with the establishment of the community for the purpose of consolidating it as well as for differentiating it from other communities; it reflects the historical development and the destiny of the specific community; it changes, becomes enriched or poorer, or loses its originality; it can be formed using previous, local dietary traditions that precede the formation of a community, or can be borrowed by other peoples which are in the process of introducing a new religion. During its golden age Bulgaria introduced its folk dietary tradition to the peoples converted by Bulgaria to Christianity. In the present study I give a definition of the basic characteristics of the Bulgarian folk dietary tradition. This definition can be used to analyse all folk dietary traditions and make comparison between them.