Health in the Early Modern World
We are not the first generation to recognise the importance of healthy eating to staying well. In the early modern era (roughly 1400-1800) food was a fundamental part of a proper health regimen. ‘A good cook is half a physician’, explained the doctor Andrew Boorde in 1542.
I’ve written general guides that explain food’s place in early modern understandings of health, as well as The Body of the Conquistador: Food, Race and the Colonial Experience in Spanish America, which shows how these ideas shaped the experiences of Spanish settlers in colonial Spanish America. ‘The Political Economy of Nutrition in the Eighteenth Century’ explains what it meant to call a food ‘nutritious’ before the invention of calories and vitamins. ‘Is it Sinful to Eat an Owl after Communion?’ showed that the answer was ‘yes’.
During the pandemic everyone became more interested in food. My research featured in a New York Times article about ‘What We Eat During a Plague’.
Books
All Relevant Publications
| Year | Category | Publication Type | Title | Publisher | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Scholarship | Journal Article | The Political Economy of Nutrition in the Eighteenth Century | Past & Present | Link |
| 2012 | Scholarship | Book | The Body of the Conquistador: Food, Race and the Colonial Experience in Spanish America | Cambridge University Press | Link |
| 2009 | Journalism and Interviews | Article | Is it Sinful to Eat an Owl after Communion? | I Found it at the JCB, John Carter Brown Library |
Relevant Blog Posts
Research featured in the New York Times
My research was cited in an article by Michael Snyder, titled ‘What We Eat During a Plague’.