Ideologies shape the way we view food and consumption practices. These can be political, spiritual, and cultural. Animal products are generally rejected, both because of vegetarian and vegan beliefs, opinions on animal cruelty, and the lower shelf-lives of these ingredients.

Back-to-the-Landers are another group that rejects normative culinary practice in favour of alternative means of production and consumption. They focus especially on the rejection of the capitalistic global industrial food system. They do not believe that food should be produced in massive quantities for profit at the expense of the environment.

Like punks, Back-to-the-Landers also attempt to purchase necessary foods in bulk and salvage food waste from dumpsters. However, they focus even further on the production of their own foods.

According to Gross, Back-to-the-Landers became a subculture sometime around the 1970s in the initial phase of the movement. At the time, these individuals were in their twenties and identified with hippie subcultural ideals. Back-to-the-Landers reject traditional consumer practices, preferring to be as self-reliant as possible while living on land that they own while minimizing external resources. Generally, they tend to have large properties, with vast gardens to help feed themselves.

Back-to-the-Landers differ from freegans in that they do not reject the agricultural revolution. Instead, they seek to incorporate means of producing food themselves, but not necessarily through eschewing agrarian practices, with less reliance on foraging and acts like dumpster diving.

They hold a deeper commitment to the community and want to work with their community to sustain themselves. The movement was greatly bolstered by the production of successful guide books on organic, home agriculture and back-to-the-land practices.

Writings on the topics that inspire these feelings have garnered mainstream attention, as well as through viral films that have shown portrayals of factory farming and industrial production.

'Be Receptive to Mother Earth' appears to be the Back-to-the-Landers motto.