Although food is something that we need to sustain us physically, there's a spirituality to food that is being increasingly acknowledged by consumers.

"To be healthy in mind, body and spirit, it's essential to be spiritually connected to the food you eat and to relish the experience of eating," said Heidi Demars, an organizer with the Bisman Food Co-op and 2013 Bush Fellow. "Understanding how to eat is just as important sometimes even more so as what to eat."

The word sacred simply means "set apart" or not of the ordinary, said Carolyn Baker, author, former psychotherapist and professor and managing editor of the eatlocalguide.com in Boulder County, Colo. "And often times something is sacred because its derived from something sacrificed," she said.

For Peter Bolland, humanities department chair and professor of philosophy and humanities at the School of Social Science, Business and Humanities at Southwestern College in Chula Vista, Cali., all food is sacrifice, because all food is gained by death.

"When we eat, we kill. This is a truth not to be shunned, shamed or avoided indeed it must be sanctified and embraced," he said.

Wherever you are on the vegan to omnivore spectrum, our lives rely on the continual ritual sacrifice of these life-forms, said Bolland.

"To eat unconsciously with no awareness of this sacred dynamic is to be out of step with the essential core of life itself," he said. "All life turns on this law, the law of sacrifice."

Historically, humans felt more connected to their food spiritually because they didn't know when or where their next meal would come from, said Baker.

"Historically, the hunter gatherers were the first humans that I know of, and they were totally dependent on food moment-to-moment and the weather and it was all about hunting animals, there was no agriculture at that point," she said.

Once humans settled and got sedentary, they connected their food with weather and the gods of their time, such as Osiris in Egypt and Ceres in Rome. "Our lives were very dependent on food, not hunting and gathering, but on the weather-sufficient rainfall and stable climate so they could raise those crops," said Baker.

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Re-connecting spirituality and food through conscious consumption