The History of Food and Nutrition
The topic that I chose to do for my project is the
history of food and nutrition. I picked
this one because my major is nutrition and I think it will be interesting to
see how diets changed throughout history.
When I started research for this project, there really was not a lot that I already know about this topic. I knew that Europeans did not eat a lot of
fruits and vegetables until they came to the New World. Vegetables were a big part of the Native
American diet and they showed the Europeans how to grow many different
kinds. I knew that the Egyptians ate a
lot of vegetables that would grow in the rich soil near the Nile. Other than those three cultures, I did not know
very much about the others. By doing
this project, I learned much more about the way people eat. We live in a society that overeats and
prefers convenience over health. I know
that people have not always been this way, so it was interesting to see the
changes of diet and uses for foods during different periods of time. I think this topic is interesting for
other people to learn about because everyone loves food! Food and nutrition is something that affects
everyone. I have written one episode on corn that was found in Gerard’s herbal. I focused on
Gerard’s writings and pictures to show what diet was like in the New World. This episode contains information on the process of growing and harvesting corn and includes a story of where some people believe corn came from. For another episode I looked at the different uses for wheat in the middle ages. We use wheat all of the time for food, but it used to be used for much more than that. This episode provides information on some uses for wheat that we might think are crazy today, but in the middle ages were completely normal. For the third episode, I am wrote about dates that were used by the Egyptians for
herbal remedies. It was very interesting
to learn about the things they used for cures. From researching for this episode, I learned that ancient Egyptians believed that dates were the "cure all". For this episode, I used Ebers medical
papyrus. These papers talked all about the
diseases people got and what herbal remedies they used. For the episode about wheat, I used Hildegard's book on plants. This book was great because I did not know about any of the uses for wheat that she wrote about.
I found secondary sources that I were great for all three episodes. For the corn and wheat episodes I used A History of Food. This was one of the best sources I used because it gave a detailed history of almost any food you can imagine.
For the Egyptian medicine I used The Medical Skills of Ancient Egypt. This book helped me because it included
all kinds of remedies that were used for different ailments.
Episode 1: Ancient Egyptian Herbal Remedies Episode 2: Uses of Wheat in the Middle Ages
Episode 3: Vegetables in the New World
Pictures: Food pyramid. Diet Motion. Weblink.
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