Researcher Konstantine Panegyres looks at the history of the Mediterranean diet which is popular with people today.
The Roman emperor Julian (332–363 CE) called bread the food that “among us is thought to be the most nourishing”.
Bread and other cereal-based foods were indeed central to ancient Mediterranean diets. This was supplemented by pulses, oil, wine and whatever seasonal produce people could obtain.
This is not quite the “Mediterranean diet” we think of today, with its vegetables, olive oil and grilled fish.
Although bread was fundamental to Julian’s Roman world, it wasn’t universally appealing. The Ethiopians, who lived on meat and milk, thought bread was terrible food that lacked nourishment.
They wondered how the Mediterraneans could live on this “diet of dung”.
Galen’s overview
The physician Galen (129–216 CE), provides our fullest account of the ancient Mediterranean diet.
In his book On the Properties of Foodstuffs, he first discusses cereals and pulses, then plants, and finally animal foods and fish. Wheat was, he says, the most widely used and “valuable” food.
Bread was not merely an accompaniment. For many people it supplied the bulk of a meal. Galen distinguishes between different types of bread. The finest white bread was “the most nourishing”. Bran bread ranked lowest, though Galen suggested it emptied the bowels more effectively.
Preparation mattered too. The best bread was “most leavened and very well kneaded” and baked “with moderate heat”.
An excessively hot oven produced a crust that was “dry and like pottery” while leaving the centre raw. Completely unleavened bread, Galen thought, suited almost nobody.
Galen learned the importance of processing wheat through an unpleasant personal experience. During a country journey with some of his friends, a poor peasant woman served them boiled whole grains because her household had run out of bread:
“Throughout the next day we had no appetite because of indigestion, so that we could eat nothing, were full of wind and suffered from headaches and blurred vision. For there was not even any bowel action, which is the only remedy for indigestion.”
The same grain became nourishing only after milling, sieving, kneading, fermenting and baking.
What else was on the menu?
Ancient people certainly ate fruit and vegetables. Galen discusses lettuce, cabbage, onions, gourds, figs, grapes, apples, pears and pomegranates. But he did not automatically regard them as the basis of a healthy meal.
Many plants were valued chiefly for medicinal effects: they might loosen the bowels, thin bodily fluids or stimulate urine, while supplying little nourishment.
The plant-rich diet could also reflect poverty rather than a healthy choice. Galen calls oats “food for draught animals, not for men”, except when “the extreme of hunger” forced people to make bread from them.
Pulses were more important than modern images of Mediterranean cuisine suggest. Lentils, chickpeas, lupins and various flowering legume plants supplied substantial nourishment.
Galen describes an Alexandrian physician who lived for four years largely on pulses. His diet sounds strikingly modern – until Galen reveals the physician seasoned them with fish sauce.
Fresh fish, meanwhile, was not necessarily an everyday staple. Access depended on location and wealth, as fish could be expensive.
Fish caught near Rome could also be contaminated by waste flowing into the river Tiber from “latrines, bathhouses or kitchens”.
Is there a single ‘Mediterranean diet’?
The Greek writer Athenaeus shows why we should be careful when speaking about “the” Mediterranean diet.
Athenaeus wrote around 200 CE and imagined a long dinner party at which the guests discussed food, wine and dining customs. His examples reveal that what people ate depended heavily on where they lived and how much money they had.
He begins one book with an account of Lusitania, in modern Spain. Seafood there, he says, “in point of abundance, excellence, and beauty, far exceeds that found in our sea”.
Wheat, barley, wine, figs and meat were remarkably cheap. Wild game was worth so little that sellers sometimes gave it away “as a bonus for goodwill”.
In other places, fish was expensive. Athenaeus quotes a diner complaining:
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen fish more expensive. Poseidon, if you got 10% of what’s spent on them every day, you’d be far away the richest god there is!”
Nor was fish always served simply. Athenaeus preserves a recipe by the 5th-century BCE Sicilian cook Mithaecus:
“Clean the insides of a ribbon-fish after cutting off the head, wash and cut into slices, and pour cheese and oil over them.”
The fish and olive oil sound familiar. The thick covering of cheese and oil clashes with today’s image of healthy, lightly grilled seafood.
The Mediterranean diet vs ‘the Mediterranean diet’
Most ancient Mediterraneans could hardly live without bread. Cereals supplied the bulk of their calories; pulses, oil, vegetables, fruit and fish varied according to region, season and wealth.
The ancient evidence leaves us with no single ancient Mediterranean diet. There were many: one for regions where food was plentiful, another for poor people just trying to survive, and another for wealthy diners able to pay extraordinary prices for expensive delicacies.
The modern Mediterranean diet is, therefore, not an ancient menu preserved unchanged. It is a selective reconstruction, highlighting olive oil, vegetables and seafood while quietly removing the mountains of bread and cheese.
Author: Konstantine Panegyres is a Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, The University of Western Australia