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Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

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Re: Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

#11

Post by snapcaster »

bluGill wrote: post #10

> According to Galen, food “is probably the most important of all medical subjects,” Just remember that in medieval times growing food was the job of the majority of men. Men also were the people most likely to be educated and actually write and talk about things and so food would be something on their mind. They would be growing it and thus writing about it. contrary to modern ideas men actually appeared to have don…

you would probably like the book Invisible Women. Touches a lot on this subject and how there is so much "missing data" when we talk about these things and it carries through to the modern day

Re: Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

#13

Post by krater23 »

Is this article really about medieval? Sounds very familiar to todays food culture. Everyone makes claims without having a solid justification, yet the observations indicate that it is true.

Nothing has changed, but nowadays we have papers that document observations and sell their theory as the truth; in the past, we had cookbooks.

Re: Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

#14

Post by cjs_ac »

bluGill wrote: post #10

> According to Galen, food “is probably the most important of all medical subjects,” Just remember that in medieval times growing food was the job of the majority of men. Men also were the people most likely to be educated and actually write and talk about things and so food would be something on their mind. They would be growing it and thus writing about it. contrary to modern ideas men actually appeared to have don…

Outside of monasteries, the intersection of men who were literate and men who were directly involved in food production was tiny.

Farming men weren’t cooking their midday meal out in the fields; they took some bread and maybe some protein out with them at the start of their working day.

Re: Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

#15

Post by alexaholic »

I enjoyed reading this, I found the article equally interesting and amusing. As a curiosity — it says that beef was cheap and suitable for manual labourers, and salmon was a staple of the monastic diet. How did they end up being among the most expensive in their respective groups?

Re: Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

#16

Post by mik1998 »

This article seems unusually misrepresenting of the theory of humours, which was prevalent in medieval Europe, at least in the catholic parts. This theory stated that no food was explicitly bad or good; rather, you should eat food that is suitable for your temperament. In that sense, they did not believe any food is necessarily (at least in terms of the humours) unhealthy; rather, it may be unsuitable or suitable for your temperament and the balance of humours within you. The hesistance of wet was mostly of its association with diseases; but it was recommended to cholerics, whose temperament needed to be balanced with it. In a sense, it sometimes produces better results (by chance) than modern dietary practices which often held up some types of (seemingly innocent food; like animal fats) to be categorically unhealthy.

Re: Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

#17

Post by fc417fc802 »

snapcaster wrote: post #11
bluGill wrote: post #10

> According to Galen, food “is probably the most important of all medical subjects,” Just remember that in medieval times growing food was the job of the majority of men. Men also were the people most likely to be educated and actually write and talk about things and so food would be something on their mind. They would be growing it and thus writing about it. contrary to modern ideas men actually appeared to have don…

you would probably like the book Invisible Women. Touches a lot on this subject and how there is so much "missing data" when we talk about these things and it carries through to the modern day

To the best of my knowledge a vanishingly small proportion of historical society was literate and it was an even smaller subset that authored anything of note. It isn't historical women that are invisible it's >90% of everyone. The written accounts are whatever the elite of the elite deigned to write down which those that came after chose to bother preserving.

Re: Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

#18

Post by bluGill »

cjs_ac wrote: post #14
bluGill wrote: post #10

> According to Galen, food “is probably the most important of all medical subjects,” Just remember that in medieval times growing food was the job of the majority of men. Men also were the people most likely to be educated and actually write and talk about things and so food would be something on their mind. They would be growing it and thus writing about it. contrary to modern ideas men actually appeared to have don…

Outside of monasteries, the intersection of men who were literate and men who were directly involved in food production was tiny. Farming men weren’t cooking their midday meal out in the fields; they took some bread and maybe some protein out with them at the start of their working day.

> Outside of monasteries, the intersection of men who were literate and men who were directly involved in food production was tiny

Higher than that. While the educated men likely did not do much farm labor (depending on the local details they may have been out there during harvest when all hands were needed), they had to ensure there were enough slaves to do that. Most of them were also well aware that they were one bad harvest from starvation and so paid attention to food production.

> Farming men weren’t cooking their midday meal out in the fields; they took some bread and maybe some protein out with them at the start of their working day.

That depends on the culture. The famous Spanish dish Paella was men cooking in the fields.

Re: Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

#19

Post by bluGill »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #17
snapcaster wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you would probably like the book Invisible Women. Touches a lot on this subject and how there is so much "missing data" when we talk about these things and it carries through to the modern day

To the best of my knowledge a vanishingly small proportion of historical society was literate and it was an even smaller subset that authored anything of note. It isn't historical women that are invisible it's >90% of everyone. The written accounts are whatever the elite of the elite deigned to write down which those that came after chose to bother preserving.

True, but farming was still somewhat visible to many of the elite. The bible (old testament) has a number of farmers who were also elite.

Re: Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

#20

Post by GuB-42 »

I am sure that in the past, good or bad food was more about conservation and food borne diseases than it was about nutrition. At least, that's the attitude that would make the most sense. That would explain sugar good / fish bad. There is probably a political aspect too, local food is seen as better than the rival neighbor food.

The modern, first world attitude must be very unusual towards history. We basically solved conservation and food born diseases are now uncommon and mostly treatable, and we have an abundance of anything, so nutrition is the only thing that remains when discussing healthy food.

What didn't change is the made up theories surrounding food. Despite all our science, we still have a lot of these today, in some for or another.

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