Food and Health in Early Modern Europe: Diet, Medicine and Society, 1450-1800

by David Gentilcore

Food and Health in Early Modern Europe is both a history of food practices and a history of the medical discourse about that food. It is also an exploration of the interaction between the the relationship between evolving foodways and shifting medical advice on what to eat in order to stay healthy. It provides the first in-depth study of printed dietary advice covering the entire early modern period, from the late-15th century to the early-19th; it is also the first to trace the history of European foodways as seen through the prism of this advice.

David Gentilcore offers a doctor's-eye view of changing food and dietary from Portugal to Poland, from Scotland to Sicily, not forgetting the expanding European populations of the New World. In addition to exploring European regimens throughout the period, works of materia medica, botany, agronomy and horticulture are considered, as well as a range of other printed sources, such as travel accounts, cookery books and literary works. The book also includes 30 illustrations, maps and extensive chapter bibliographies with web links included to further aid study.

Food and Health in Early Modern Europe is the essential introduction to the relationship between food, health and medicine for history students and scholars alike.

Genres: Food, Nonfiction, History

264 pages, Paperback

First published December 17, 2015

Reviews

[Jo Walton]

I've been reading a bunch of research books called X in Renaissance Italy or X in Early Modern Europe, and this is one of them. If you're interested in what people eat and how they have thought about health and diet and how that changes over time, this is great. I kept coming across fascinating bits and pieces. It gets more interesting as it goes on.

[Hannah Trower · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Very readable and interesting overview of the intersection of medicine and diet in the early modern period. Surprised at how late this book takes the period, but dividing the historical record is fraught anyway. Very well researched, goes into the class, religious, and colonialist implications of food. Would love more micro versions of this text, particularly focused in on the earlier period. Great quotes, very interesting in its approach to understanding the past as a) fundamentally different in understanding from our own period, but also b) not stupid. There are plenty of medical opinions that seem like nonsense, and just as many that would not be at all out of place on a coffee table today. Only deals with print sources, would be interested in what manuscripts would have to offer or change to the text.

[Willow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Topics: dietetics (2 parts, 1450-1650 & 1650-1800)—diet and social rank—regional foods—religion & food (fasting)—vegetables—food from the Americas—alcohol & caffeinated drinks
Passages of interest:
Chapter 5—use of food to identify religious minorities (Spain)
Chapter 1,2,7—discrepancy between medical theory & actual eating habits
Chapter 4—theories of physiological differences between classes necessitated different diets

[Sim Kern · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very helpful resource for understanding food habits of the early modern period and evolving medical attitudes towards different foods.

[Mills College Library]

613.094 G3381 2016