Master's thesis tourism and Local Food and Beverages

with several ingredients by Hanson (2002). 
The broadest way of categorizing cuisine is by country and possibly the religion of that 
country. The use of country as a basis for categorization has its own deficiencies, for it fails 
to take into account the shifts in types of foods and methods of preparation which are likely 
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Chapter 2. Literature Review 
to be utilized within one country. Furethermore, Regional cuisine within a country is what 
offers us true insight into the variety of flavor combinations available to a cook, as Chesser, 
(1992) declares. 
Religion, on the other hand, by limiting the number of food materials that may be used in the 
process of food-preparation, affects the cuisine of a country. He maintains that the infusion of 
religious and cultural beliefs and attitudes gives a particular cuisine its own distinctive 
character. To make this statement more tangible, we can refer the reader to Hanson ( 2002) 
who claims that almost all (about 98 percent) of Iranian are Shi
‟
ah Muslims, meaning that 
they follow S
hi‟
ah Islam, the government religion, and celebrate Muslim holidays throughout 
the year. Hayes & Laudan (2009) referring to the influence of religion on the food culture of 
people, cite that as Islam remains the dominant religion, Muslims are obliged to observe 
dietary laws that forbid the consumption of pork, blood, and alcoholic beverages. 
Historically speaking, the production of food has always been of huge importance as it is 
today. Now days, with the fast moving technological developments which have changed the 
face of the world, the system of food production has also undergone significant changes, the 
very examples of which are numerous products brought to the third world from other 
developed countries to help feed their growing nations. In such a case, it should be obvious 
that these developments should ultimately contribute to the culinary preparation in Iran as 
well. As we know culinary preparation initially was reliant on the developments within a 
region but as time went by and different people with different cultures came into contact with 
one another, this process also changed. Nevertheless, as the development of new techniques 
of culinary preparation and the factors involved in this process are newly arrived subjects in 
Iran and little research is done so far, to shed some light on this area of research, we may 
content ourselves with the already given information