Good food and bad: Nutritional and pleasurable eating in ancient Greece

This paper speaks to the theme of the boundaries of food and medicine as constructed in the Greek and Roman worlds. It examines how physicians developed innovative ways of thinking about the body that did not attribute health and sickness to the intervention of gods. Ancient physicians and natural historians conceived of new potencies for substances and described their impact on the body׳s physiology between the late fifth century BC and the early third century AD. The legacy of these ideas and practices had great traction in the Mediterranean world and survived into Early Modern Times, and until the rise of new forms of science.

This article analyses texts transmitted from the ancient world and considers how substances were attributed nutritional and medical potency. The texts relevant to this analysis include medical and philosophical treatises as well as cookery books. The article highlights discussions about the nature of food and drugs and the herbs thought to cross the boundaries between them. It interrogates different contexts within which foods were thought good or bad for the body, and the social and moral connotations attached to those perceptions.

Much of the analysis is devoted to understanding the flavours that were a key marker in the nutritional potencies attributed to foodstuffs. However there are clear and influential moral boundaries set by Plato in the discourse around food and pleasure. While every physician should be a chef, and many wrote cookery books that have been lost, a chef׳s talent was located in increasing pleasure, and therefore a less valuable skill. However the different literary genres show overlapping terminology and concerns, particularly with the quality of ingredients. Poor taste was not only a culinary concern. With regard to the setting of boundaries between foods and medicines, the transition between one category and another is frequently determined by the preparation and strengthening of a food׳s potency.