71–80 of 84 posts
I've read an archeological analysis of a merchant ship rowers-slaves -- every skeleton had perfect teeth. Because slaves were fed only fish, not any bread, bread was a product that merchants traded, while fish was cheap and abundant.
So I think "fish bad" opinion was just because fish was cheap and everyone had it.
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> Since no one had seen fish having sex, it was believed that fish spawned spontaneously from rivers/lakes/oceans and therefore were free from the animal version of "original sin". I don't know who comes up with this stuff. Aristotle wrote extensively about fish eggs, milt and breeding habits centuries before the Christian era. Not only that, fishermen throughout history were well aware that fish laid eggs. On the ot…
Aristotle thought some fish were spontaneously generated and others not (also all eels and Testacea). "This occurs in ponds, especially one near Knidos, which, so it is said, on one occasion dried up at the time of the Dogstar and all the mud was taken out; water began to collect in it as the first came, and at that point tiny fishes appeared, as soon as the water began. This fish was a kind of grey mullet which is n…
It's fascinating how closely this parallels Chinese traditional medicine, where foods are classified as "heaty" or "cooling" and health conditions can be both caused and treated by an excess of one or the other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_food_therapy
This is one of the things that makes the contemporary Chinese treatment of TCM as credible so jarring to me. Many people seem to regard it as some unique inheritance of their culture, but in fact it closely resembles many other pre-scientific medical traditions, including in the "West". For me, pseudoscience is like comparative religions: historicizing it and situating it in a context alongside comparable traditions…
Most people probably don't have my same view, but I don't see these practices as having 'credibility' in the same way as a pharmaceutical with a phase 3 trial and decades of follow ups. But they DO have credibility in the sense that there's a long history of people following this advice and feeling a little better. Maybe it's just placebo or a coincidence, but if it works it doesn't matter.
Similarly, contemporary western medicine has all sorts of blind spots, is vulnerable to lobbying/agendas/money, and doesn't offer much in the way of a holistic guide towards the feeling that your diet is aligning with your health goals.
This is similar to my view of religion. Any given doctrine isn't factual, but people long for a way to spiritually understand the world, and they aren't wrong for doing so. Science can't and shouldn't provide that.
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The fish thing is a carry over from Judaism, which has no such concept of "original sin". I find that a much more convincing explanation.
But his last line was about catching and preserving fish.... Which is the opposite of eating fish. I'm not sure what he was answering
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For most of human history calories in was way more important than nutrition since we could barely even manage that. Just the fact that you can buy fresh fruit and vegetables in the middle of a harsh winter is an incredible feat of logistics and technology that has taken a century to develop.
It was more of a storage problem than a production problem. Plenty of grains and foods people grew throughout known history were more than capable of providing all the calories someone would want or need without crazy effort. The problem is keeping that food good for an entire year, or more if there is unexpected bad growing weather. One person, even using entirely hand tools and no draft animals, could grow 10x more…
You can grow the food and you can store the food but that doesn’t do much good if locally you make too much and someone somewhere else is starving but you can’t get from point A to point B, and it has to get there not only unspoiled but intact, or at least undamaged enough to eat.
> In thirteenth-century England, Christians were expected to avoid meat every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday during Lent (when eggs and dairy products were also forbidden), Advent and on some saints’ days (or the eves of their feasts) Every person (back then) could observe farm animals had sex. Since no one had seen fish having sex, it was believed that fish spawned spontaneously from rivers/lakes/oceans and therefor…
The Basques were whalers. They started from the coast, using watch towers. Once the Bay of Biscay was depleted they moved further and further into the Atlantic. Whale meat was mediocre and didn't preserve well, and while whale bone (baleen) is useful enough, but the real target was whale oil, the best lubricant and fuel for lighting. All of this is from The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europ…
and it was used that way until the second half of the 20th century
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 solve…
Dealing with sugar specifically, sufficient concentrations act as a preservative as well. Honey, in particular, can be applied to surface wounds to help promote healing by resisting infection. Also, it's delicious, and you're less likely to find parasites in it than animal flesh.
Funny how in the last few decades we turned a system that has benefited us for millions of years into a liability, simply by making that "perfect food" so abundant.
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> They observed that pickled vegetables preserved the veggies for months. Kind of a tautology. Why would they think to pickle something in the first place?
You can ask this about a lot of foods, but probably won't get many satisfying answers. For example cheese goes back many thousands of years, and it's theorized that it was invented accidentally due to storing milk in sheep stomachs or similar. Probably something similar for pickling. Someone noticed that salted foods last a long time, and vinegar never seems to go bad, so why not try combining them?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was more of a storage problem than a production problem. Plenty of grains and foods people grew throughout known history were more than capable of providing all the calories someone would want or need without crazy effort. The problem is keeping that food good for an entire year, or more if there is unexpected bad growing weather. One person, even using entirely hand tools and no draft animals, could grow 10x more…
It was both storage and transport. The development of international shipping logistics, improved infrastructure and refrigeration were all needed to make this happen. You can grow the food and you can store the food but that doesn’t do much good if locally you make too much and someone somewhere else is starving but you can’t get from point A to point B, and it has to get there not only unspoiled but intact, or at le…
Before vapor-compression refrigeration, there was the ice trade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_trade
> In thirteenth-century England, Christians were expected to avoid meat every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday during Lent (when eggs and dairy products were also forbidden), Advent and on some saints’ days (or the eves of their feasts) Every person (back then) could observe farm animals had sex. Since no one had seen fish having sex, it was believed that fish spawned spontaneously from rivers/lakes/oceans and therefor…
> First Course: Cheat Bread and Manchett, Beare and Ale Wyne, Flesh for Pottage (thick broth), Chines of Beef, Venison in Brew’z or mult’, Pestells of Reed Deere, Carpes of Young Veale in Arm’ farced, Custard garnished, or Fritters
> Second Course: Jelly, Ipocras, Creames of Almonds, Pheasant, Hern, Bitterne, Shovelard, Cocks, Plovers or Gulles, Larkes or Rabbits, Venison in fine past, Tarts, Fritter
https://www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/history-and-stor...
Honestly it's a wonder there was any royalty without gout.