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Healing diets of Galen, Maimonides, and Hippocrates was devoid of colorful fruits, vegetables, and dairy
When I was in college I took an interest in ancient practices of medicine. I was particularly interested in them because they often involved a form of diet therapy, which today seems to be an outdated practice.
I first started reading about Galen, because the school library had a book by him available. While reading it, I found it odd that the first thing he wrote about was how bad fruits were in general. Galen said his father warned him as a child to avoid eating too many fruits, as they produced a certain redness in the skin, in addition to promoting a form of mania. Galen even said that if people avoided, or at least limited fruits, he would be far less busy with patients. Additionally, I found it interesting that he also had strict recommendations against a wide variety of vegetables. The reason I found this odd, was because I was living on a college campus with signs everywhere saying how good fruits and vegetables were. Most people would be eating a decent amount of fruit as there was plenty available for free all over campus. Additionally, Galen was the first person I ever read who was negative about vegetables. This seemed very odd and "out of touch" with common sense. At the same time I was fascinated, and I continued to read what he recommended to eat. For most illnesses, he advised Romans to basically get most of their calories from gruel, which essential was barley, and maybe some other wheat grain mixed in. He supplemented the diet with salt, fish sauce, vinegars, and oils as needed. Later, meat dishes can be added. He also recommended whole wheat bread, but warned against fried food, especially fried with butter. He also recommended honey, which meant that the sugar in the fruit was not the harmful component.
Later on, I got my hands on a book by Hippocrates. Hippocrates recommended something very similar. Despite all the people who misuse Hippocrates name, his basic diet was a grain and pulses based diet with limited amounts of fruit and vegetables, and meat/cheese as available.
Maimonides too, advised people to go on a grain based diet. In particular, he said wheat bread is the best food to eat, while other boiled grains are very good. For meats he advised to remove all fats from poultry and beef before cooking. With regards, to dairy products I found his recommendations to be especially interesting. He said fresh yogurts and fresh, "white" cheeses were fine, along with butter. Milk was ok, as long it was drunk on the same day it was milked. Any older, he said it turned to poison. He also advised against aged cheese. I find this interesting, because Vitamin A degenerates overtime. No doubt aged cheeses and highly processed dairy products have plenty of denatured Vitamin A. The only fruits he recommended were dried fruits like raisins and figs. He thought most fruits and vegetables did more harm than good.
In short, part of the reason I still have faith in this diet, is because three different Doctors from different time periods, and different parts of the world, all intuitively arrived at a grain based diet that was limited in fruits and vegetables. From my understanding, Chinese Medicine also prescribes a very simple, limited diet, without much Vitamin A when someone is sick, but I haven't researched this too much.
PS- For those worried about any vitamin deficiency on a limited diet, I am currently searching for a really interesting article regarding biome diversity. It actually says that a limited, grain based diet with a chosen staple(wheat, rye, rice, corn, etc.) is actually healthier then a wide variety of foods. The reason is, that the limited staple actually allows your gut to diversify it's microbiome and produce nutrients that aren't there. This includes B Vitamins, and even fat soluble vitamins like Vitamin K. Ironically, a diverse diet produces a far more limited range of bacteria.
Wow, the tip about removing fat from beef and poultry before cooking is interesting. I read a book about lutein-free diet that also warns about those two fats that contain lutein, a carotenoid.
I also think pork fat is not good because the animals are supplemented with A making the fat more toxic than it used to be.
The thing about reduced variety being beneficial to the gut is also something that I was suspecting, but haven't put into practice.
Thanks for sharing, really interesting.
Very interesting YH! Thanks for sharing!
This is pretty much a typical Mediterranean diet.
Neutral foods like white rice and other grains were chosen by most cultures as a staple food for a reason.
My family ate that way. Danger is when you over do it on certain night shades, meats and dairy. My grandmother for example ate very similar to what's advocated here except she really loved nightshades like green and red peppers. She handled them well but towards the end of her life she always complained of gases and some stomach issues. Still she lived a long life and relatively good health. Her mom pretty much lived mainly on grains like rice and wheat and almost zero in term of dairy or fatty cuts of meat. She lived to over 100 with no medication able to walk and retained her mental function pretty well. By the way, whatever those keto people tell you, they used to consume pure sugar back then almost always with coffee or tea.
Popular idea of a healthy microbiome is diverse diet made up of exotic fruit special vegetables and eating the whole animal ie fats and organs. It's an unrealistic disaster. This is what happens when people are too orthorexic
I love this topic YH! I'm beginning to feel more and more that a simple diet based primarily around starch (rice in my case) is best. I'm fascinated with the history of food and think we have lost touch with a lot of truth, wisdom, our instincts and made things unnecessarily complicated when it comes to eating in modern times.
Really interesting.
"we have lost touch with a lot of truth, wisdom, our instincts and made things unnecessarily complicated when it comes to eating in modern times"
It's actually like that with everything not just with eating . Simplicity is the key in everything.
How fascinating, YH, especially their recommendation to limit fruit and vegetables. Personally, I saw massive health improvements from adopting a low-fruit/veg diet in favour of foods with higher caloric density.
All the talk of antiquity brought to mind the story of Daniel in Babylon (Daniel chapter 1 in the Old Testament), who requests a diet of grains and legumes instead of the rich meats (and non-kosher diet) of his captors, and is rewarded with good health.
The idea that gut microbes are happier with a more consistant diet makes a lotta sense to me. At one point or another I’ve kept everything from kefir grains to sourdough culture growing on my counter, and if you change up their food source a little there’s always an adjustment period.
YH,
I'm very interested in that article about gut biome on a simplified diet. Please, share if you find it again!
I'm interested in this also and would love to see that article about the diversity of food and how it affects microbiome. Recently, I was helped greatly by taking Microbiome Labs (brand) Megasporebiotic. I took it because of success among the Histamine Intolerant community (online). In video interviews of Kiran Krishnan, who has published research which led to him founding the company and selling the product, he says that eating a wider variety of foods is better because it produces a more diverse microbiome. Which begs many questions, including: does diversity of microbes help? How? Is it stable for long term if one is forced by circumstances to eat a limited diet? I can tell you that I had allergy symptoms to dairy, for sure, when I was a kid and I ate anything and everything that I wanted, but I only became completely histamine intolerant when I started brewing kefir at home with premium raw milk. I also let it ferment with grape juice. I know it was a gut microbe imbalance thing that harmed my collective ability to make enough DAO to degrade the histamine being produced by my off-balance gut microbiome. Using high end probiotics with lacto microbes was not enough to help (which I did for years). It only took a couple of months on the Megasporebiotic for the histamine intolerance to vanish.