
The strange way people looked at food in the 16th Century - otoolep
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36072989
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dmix
The strange way _upper-middle-class British_ people looked at food in the 16th
Century _as referenced by Shakespeare_.

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rayiner
> It was thought that the cold English climate made English stomachs hotter
> than those of their Mediterranean neighbours and so better able to digest a
> meat like beef, which was also more tender in England as the cattle fed on
> pasture.

I see nutrition science hasn't improved much since Shakespeare's time.

~~~
dahdum
Reminds me of the "japanese intestines are longer" theory.

[https://medium.com/words-escape-us/are-japanese-
intestines-l...](https://medium.com/words-escape-us/are-japanese-intestines-
longer-8a41ca3e7d89#.mdcmtu7x9)

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anexprogrammer
No discussion of food and diet beliefs of the time is complete without
considering the beliefs of medicine at the time. The article only obliquely
hints at this "although it had to be considered whether or not a specific meat
was suited to one's "humour", occupation, and even nationality". It's a belief
that seems to have held from ancient Greek times and shares much with ancient
Chinese and Egyptian beliefs.

The four humours were associated with different qualities, personality types
and body types, and consisted of 4 basic substances we were all made up of.
Food was thought to be important means of cure and compensating for the
humours, and balancing those elements.

It's basically a set of beliefs that dominated for 2,000+ years.

See
[http://kheper.net/topics/typology/four_humours.html](http://kheper.net/topics/typology/four_humours.html)
or
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism)
for a bit more depth.

Of course if you were a poor labourer I doubt much of this entered into your
thinking on food!

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nsxwolf
I wonder how many people actually adhered to much of this. Just because some
authority says something about food doesn't mean everyone believes it or
follows the advice.

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zwieback
Sounds like people's view of food is just as irrational today as it was then.

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falsedan
V. disappointed this wasn't a buzzfeed listicle of people pulling faces at the
dinner table in medieval paintings.

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tamana
I thought HN practice was to prune editorializing clickbait words like
"strange" in article titles.

