Throughout history, as people are confronted with an indominable force such as sickness, they search for peace in other ways, particularly through food. Whether this be through cooking nutrient filled meals, throwing a party with your friends to still enjoy life, or baking homemade bread as quarantine sets in, people find solace through food. As we’ve all seen over the past year, food changes and fluctuates in times of tumult. It has been proven that in times of pandemic and sickness, eating patterns shift and change as people struggle to adapt to the new normal. By looking through historical accounts, books, and recipes, it can be identified how these habits and ideas have changed through history. Food has forever affected how we view our health and remains interconnected. It has changed and developed from “food directly can heal infections” to “food can influence heath” and “infections can be treated with medicines”. These ideas have developed concurrently with ideas of medicine, germs, and infection theory. Previously, as pandemics broke out, people struggled to find the reasoning behind why so many were perishing. It was blamed on everything from bas air, certain people groups, or curses from God. But, as technology advanced, ideas changed people began to connect illnesses to particular sources, such as mosquitoes or sanitary conditions within cities. This led people to believe that particular sources could be the sole source of illness, particularly food-borne illness carrying foods such as cholera infected water, raw milk with various bacterial infections, and E.coli outbreaks as mass production began. It became better as sanitary practices began, but real improvements began as germ theory became accepted and various medicines were created. Outbreaks became less common, until we encountered pandemics that spread in ways that are more difficult to control, such as influenza, COVID-19, or Ebola. We still struggle to this day, but we know how to deal with them now. Food has become less of a scapegoat and developed into a role of comfort. As we look back in history, this developing role of food is evident through writings, paintings, and accounts of the times. All of the sources given discuss pandemics or other widespread sicknesses, and how people treated these events changed as time went on, as medical knowledge progressed, and as living changed. They each give very different and unique views on the times the author was living in, and each provides new and rich insight into their given time period.