Nutrition History (from Parts Unknown)

This is the story of beriberi. For more than 1500 years, beriberi was known as poison wind affliction, a sickness produced by chronic exposure to damp winds. In reality, beriberi is caused by the absence of a vital nutrient in the diet (vitamin B1) the human body requires in amounts less than one thousandth of a gram per day— the same amount that could fill a standard vitamin capsule 500 times. It would take decades of gruelling and relentless front-line work to establish the connection of the beriberi and the diet—work pioneered by physicians and medical thinkers who bucked the rigid medical dogma of their time. The story of beriberi, from its first description through the discovery and synthesis of vitamin B1, plays out in the context of Japan's transformation from a premodern feudal society into an industrialized nation.     

In Episode 13 of Nutrition History from Parts Unknown, we're  talking on sugar, the unlikely superfood of medieval times. We'll be tracing the emergence of sugar in fine medieval cuisine and discussing its importance in maintaining a health humoural complexion, as well as its many medicinal applications.    

In Episode 12 of Nutrition History from Parts Unknown, we're continuing where we left off in Episode 11, talking on the 14th century medical community's response to the Black Death of 1347-51. This response was most exhaustively detailed in a genre of literature known as 'Plague Regimen'. These were popular medical manuals which provided the reader an understanding of the pestilence's origins, and advised on lifestyle interventions to prevent catching the disease. The advice of the Plague Regimen focused on the six medieval lifestyle factors, or "non-naturals" : air quality, sleep, physical activity, excretion and retention (this included bathing and sex), emotional health, and diet. 

In Episode 11 of Nutrition History from Parts Unknown, we're talking the 14th century medical community's response to the Black Death of 1347-51. This response was most exhaustively detailed in a genre of literature known as 'Plague Regimen'. These were popular medical manuals which provided the reader an understanding of the pestilence's origins, and advised on lifestyle interventions to prevent catching the disease. The advice of the Plague Regimen focused on the six medieval lifestyle factors, or "non-naturals" : air quality, sleep, physical activity, excretion and retention (this included bathing and sex), emotional health, and diet. 

On Episode 10 of Nutrition History from Parts Unknown, we’re dishing out three stories on the early history of protein and its role in the nutritional sciences of the 19th century. The first of these stories delves into the French Gelatin Controversy of the 1830s. Next up we’re talking on a Justis von Liebig and his Extract of Meat, and we’ll finish up with a history of the confrontation between vegetarianism and the meat-centred dietetics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In episode 9 of Nutrition History from Parts Unknown, we are talking about one of the oldest and most renowned herbal medicine in the history of the world—ginseng. Ginseng has a history spanning thousands of years and three continents— it’s story is one filled with various intrigues and some chicanery, connecting an unlikely cast of characters including Manchurian emperors, French Jesuit priests, and a famed American woodsmen. Ginseng has always ranked among the most important and valuable herbs in Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM), even today Asian panax ginseng is among the most highly valued forest products, fetching upwards of $1000/lb in Hong Kong markets. When the West became familiarized with ginseng in the 18th century, the herb became synonymous with invigoration, it was touted as a restorative tonic that cured derangements and languid tempers, and more recently ginseng has become the prototypical energizing herbal medicine.    

In Pt.2 of Vegetable Eating in the Middle Ages, we'll discuss the broadening of the medieval European vegetable resume with additions from the Arabic World and the Americas, the rediscovery of horticulture and renewed interest in botany and gardening among Europe's elite in the Late Middle Ages, and the gradual breakdown of the Gallenic-humoural biases against vegetables.   

In Pt.1 of Vegetable Eating in the Middle Ages, we're tracing the history of vegetable consumption in Medieval Europe following the Fall of Rome.  We'll cover the actual eating of vegetables across the three orders of medieval society(the nobility, clergy, and peasantry) and the impact liturgical fasts humoural dietetics had on vegetable eating. Episode 1 wraps up with a conversation on fruit eating in the medieval period.

In episode 6 of Nutrition History from Parts Unknown, we are tracing the origins and history of the disease of nutritional deficiency known as pellagra, a disease which claimed over 100,000 American lives in a relatively short course of 100 years. These numbers may not seem especially high when compared to the toll infectious disease like typhoid or cholera claimed(which tally in the millions)—but pellagra is not an infectious disease—it is a disease caused by a dietary deficiency, more specifically a deficiency in vitamin B3, also known as niacin. Today’s episode will trace the 300 year history which saw the disease of pellagra emerge, the reasons why it emerged, and the grueling process to discover it’s true causes. It’s a story filled with vampires, and parties, and some very questionable science.  

In episode 5 of Nutrition History from Parts Unknown, we are picking up where we left off in Episode 4, tracing the persistence of bread eating amidst a series of grain crises and famines which struck Europe in the heart of the premodern period which inevitably toppled bread’s status as the unanimous champion staple-food of Europe. Europe did all it could to hold onto its bread throughout the turmoil of the 16thand 17thcenturies, but eventually had to surrender to the reality that other staple foods would be needed if regular famine was to be made a historical vestige. And so Europe’s diet expanded to include novel foodstuffds, albeit it did so reluctantly. Among the most important of these new foods, was the potato, the last famine hero, and this description is apt because it was, perhaps more than any other food, that which buffered food precarity in premodern Europe.    

In episode 4 of Nutrition History from Parts Unknown, we are taking it back 500 years to the glory days of bread, a time when Europe’s medical community was unanimous in its praise of bread as a health food. Bread became Renaissance Europe’s most widely celebrated dietary staple. It was thought to promote wellness through a number channels: Its sticky and elastic gluttinous proptires were considered essential to a well-functioning digestive tract its warm, moist thermic properties were perfectly suited to, and promoted, an ideal moist and warm human body temperament, and finally it placed second only to meat in terms of providing pure nourishment. A complex and convoluted dietetic system, highly influenced by the medical thinking of Ancient Greece and Rome, informed these pro-bread takes, which we are going to delve into on today's show.

For more than 300 years, scurvy was the greatest menace to maritime exploration and long-distance seafaring. The true cause of the disease-Vitamin C deficiency-eluded physicians and medical thinkers until the early 20th century. In episode 4 of Nutrition History From Parts Unknown, we're delving into history's many zany theories on why scurvy occurred, how to treat it, and why it took so long for science to come around to the reality that scurvy was a disease resulting from a lack of access to fresh fruits and vegetables, and the vitamin found found therein.

If you came across it in its natural environment, you might dismiss spirulina as pond scum, but this subtropical autotroph is gram for gram among the most nutritious foods on Earth. Hot take alert? Not so much. Spirulina is an evidence-based stud, a food supplement packing an incredibly rich nutritional resume and a robust body of research endorsing its therapeutic benefits. Get scum.

Every society gets the remedy it deserves. This is the story of how Soviet Russia birthed the modern adaptogen, a class of herbal tonics unrivalled in their ability to confer protection against all manners of stress. Discover the beginnings of eleuthero, rhodiola and schisandra, and other herbal adaptogens, and how they fuelled the economic, athletic, and interstellar endeavours of the USSR.