Plant Poisons and Rotten Stuff – The Blog

Foods eaten: Eggs, White bread, Butter, Chicken liver pate, Greek yoghurt, Duck, Brussels sprouts, Potatoes.
Kcals: 1813, Protein: 77g, Fat: 144g, Carbs: 56g.

People forget that all of these “wonderful” multicoloured, aromatic fruit and vegetables are relatively new re-additions into our diet. Only a couple of decades ago types of fruit and green vegetables were only available for short seasons through the spring, summer and autumn, and these were limited to local produce. The myth of the cholesterol-lowering Mediterranean diet has cultivated their use.

Tomatoes, one of the worst offenders for the food chemical intolerant, were thought poisonous well into Victorian times. In pre-modernity fruit and green vegetables were treated as supplementary to a staple diet of meat, eggs, butter, ale, cheese, and coarse bread (the ale, which was drunk instead of water provides an explanation for the fatness and malnourishment of the average medieval peasant), though the diet was not as low in fat or protein as certain vested interests on the internet claim (they also claim that a “low fat” medieval diet is “good” for you and in no way associated with obesity, drunkenness or the Black Death).

Staple medieval vegetables such as onions, leeks, cabbage, garlic, turnips, parsnips, peas and beans were relatively low in salicylates compared to the strongly flavoured Mediterranean vegetables favoured today. Medieval cheese was frequently curd cheese and not aged (cream cheese, cottage cheese, brie and double Gloucester were the most common varieties).

The lord’s diet, by contrast, was rich in aged game, fancy cheeses, and various exotic fruits, vegetables and spices, and ale and wine. The stereotypical medieval lord was obese and had rosacea. Gout is linked to food chemicals called purines, and this diet was certainly gout-producing.