Food and Health in Early Modern Europe

Food and Health in Early Modern Europe reconstructs the history of European foodways as seen through the prism of printed dietary advice from the early modern period. It offers a doctor’s-eye view of changing food and diet. The relationship between food and medicine has often been obscured, for the two tend to be seen as separate arenas. Approaching them instead as part of a continuum offers insights into both food consumption and the process of health maintenance. This book is thus both a history of food practices and history of the medical discourse about that food. As a result, it is also an exploration of the interaction between the two: the relationship between evolving foodways and shifting medical advice on what to eat in order to stay healthy. I have structured this book so that the first two chapters examine the changing nature of the genre in the context of wider medical trends. These are followed by a series of thematic chapters in which the dietary advice is related to changes in food perceptions, practices and preferences.