I just wondered what people considered healthy dieting a few centures ago?

Question
How did  people diet in medivial times? What doctors told them to eat, what to avoid?
I just wondered what people considered healthy dieting a few centures ago?

Thank you!

Answer
Hello Dorris,

I happened to have an article on this topic. To save you time, here is the full text of it :)

*** A History of Dieting Ideas From 16th to 21st Centuries 16th century ideas about nutrition that influenced modern dieting.***


The dieting of the European poor was very simple through history before the mid-1800s. It was whatever that was available and affordable: vegetables and grains in form of soups, bread, and porridges. But what was on the rich people's tables? What was considered tasty and good for you?

If you were to attend a 16th century court banquet in France or England, you might be served Blancmange -- a thick dish of rice boiled in almond milk, with pureed chicken, toped with fried pork fat, and sprinkled with sugar. Sugar was a common spice in main dishes until some 100 years later, when in the mid-1700s, the modern nutrition history began. For one thing, they started serving raw fruits and vegetables instead of the cooked ones that were exclusively in use until the mid-1700s. What happened? The answer can be found if we look at the role of cooking in general medicine of the time.

Eating healthy food was extremely important to people of the 1600s, some historians think that it was more important than it is today because physicians had so few other options: the choice was often between bloodletting and dietary prescription. In the 1600s, Dr. Andrew Boorde wrote, "A good cook is half a physican" -- in original spelling: "A good coke is halfe a physycyon." But what was considered healthy?

Sixteenth-century cooks and physicians alike were trained according to medical ideas that can be traced to antiquity: the Hippocratic Collection (400 B.C.) systematized by Galen (200 A.D.) and then by Islamic medics. In the 12th century, these Arabic medical texts were translated into Latin and in this form used by French physicians, e.g., Montpellier. In the late 1500s, the fundament of medical manuals was built and remained until a competing medical philosophy, influenced by German physician Paracelsus, emerged.

According to 16th century manuals, good health corresponded to a proper equilibrium of bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile or, as far as the Aristotelian elements were concerned:


blood was hot and moist
phlegm was cold and moist
yellow bile was hot and dry
black bile was cold and dry
Ideally, the human body had to be warm but not too much and slightly moist. It was believed that this condition could be maintained by eating a proper diet. It was exactly from this theory's standpoint how Blancmange was created: it had combined chicken, rice, almond milk and sugar, all slightly warm and moist, to reach the perfect balance.

It all started changing in the 17th century and historians of science still debate the causes of this shift. The chemists, who experimented with distilling natural edible substances seemed to have contributed to it. They were the first to notice that foods consisted of, and could be divided into, a few basic substances -- and nutrition classification was born. Guessing about the mechanisms of transformations of foods, they suggested the idea of fermentation. This immediately was applied to practical dieting and cooking. For instance, cooks now approved of mushrooms (that were strictly prohibited before) because they fermented so readily. For the same reason, raw vegetable salads with oil-based dressings also became fashionable. Oils and butter were considered both tasty and good for you and the cuisine became heavy on them.

Sugar, on the other hand, was now being criticized . "Under its whiteness," wrote a physician at Henry IV's court, "sugar hides a great blackness"脙鈥?meaning that it blackened the teeth. Then of course came the discovery of diabetes by Dr. Willis, who had noticed the sugary urine of his patients. The moral was clear: sugar was dangerous, perhaps even a poison - and it was now served only in desserts.

By the end of the 18th century, scientists started on the line of research leading to the discovery of modern concepts such as calories, carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins and minerals. One of the goals was developing an affordable yet adequate diet for workers. They returned to the staple foods of the poor - vegetables and grains, with the addition of the refined flour.

The refinement idea prevailed as a practical one since it allowed for energy-dense food, such as white flour versus whole-grain mill. The fat, also being energy-dense, remained highly regarded and these two foods, the fat and refined flour, are now blamed for the high rates of obesity in the most developed nations. It looks like a truly healthy cuisine for the masses is yet to be developed.  

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