8 ms·
The strange way people looked at food in the 16th Century
- zwieback 11y agoSounds like people's view of food is just as irrational today as it was then.
- dmix 11y agoThe strange way upper-middle-class British people looked at food in the 16th Century as referenced by Shakespeare.
- nsxwolf 11y agoI 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.
- rayiner 11y ago> 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.
- jasonjei 11y agoAt least they realized too much bacon without expending the energy is a bad thing!
- dahdum 11y agoReminds me of the "japanese intestines are longer" theory. https://medium.com/words-escape-us/are-japanese-intestines-longer-8a41ca3e7d89#.mdcmtu7x9 https://medium.com/words-escape-us/are-japanese-intestines-l...
- anexprogrammer 11y agoNo 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!
- falsedan 11y agoV. disappointed this wasn't a buzzfeed listicle of people pulling faces at the dinner table in medieval paintings.
- tamana 11y agoI thought HN practice was to prune editorializing clickbait words like "strange" in article titles.