Essay Review Nutritious Foods and Consumption Choices in the Early Modern Period

Early modern societies witnessed profound changes in the ways that physicians viewed the effects of foods on physical and mental well-being. Dietary advice, however, was just one factor affecting consumption choice. In considering evidence presented in four recently published books that discuss aspects of diet and food selection processes, this essay looks first at ideas relating to healthful eating, and then at the foods that early moderns chose to eat. Trudy Eden describes the food experiences of English colonists in North America, which drew on the ancient concept of the humoral body whereby imbalances between the four bodily humors could be corrected by ingesting appropriate foods that were thought to be either, warm, cold, dry or moist. The outward signs of imbalance could be detected by changes in temperament, and this needed to be monitored regularly, with adjustments in diet remedying any deterioration in intellectual ability and loss of virtue that were pre-requisites for leadership. The perfect diet for a gentleperson consisted of light, delicate and fresh foods—those that were also the most expensive—which could not be bought by labourers. These people were associated with coarse foods and could therefor