The Regimen Sanitatus Salernum diet

[Piling]

I Tried a Medieval Diet, And I Didn't Even Get That Drunk
The Regimen Sanitatus Salernum was the Middle Ages' most famous health manual. How does it hold up?

By Sarah Laskow

It can seem sometimes like all diet advice boils down to the same basic ideas. Eat vegetables, healthy proteins, avoid processed snack food and hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.

This was not, however, the case in medieval times.

The Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum was created, allegedly, by famous doctors for English royalty and disseminated in the form of a poem. It recommends, very specifically, red wine, fresh eggs, figs and grapes. It has little to say about vegetables. In many ways, it’s the antithesis of today’s health fads—it celebrates wheat, emphasizes meat, and involves two significant meals, with no mention of snacking. Water is looked on with suspicion, and juice is nowhere to be found.

But from the 1200s through the 1800s, the Regimen was one of the most well known guides to health in Europe, at a time when the stakes of staying healthy were much higher than they are now. Getting sick could be a death sentence; this regimen promised to keep people well.

Could we be ignoring some great advice? Is water really all that? I decided to test the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum out myself. For a week and a half, I followed, to the best of my ability, the advice of the doctors of Salerno. I drank diluted wine at dinner, and sometimes at lunch; I ate bread at almost every meal; I sought out richly stewed meat whenever I could. The regimen was not just about what to eat, though, and I also followed its prescriptions for daily life.

I felt like I was living the Game of Thrones life; some days, I felt I was living like a 13th century king. Despite the amount of wine I was consuming, I never got drunk! In fact, I felt great.

Read more here :
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/i-tried-a-medieval-diet-and-i-didnt-even-get-that-drunk

Here you can download the manual of Diet (translated in English) :

http://www.sca.org.au/herb/library/Regi ... itanum.pdf

[Anthea]

Very interesting

Are you going to keep it up?

The diet would be no good for me as I do not eat meat or drink anything even remotely alcoholic

I would have thought that water would have been purer in those days because it would have had to come from a well

When I was young there was an pump in what would probably have been some type of kitchen years earlier

The pump was kept in good condition and in the summer months the water was lovely and cold sweet and refreshing, nothing like the recycled urine most of us drink now

[Piling]

I think I will follow it as so closely as I can. Concerning wine, I will replace it by pomegranate juice with water. Wine is expansive in Duhok, more than whisky, and when I buy some, it is for special celebrations.

Like Medieval people, I prefer meat, fat, bread and dairy than vegetables. So I am going to eat fruits at any meals. I've just bought 2 kilos of cherries. 1 kg = 2500 dinars so less than 2 euros.

Because of the bad weather, cherries could cost 20 euros/kilo this summer

From eating the cherry, you will derive great benefits: It purges the stomach, its pit removes your kidney stone. And from its pulp will come good blood.

Regimen Sanitatus Salernum diet

[Anthea]

Almost non-stop heavy rain with plenty of thunderstorms across Europe for past few weeks

Very likely to have damaged crops - lots of food could go up in price

Perhaps instead of America throwing away ONE THIRD of it's food it could cut back or even share some with countries where people are starving