From Offerings to Food: A Qualitative Study of Lungsuran Handling and Nutrition Potential in Urban Bali

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This study shows how lungsuran becomes waste through four interacting mechanisms—ritual-temporal suitability, authority and ownership, social permission and hierarchy, and marketization/devotional abundance—operating under cross-cutting material constraints. It also identifies culturally legitimate and nutrition-sensitive recovery pathways in urban Bali.

Introduction

Food waste and malnutrition continue to coexist as a global double burden. Large quantities of edible food are discarded while many populations still face inadequate diets, food insecurity, and limited access to diverse, nutritious foods. This tension has increased interest in interventions that can simultaneously reduce edible loss and improve food access, particularly in rapidly urbanizing settings where food provisioning, social norms, and waste systems are changing.^1–4

Within public health and nutrition, this concern has contributed to growing attention to nutrition-sensitive approaches. In this literature, the value of food recovery lies not only in preventing waste but also in whether recovered foods can support dietary diversity and short-term food access in ways that are socially acceptable, safe, and institutionally feasible. Yet most food-waste research still explains edible loss through household planning, purchasing, storage, and disposal behavior. This framing is useful, but it is less able to explain contexts in which food circulates through ritual, moral, and social systems before it becomes available for ordinary consumption.^3–5

Insights from food anthropology, commensality studies, and scholarship on ritual food help address this gap. Food anthropology has long shown that food is not only a source of nutrients but also a carrier of identity, value, obligation, and social order. Commensality research similarly shows that eating together organizes belonging, hierarchy, inclusion, and exclusion, while South Asian scholarship on ritual meals demonstrates that ceremonial foods are embedded in symbolic and social systems that regulate procurement, offering, sharing, and consumption.^6–10

These perspectives are highly relevant to Bali. In Balinese Hindu practice, offerings (banten) frequently contain edible items such as fruits, rice-based foods, snacks, and side dishes. After ritual use, some of these items become lungsuran, also referred to in some contexts as surudan or paridan. Although lungsuran is often understood as blessed and still edible, its post-ritual handling is not equivalent to that of ordinary leftover food. Its movement is shaped by culturally specific ideas about sacred transformation, appropriateness, etiquette, compatibility, and responsibility.^11–15

In this article, we therefore conceptualize lungsuran as a culturally governed edible flow. Unlike leftovers, lungsuran has passed through ritual transformation and carries post-offering meanings that affect whether it is considered appropriate to eat or share. Unlike surplus, its fate is not determined by quantity alone, but by rules of timing, ownership, legitimacy, and social permission. Unlike redistribution, edible flow refers to the broader movement of edible material through socially regulated pathways before any redistribution can occur. The concept highlights how food can remain physically edible while becoming socially unavailable, morally sensitive, or institutionally unclaimed.^7,8,10,16

The post-ritual handling of lungsuran is also shaped by broader social relations. Access is not neutral. It may be governed by religious authority, lineage boundaries, order of access, social hesitation, prestige concerns, and gendered divisions of labor between those who authorize disposal and those who sort and reclaim foods. Under such conditions, reluctance to take lungsuran should not be read simply as personal preference or lack of need; it may also reflect symbolic boundary-making, moral surveillance, and status performance within communal religious life.^6,9,15,17

These dynamics are unfolding alongside urban and socioeconomic change. The increasing use of ready-made offerings, changing labor patterns, greater emphasis on practicality, and the expansion of larger or more elaborate ceremonies may all alter the post-ritual trajectory of edible offerings. When offerings are purchased rather than prepared within the household, felt ownership over what happens after the ceremony may weaken. At the same time, devotional abundance may increase the volume of edible residues beyond what households or temple communities can realistically reclaim, sort, or redistribute.^12–15,17

This study examines how lungsuran is handled in urban Bali and identifies the mechanisms that shape whether it is re-consumed, shared, diverted, or discarded. We conceptualize its post-ritual trajectory as being filtered through four interrelated mechanisms: ritual-temporal suitability, authority and ownership, social permission and hierarchy, and marketization/devotional abundance. These mechanisms operate under cross-cutting material conditions, including labor, time, storage, containers, and transport. By analyzing lungsuran in this way, the article contributes not only to understanding ritual food handling in Bali, but also to broader debates on food waste, commensality, moral regulation, and nutrition-sensitive recovery in culturally governed food systems.^3,4,18,19

Methods

Results

The qualitative dataset comprised 20 in-depth interviews with key stakeholders, four focus group discussions (40 participants), and 8 structured observations across household and temple settings. Key informants were aged 33 to 67 years (15 male, 5 female), while the FGDs captured predominantly female perspectives involved in domestic food preparation and post-ritual sorting. Observations totaled 37.5 h and produced an approximate cumulative estimate of 307 kg of lungsuran across sessions (range 8–95 kg per session). This figure should be interpreted as an indicative observational estimate rather than a precise weight audit. Participant profiles are summarized in Tables 1 and 2.

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Table 1.

Characteristics of Key Informants by Role, Age, Sex, Education, and Years in Role.

No.	Code	Category/Role	Age (years)	Sex	Education	Years in Role
1	PHDI-01	PHDI representative	58	Male	Master	12
2	PA-01	Temple priest (pemangku)	62	Male	High school	38
3	PA-02	Temple priest (pemangku)	54	Male	High school	28
4	PA-03	Temple priest (pemangku)	67	Male	Bachelor	42
5	PA-04	High priest (sulinggih)	49	Male	Bachelor	22
6	BA-01	Village head	56	Male	Bachelor	8
7	BA-02	Village head	52	Male	Master	6
8	BA-03	Customary village head (bendesa adat)	61	Male	Bachelor	8
9	BA-04	Customary village head (bendesa adat)	48	Male	Master	5
10	KB-01	Neighborhood head (kelian banjar)	45	Male	Bachelor	3
11	KB-02	Neighborhood head (kelian banjar)	51	Male	Bachelor	7
12	KB-03	Customary committee member	43	Male	Bachelor	4
13	KB-04	Customary committee member	47	Male	Bachelor	5
14	DKP-01	Food Security Office	42	Female	Bachelor	12
15	DLHK-01	Environmental Agency	39	Male	Bachelor	10
16	PJB-01	Professional offering provider	41	Female	High school	15
17	PJB-02	Professional offering provider	39	Female	Junior high	7
18	LSM-01	Environmental NGO	35	Female	High school	5
19	LSM-02	Environmental NGO	40	Male	Bachelor	12
20	LSM-03	Food rescue NGO	33	Female	Bachelor	3

Note: n = 20 key informants.

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Table 2.

Composition of Focus Group Discussions by Sub-District, Sex, and Mean Age.

Sub-District (Banjar)	Participants	Sex Composition*	Mean Age (years)
Denpasar Barat	10	3 M,7F	46.3
Denpasar Selatan	10	4 M,6F	43.1
Denpasar Timur	10	4 M,6F	40.2
Denpasar Utara	10	2 M,8F	44.2

Note: n = 40 FGD participants. M = male; F = female.

*Sex composition is presented as the number of male (M) and female (F) participants.

Across interviews, FGDs, and observations, lungsuran was consistently described as a culturally governed edible flow rather than as ordinary leftover food. Figure 1 summarizes the revised analytical model, and Table 3 consolidates the four mechanisms and the cross-cutting material condition that shaped post-ritual handling. Supplementary Table S7 provides the expanded codebook and illustrative examples supporting the development of these mechanisms. Four mechanisms shaped whether lungsuran moved toward re-consumption, sharing, diversion, or discard: (1) ritual-temporal suitability, (2) authority and ownership, (3) social permission and hierarchy, and (4) marketization and devotional abundance. In this model, re-consumption refers to edible lungsuran being eaten by the household or ritual participants soon after ritual completion, usually within the same setting or under direct household control. Sharing refers to edible lungsuran being transferred to others or taken away for later consumption, especially in communal or temple settings where permission, ownership, and timing must be socially clarified. Diversion refers to non-human food or material pathways such as feeding animals or composting, while discard refers to disposal into mixed waste. Table 4 presents the estimated allocation of lungsuran across the eight observation sites according to these post-ritual outcomes. Across all outcomes, material capacity—including time, labor, containers, storage, and transport—acted as a cross-cutting operational condition that widened or narrowed the possibility of recovery.

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Figure 1.

Synthesized pathway from ritual offering to post-ritual outcomes.

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Table 3.

Analytical Mechanisms and Cross-Cutting Material Condition Shaping Post-Ritual Handling of Lungsuran.

Analytical Component	Illustrative Indicators	Typical Implications for Lungsuran Handling (examples)
Ritual-temporal suitability	Grace period after prayer; delayed dismantling; exposure to heat and dust; perceived freshness and safety	Foods retrieved quickly are more likely to be re-consumed or shared; delays narrow the edible window and increase discard.
Authority and ownership	Clear household control versus pooled or temple-controlled offerings; diffuse decision rights; volunteer burden	Clear ownership facilitates reuse; ambiguous authority leaves edible foods socially unclaimed and harder to redistribute.
Social permission and hierarchy	Order of access; priest or leader precedence; ewuh pakewuh; gengsi; fear of gossip; lineage compatibility beliefs	People may delay taking, take only symbolically, or avoid taking entirely even when foods remain edible.
Marketization and devotional abundance	Ready-made offerings; practical lifestyles; larger or more frequent ceremonies; surplus volume; weakened post-ritual responsibility	Greater surplus and less planning after rituals increase the risk that edible items are left behind and cleared as waste.
Cross-cutting material capacity	Availability of labor, time, containers, storage, transport, and rapid sorting arrangements	Across all mechanisms, recovery becomes more feasible when practical handling systems are in place.

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Table 4.

Estimated Allocation of Lungsuran Across Observation Sites.

Observation Code	Setting	Volume (kg)	Discarded (%)	Re-Consumed (%)	Fed to Animals (%)	Shared (%)	Other (%)
OBS-01	Household	8	20	50	25	5	0
OBS-02	Temple	95	70	0	15	10	5
OBS-03	Household	22	30	45	20	5	0
OBS-04	Temple	68	65	5	20	8	2
OBS-05	Household	31	35	40	15	10	0
OBS-06	Household	12	25	55	15	5	0
OBS-07	Temple	52	68	0	22	7	3
OBS-08	Household	19	28	48	18	6	0

Note: n = 8 observation sites. Estimated volumes are approximate observational estimates based on structured visual estimation supported by sample weighing when permitted; they should be interpreted as indicative rather than precise weight-audit measurements. “Other” refers to composting or collection by local environmental groups. At temple sites, percent allocations describe the residue stream managed by temple organizers or volunteers after household-owned offerings had been reclaimed.

Discussion

This study shows that lungsuran is best understood not as ordinary leftover food, but as a culturally governed edible flow whose post-ritual fate is shaped by ritual timing, authority, hierarchy, and changing ritual economies. This interpretation extends conventional food-waste frameworks that explain edible loss mainly through household planning, purchasing, and disposal behavior. In the present case, foods became wasted not only because they were perishable, but because they moved through a morally regulated social field before they became available for ordinary consumption.^23–26

The findings suggest that edible recovery in ritual settings cannot be explained adequately by quantity or perishability alone. What mattered was not simply whether food remained edible, but whether it could move through a socially legitimate pathway of retrieval, authorization, and use. In this sense, the study extends dominant food-waste framings by showing that post-ritual food loss is mediated by sacred timing, entitlement, and social hierarchy. The analytical value of the edible-flow concept therefore lies in shifting attention from food as a material remainder to food as an object whose recoverability is socially organized.^7,9,10,23

The findings also deepen understanding of power and hierarchy in post-ritual food handling. Order-of-access norms, ewuh pakewuh, and gengsi did not merely reflect politeness or personal preference; they operated as informal mechanisms of social control. Hierarchy shaped who could act first, prestige shaped who could act without shame, and compatibility beliefs shaped who was considered an appropriate recipient. These dynamics also intersected with gendered divisions of ritual and post-ritual labor, particularly between those who authorized redistribution and those who handled foods directly. This division meant that those most directly involved in handling edible lungsuran did not always possess equal authority to legitimize redistribution decisions in communal settings. Together, these patterns suggest that redistribution in ritual settings may reproduce social distinctions unless legitimizing rules explicitly widen the circle of acceptable recipients.^{6,10,15,27–29}

The study further shows that marketization changes not only how offerings are procured but also how moral responsibility is distributed after ritual use. Participants’ accounts of ready-made offerings are consistent with wider scholarship showing that convenience can reshape everyday moral obligations around food. In urban Bali, purchased offerings made ritual participation more practical, but also weakened felt ownership over post-ritual handling. Combined with devotional abundance, this increased the likelihood that edible materials were left to tired volunteers and cleared as waste rather than being actively sorted or redistributed.^12,13,17

From a nutrition-sensitive perspective, the findings point to a modest but meaningful opportunity. The foods most often mentioned in interviews and observations, including fruits, rice-based items, snacks, and side dishes, are not nutritionally equivalent, and the present study did not include nutrient assays. Even so, these categories could support short-term household food access and aspects of dietary diversity if they are recovered early and handled safely. In this context, nutrition-sensitive recovery means creating socially legitimate and food-safe pathways through which culturally acceptable edible items can potentially contribute to food access without undermining ritual values.^3,4,24–26

These findings also have relevance beyond Bali. Many religious and ceremonial food systems involve rules about offering, blessing, entitlement, and social distribution. Although the specific meanings differ across settings, a similar analytical problem recurs: foods may be nutritionally usable yet remain constrained by ritual timing, hierarchy, and symbolic boundaries. The Bali case therefore contributes to broader debates on food waste, ritual economy, commensality, and the governance of culturally sensitive redistribution.^9,16,23

The applied implication is that successful interventions must work with, rather than against, the moral architecture of ritual food. The most plausible entry points identified here were pre-ritual right-sizing, rapid post-ritual sorting, basic covered storage and container systems, and public authorization from priests or customary leaders regarding who may take edible lungsuran and when. These are governance measures as much as technical ones. They reduce waste not by redefining lungsuran as ordinary surplus, but by making recovery ritually appropriate, socially legitimate, and operationally feasible.^27–31

Several limitations should be noted. First, the qualitative design was intended to explain mechanisms rather than estimate prevalence, so the findings are analytically transferable rather than statistically generalizable. Second, the cumulative estimate of 307 kg across observation sessions should be interpreted as indicative because it was based on structured visual estimation supported by sample weighing when access permitted, not on continuous weighing of all materials. Third, coding was conducted by the sole author in line with reflexive thematic analysis; trustworthiness was strengthened through triangulation, audit trail, and member checking rather than through formal inter-coder reliability testing. Finally, the study inferred nutritional potential from food categories and handling pathways rather than from laboratory assessment of nutrient composition or microbiological safety.

Overall, the study suggests that edible recovery in ritual contexts becomes feasible when sacred meaning, social legitimacy, and practical handling conditions are brought into alignment. Where those elements remain disconnected, blessed foods can move rapidly from moral value to material discard.

Conclusion

Lungsuran is not simply leftover food, but a culturally governed edible flow whose post-ritual fate depends on the alignment of sacred meaning, social legitimacy, and practical feasibility. In urban Denpasar, edible losses occurred when a narrow recovery window was constrained by ritual sequencing, ambiguous authority over communal residue streams, social permission norms, and the growing marketization of offerings. Material capacity, especially labor, time, containers, storage, and transport, further shaped whether edible items were rapidly recovered or cleared as waste. Nutrition-sensitive recovery is therefore feasible only when interventions are designed around ritual-temporal suitability, transparent authorization, culturally legitimate redistribution rules, and basic food-safety practices. Future work should test pilot governance models, document nutrient composition of commonly recovered items, and evaluate whether such models can improve dignified food access without undermining ritual values.

Supplemental Material