Jana Eagle wrote:

>Hi Christy, I like your insights.  Especially mentioning the white
>bread and white rice as a status symbol.  It seems strange that
>something which is deleterious to health would become a status symbol,
>doesn't it?  I guess it comes down to: if it doesn't work, the being
>in question will not survive long enough to pass on their genes.
>
>Jana
>
Hi Jana

I asked myself if eating white bread and -rice would deteriorate a
persons health immediatily so the link would be made between the food
and the general health.  The answer is no because these foods were not
the only ones taken. Already in medieval times people lived in dark
grotty drafty places (including the rich) and were not the healthiest to
begin with.
The habit of eating heavily salted (preserved) meats and fish caused
high bloodpressure (just look at old paintings, everybody with a red
face) and loads of grains as cheap food must have worsened things
already.  There might not have been  a chance for people to eat
otherwise because only the very rich could afford anything else. Fresh
fish yes, there was even a rule in England that you could feed servants
salmon no more then three times a week.  But lets not forget that plates
ususally excisted out of a round bread, hollowed out like clamchowder is
still eaten today.  So the step to refined products was not as big as that.
We know that gout was the disease of the rich being blamed on wine and
meats.  It is true that wine causes acid crystals to form in the joints
but in my opnion grainproducts had more to do with it.

Let's not forget the romans, who ate and drink from leaden plates and
cups, whose waterworks excisted from leaden pipes.  Various illnesses
plagued them and even sterility and madness occured from that.

About Japan I can't really tell because I know not enough about the
health of the people during the change of diet other then the beri-beri
explosion.

As I'm writing a novel that partly takes place in the 17th century I
spend an awful lot of time with my nose in historybooks.  Not just that
era but also a long time before it to see the connection between things.
And I've been a member of an Anachronical society and they cook with
medieval cookbooks. Great food, surprising amount of vegetables but it
was the diet of the rich, not the general public.

Christy