What are your thoughts about food's inportance in history. Food is one of the most unique things in someone's culture. So does anyone know anything interesting about food in history? It could be what one religion has to do with food, or just food being mentioned in history. I am a chef so I find food very interesting.

:)

food is very important for a culture. like England it culture food is Fish n' Chip

Exactly. Just like Kosher, although not really a food, it is uniquely Israeli.

Although it is interesting the way a human body "deals" with food.

You can live of a lot less than the perscribed "3 square meals a day" that is just a modern myth and you only really need that much nutrition is you were very active (such as in the navy where the expresion has come from).

Will less strenuious activity you can literally "train"your body to live off only 1 meal a day, or even a meal every other day.

That is of course the FUTURE and not history, so I'll revert back and say that food has allways been one of the two factors that held up civilizaton: Food and "love".

Both of which have started and ended wars.

~ Boli

Yes. Food is a key to many cultures (Indian, for example).

I think Food is very important in Portuguese Culture, each region has it´s own food, depends on their resources, weather, season or festivities. Food is history :)
I couldn´t live without Portuguese traditional food ;)

Here is a link to Portuguese food as I posted in the "whats your country traditional food?" trhead:

http://www.portugalvirtual.pt/80drinkeat/index.html

Food is one of the basic foundations upon which a culture is built and identity is created. It is the one part of culture that people understand viscerally and rarely have to have explained to them (unlike opera or Buddist spirituality for example). It is probably because food is so vital to cultural identity that no icon of Americanization seems to draw the ire of people outside of the US like McDonalds.

I too am a chef so of course I think food is important.;)

For about 1000 years, the staple diet of the English was variants of pottage- a thick stew made of boiled grains. To this would be added vegetables (onions featured heavily as potatoes weren't around- cabbage and root crops were also present).

Meat was rarer- it would usually be pork products. Just about every part of the pig that could be eaten was eaten.

More common was fish- usually river fish of the wriggly variety such as eels and lampreys.

The principle drinks were ale and cider.

Probably the second most important event in the history of cooking (after the discovery of cooking) was the discovery of the New World. The number of new foods that were brought back to the Old World was staggering. Many of them are considered traditional foods now in lands where they were unknown 500 years ago. A partial list:

Corn (maize)
Chocolate
Tomatos
All Peppers (hot and sweet)
Vanilla
Potatos
Sweet Potatos*
Peanuts
Turkey
Maple Syrup (from the sugar maple)
Pumpkins

This is just off of the top of my head, the full list in my history of foods book (which I seem to have misplaced) has a few hundred items, most of which are common ones.

*An interesting thing about sweet potatos. They are native to the Andes but were grown across the Pacific ocean as far west as the Phillipines before Columbus discovered the New World. From the study of seeds it is known that the varieties grown in Polynesia and parts west were descendents of cultivated varieties first bred in South America. Though it is circumstantial this is still strong evidence of some contact between the people of the Pacific and South America.

Originally posted by Drewcifer


Corn (maize)
Chocolate
Tomatos
All Peppers (hot and sweet)
Vanilla
Potatos
Sweet Potatos*
Peanuts
Turkey
Maple Syrup (from the sugar maple)
Pumpkins



Also, squash, beans, pulque, coca, manioc, and teonanacatl (look this one up).

They also invented suppositories, but that is the wrong end.

It is kindof important but there are lots of more important things. Like arkitechere, Lauguege, clothes, and more. Althought the style of cooking is important to, but not as much.

My scale of culture imortance

Languege
Arcitechere
Clothes
Food
Cooking
other stuff

Wow! A lot of responses. I agree that the resources that a culture or group is "given" helps create their cuisine, showing a somewhat vague overview of how much ingenuity is in a group. For example America, pork ribs were thrown away and the poorer classes, mostly freed or still in bondage black slaves, turned that into a delicacy.

I agree, #1 Person that there are more important things, but as a chef I am probably biased towards food. ;)

Food is very important. You can learn a lot of a civilization by its food.
I don't mean the style of cooking, but more the spread of different foods and the nutricients in it. In Europe the most common food is always grain. In Eastern Asia Rice and in the New World corn. Of those three grain is the least productive. You need four times the space as rice does to produce the same weight of food. And corn is even better. Stramnge thing is that the civs with corn didn't advance so quickly as Europe or Asia.
One of the main reasons for that is the lack of large mammals. No horses, cows or sheep. So no animals to carry much for you, drive you around or provide large quantities of food/milk/leather.
Another factor is the climatical boundaries. To travel from west to east or vice versa is a hundred times easier then from north to south. In west/east you stay in the same climate, and with north/south you pass severa climate-zones. The Americas are more a north/south continent then Eurasia is. So this limits the exchange of ideas, foods, technologies, and so forth. No Inca ever met an Aztec as far as we know today. But Rome and China had contact via the Scythian tradesmen.

So the spread of foods is a very good indicator how a civ survived, or didn't, and what contacts and achievements it had. The potatoe is the most important food in Russia. Czar Peter the Great learned of it from the Dutch when he visited Zaandam and the Dutch obviously learned it from Spanish traders from the New World. This tells a lot about the history of Holland, Russia and Spain, for example.

Really good post, Tavenier. You pretty much said what I was gonna point out. :)

HOLY S**T!

I can't believe this just came up. I just (12 minutes ago) finished writing a quarter paper on food in Europe between 1648 and 1815--how it changed and what it was like in the many regions of Europe and many socioeconomic conditions people faced. NEAT!

Originally posted by Packer-Backer
Really good post, Tavenier. You pretty much said what I was gonna point out. :)

Thanks, PB! :D

Originally posted by Benderino
HOLY S**T!

I can't believe this just came up. I just (12 minutes ago) finished writing a quarter paper on food in Europe between 1648 and 1815--how it changed and what it was like in the many regions of Europe and many socioeconomic conditions people faced. NEAT!


Was this for your study, you mean? It is a very interesting subject, if you ask me.
I'be read and studied much about it. A book I could advice anybody interested in these kind of subjects is:
Guns, Germs and Steel, the Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond. It is very readable. I am a historian, but you don't need to be one to understand the book. It is very open to anybody.

Well, it was for my AP European History class. I could let you read some of it if you like. I think it is good.

Originally posted by Benderino
Well, it was for my AP European History class. I could let you read some of it if you like. I think it is good.


That would be great (I teach history).
I will PM you.

Of course the food can translate into other thins. Fro example were would we be without the word "BAM!!"?

:lol: Also, I see your sig of course, where would be without the Simpsons? ;)

One thing I would like to show my disgust at is weird delicacies. What about those Roman emperors serving peacock brains, if it is rare and expensive it is doesn't mean it is good! Why did monarchs and dignitaries like frog's legs, fois gras, cow tongues, and all of those other nasty, basically disgusting inards and gizzards? Were they insane? Delicacies are beef tenderloin, not beef tongue!

Originally posted by Packer-Backer
:lol: Also, I see your sig of course, where would be without the Simpsons? ;)

One thing I would like to show my disgust at is weird delicacies. What about those Roman emperors serving peacock brains, if it is rare and expensive it is doesn't mean it is good! Why did monarchs and dignitaries like frog's legs, fois gras, cow tongues, and all of those other nasty, basically disgusting inards and gizzards? Were they insane? Delicacies are beef tenderloin, not beef tongue!


I don't understand either. Why do the wealthy, even today, want to eat caviar? I have tasted it once and it was not completely awful, but it did not taste good. I just think the only thing with it is to impress their guests (like the seventheen century folks liked to do with pepper) or to show they are different from the common folk who like to eat steak, meatballs and spareribs.
The same question is: why do they need the most expensive sportscars? I don't know by experience, but I am sure that a decent Ford Transit is much more comfortable then a Ferrari Testarosa. But can they show off with a Ford? No.

Food, or lack of it during the Irish famine, has left a cultural scare in Ireland that lasts to this day.
There is still a cultural 'push' to go to lands that are better off even though the Ireland today is as good as any country.

Its not as bad as it used to be and is in decline, but its still there.

You are right, Tavenier. The rich nobility thought they were better just because something was a small part of an animal. Just think about what something like calf liver is, it is the liver of a disgusting calf. The liver! An organ of a dirty, rotten animal! And you're supposed to eat that? And you are right about something like caviar, it isn't that great, and it is the roe of a sturgeon, roe! Would you eat the mammal version of roe off of a cow?

Originally posted by Packer-Backer
You are right, Tavenier. The rich nobility thought they were better just because something was a small part of an animal. Just think about what something like calf liver is, it is the liver of a disgusting calf. The liver! An organ of a dirty, rotten animal! And you're supposed to eat that? And you are right about something like caviar, it isn't that great, and it is the roe of a sturgeon, roe! Would you eat the mammal version of roe off of a cow?



Or fertilized chicken eggs?

And eating liver is so bad for your health. All bad stuff is kept there.

Meanwhile back on-topic...

Food has indeed been a very important theme in history. The very differentiation in how agriculturists and pastoralists had gotten their foods had led to the division of the steppes and the Chinese world - even if both were of the same racial grouping. The border between the two 'worlds' marked the northernmost limit where Chinese-style agriculture can be practised, vis a vis the nomads' steppe economy.

Originally posted by XIII
Meanwhile back on-topic...

Food has indeed been a very important theme in history. The very differentiation in how agriculturists and pastoralists had gotten their foods had led to the division of the steppes and the Chinese world - even if both were of the same racial grouping. The border between the two 'worlds' marked the northernmost limit where Chinese-style agriculture can be practised, vis a vis the nomads' steppe economy.


True. And what about the amount of food produced by one farmer-family? If they can produce enough food for two families to feed, then the other family can specialise in pottery, masonry, and so on. Nowadays in most wealthy countries around 6% of the population produces food for the whole country.

And nowadays there are only eight countries in the whole world which are autarkic, meaning self sufficient. The other, say, 200 countries don't produce enough for themselves and need the extra food from those eight countries. The biggest producers are Canada, USA and I believe France. The Netherlands are one of those eight too.

Also if a nation has to do with what it's got, that shows how ingenious or how insane the cooks are. :p