Nutritional and Health Aspects of Food in Western Europe

Susanne Braun, Christina Zübert, Dimitrios Argyropoulos, Francisco Javier Casado Hebrard, Susanne Braun, Christina Zübert, Dimitrios Argyropoulos, Francisco Javier Casado Hebrard

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780128131718
• eBook ISBN:
  9780128131725
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Food Science
• Index: Technology & Engineering

People were once restricted to food native to their region and produced locally. Today, however, food from any place in the world is available, or can be made available, anywhere else. Often there is no or very little information about the nutritional and health aspects of these foods. Nutrition and Health of Western European Foods: Traditional and Ethnic Diets is part of series that will cover the entire globe and is aimed at filling the knowledge gap from traditional and scientific points of view. This volume provides an analysis of traditional and ethnic foods from Western Europe, including Ireland, the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Germany. It also addresses the history of use, composition, preparation, ingredient origin, nutritional aspects, and health effects of various foods and food products in each of these countries. Nutrition and Health of Western European Foods: Traditional and Ethnic Diets ultimately presents both local and international regulations, providing suggestions to harmonize these regulations and promote global availability of these foods. - Analyzes nutritional and health claims related to western European foods - Includes traditional and ethnic foods from Ireland, the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Germany - Explores both scientific and anecdotal diet-based health claims - Examines if foods meet regulatory requirements, and how to remedy noncompliance - Reviews the influence of historical eating habits on today's diets

Chapter 1

History of eating habits, food cultures and traditions in Western Europe

Michael Wacker BASF Schweiz AG, Regionals Zentrum für Arbeitsmedizin, Kaisten Site, Kaisten, Switzerland

Abstract

The invention of cooking extends the biological niche of humans, killing pathogenic organisms and keeping food longer. The food composition varies from local conditions. What men eat, the preparation, the eating habits and nutritional taboos depends on his living environment and his culture. People learned to take advantage of the health-promoting properties of foods early and to cultivate them later. The constant adaption of cultivation methods and croups meant that more and more people could be harvested. The targeted breeding of livestock replaced game as the main protein source. Soon a continuous trading network was extended all over Central Europe. A steady exchange of knowledge, seeds, medicinal and spice plants took place in the last 7500 years. Severe drought and famine lasted often over a few years and have been so common until modern times that everyone had gone at least through one. It was only in the second half of the 20th century that it succeeded in selling off hunger from Western Europe.

Keywords

Cooking; Alcohol tolerance; Lactose tolerance; Neolithic Revolution; Roman Lifestyle; Christian food rules; Spice trade; Overcome hunger

Contents

• Introduction
• It starts with the cavemen
• The Neolithic Revolution
• From Bronze Age to the Roman Empire
• The heritage of the Roman Empire
• Christian food rules and medical traditions
• New trade routes
• The role of potatoes
• The beginnings of the food industry
• References

Introduction

There are four key questions that come up in this article: Why do we cook? Why do we eat what we eat? What has changed after the caveman? Who influenced what we eat today? The first two I answer on a page, then it will be exciting…

The invention of cooking extends the biological niche of humans; this has raised the nutritive value of wild plant because nutrients can be digested better. Cooked meat delivered more energy (Carmody et al., 2011). Meats, such as beef, pork, and chicken, can contain harmful bacteria and parasites. If eaten raw, these bacteria and parasites could have severe health impact. Thus, cooking meat properly, harmful organisms are killed during the process.

Scientists from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment in Tübingen have studied the Neanderthals’ diet. Based on the isotope composition in the collagen from the prehistoric humans’ bones, they could show that, while the Neanderthals’ diet consisted primarily of large plant eaters such at mammoths and rhinoceroses, it also included vegetarian food (Wißing et al., 2016). They assume that Neanderthals diet in Western Europe was 80% meat, 20% vegetables. Indeed, there seem to be large differences in the eating habits with their conspecifics from southern Europe: The shotgun-sequencing of ancient DNA from five specimens of Neanderthal calcified dental plaque shows differences in Neanderthal ecology. At Spy cave, Belgium, Neanderthal diet was heavily meat based and included woolly rhinoceros and wild sheep (mouflon), characteristic of a steppe environment. In contrast, no meat was detected in the diet of Neanderthals from El Sidrón cave, Spain, but dietary components of mushrooms, pine nuts, and moss reflected forest gathering (Weyrich et al., 2017).

Here we see that—what man eats, how he prepares it, how he eats it, what he doesn’t eat depends on his living environment and his culture. Despite dramatic differences between the typical regional foods, nutritional requirements are usually covered. There cannot be a best form of nutrition for all (Wikipedia.org, n.d.-a), not even an archaic so called Paleolithic diet.

It starts with the cavemen

Recent genomic data have revealed multiple interactions between Neanderthals and modern humans. Anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals were both living in Europe for up to 5400 years (Higham et al., 2014). Around 40,000 years ago, during the replacement period, human population increased by one order of magnitude, suggesting that numerical supremacy alone may have been a critical factor in facilitating this replacement (Mellars and French, 2011). Although this process of displacement has existed for many centuries, an increase in a few generations can be seen.

Reasons for the sudden fast growth of the population are uncertain. A change in the hunting procedure or the adaption of social structure in growing groups of Homo sapiens may have played a role. The climate change and the environmental conditions could have helped; we could imagine that distribution of knowledge on new medical plants can reinforce this trend.

First medical herbs have been found in the Shanidar cave in a 60,000 year old Neanderthal tomb: Yarrow, Cornflower, Bachelor's Button, St. Barnaby's Thistle, Ragwort or Groundsel, Grape Hyacinth, Joint Pine or Woody Horsetail and Hollyhock were represented in the pollen samples, all of which have long-known curative powers (Solecki, 1975). Because of a lack of findings, we do not know much about the precise point of time at which Homo sapiens has developed deeper knowledge of medical conditions, treatments and products. Newer findings concerning Ötzi, Europe's oldest known natural human mummy, found on the Hauslabjoch, have shown signs of a much more refined medical knowledge: he had several specialized tattoos created by making multiple parallel or intersecting linear incisions with a scalpel, filling the incisions with a mixture of herbs, and lighting the herbs, which also had the effect of cauterizing the incisions. Most of these tattoos were made on the skin over joints that were affected by arthrosis (lumbar spine, knee, and ankle). He might have used these tattoos as a form of localized therapy for muscle and joint pain. An analysis of the content of the Ice Man's rectum revealed Trichuris trichiura eggs which cause abdominal pain and cyclic anemia. Among the objects found with the mummy were the woody fruit of Piptoporus betulinus, a bracket fungus. The toxic oils in the fungus were probably the only remedy available in Europe before introduction of the considerably more toxic chenopod oil from the Americas (Capasso, 1998).

Numerous findings cover that in the Mesolithic period, fish and seafood had a big share in the diet of mankind in coastal regions (Pickard and Bonsall, 2007). Huge mounds of shellfish, known as middens, are common on coast all over Europe. For example, Sligo in Ireland is a place meaning “shells,” a reference to these mounds. The hunters of the North Sea and Baltic coasts were skilled fisher who built dugout, hunted seals with harpoons, and caught fish with traps and nets.

The Neolithic Revolution

In Western Europe, the Neolithic Revolution came delayed with the Linear Pottery culture flourishing approximately 5500–4500 BC. Childe named this transition from the hunter-gatherer to the agrarian way-of life with its far-reaching effects of this change in all aspects of life. Humans made their first successful attempts to domesticate animals and started retaining them in herds. Men became sedentary, settled down in permanent village communities. There is much speculation to the causes of the changeover and how it unfolded. Reichholf comes to a surprising conclusion: in the beginning, living in settlements didn’t come about from need or hunger, but was based on raucous festivity and the discovery of alcohol.

He explains that excess, not need, turned humans into resourceful civilized beings and served as the catalyst for change, both with respect to the development of humans as well as their shift from a hunter-gathering way of life to agriculture.

Reichholfs calculations for energy balance are convincing. Three kilograms of grain per person per day would have been required to compensate a protein-rich meat diet. This means that a family would have needed around 5 tons of grain per year.

Then why did man began planting crops in the first place? Reichholfs answer is as surprising as it is convincing: because of alcohol. At first, the yield of wild grain was insufficient to replace meat, but now it was possible to produce alcohol through fermentation. This had served several functions. As an intoxicant at festivities, alcohol strengthened the community. At the same time, enzymes produced during the fermentation process break down plant substances that are difficult to digest. Thus, more nutrients became available. Indeed, the first verifiable record of grain cultivation did not involve wheat but rather barley, which is still used to make beer today. Until much later beer mash turned into sourdough for baking bread. Alcohol tolerance is still highest today in the cultures where bread is a nutritional staple (Reichholf, 2008).

From now on humans produced foodstuffs themselves, and not only nature. Human societies were founded in a new direction that quickly led from the first settlements to urban communities. Small, loosely affiliated tribes developed into ethnic groups and larger communities. Substantial population growth previously would have posed a threat to the nomadic groups because the number of people had to balance with the supply of game. Now it offered advantages, because the number of harvester productivity rouse (if the cultivation area can be increased), and from this food surplus specialism, division of labor and not at least ownership emerged: people and ownership combined to form power. The new lifestyle proved far superior to the old one. The migration and resettlement of peasants created imitators, spread, and achieved dominance.

In the cooking pots of the so called “proto farmers” domestic cattle and sheep are now mixed with red deer and mussels (Craig et al., 2011). Grain farming varied from region to region, but two forms of ancient husked wheat are generally included: einkorn and above all emmer. Further spelt, barley and millet were cultivated, some as summer, some as winter crops. Besides this, there are a few findings of peas and lentils. Seeds picked from wild plants like linseed and poppy seeds were valued for their oil content.

Berries, fruits, herbs and vegetables mostly added flavor to the food or had medical purposes. Farmers used blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, dewberries, elderberries, hawthorn, rosehips, cornelian cherries, sour cherries, pears, plums, sloes, wild grapes and the very popular crabapples. They cultivated local medical plants like orach, bistort, sorrel, stinging nettle, wild garlic, and imported plants from the Mediterranean region like parsley, dill, lemon balm, mistletoe, verbena, juniper berries, marjoram, caraway and mugwort.

Except for dogs, all farm animals originated in their domestic form from the Near East. Any cross-breeding of sheep, goats, pigs or cattle with game animals was willingly avoided. As paleogenetic studies have shown, the native European aurochs were never tamed. All local bovine breeds can be traced back to a small herd of around 80 animals some 10,500 years ago.

Soon a continuous trading network was extended all over Central Europe from the Paris basin to the Black See, shown by the linear band ware, ceramic pots of a very particular way of production and decoration that appear throughout the transport route.

Bovine Milk became an additional agricultural livestock keeping for food and labor. Lactose tolerance, the tolerability of unfermented milk after weaning, was growing among dairying farmers around 7500 years in association with the dissemination of the Liner Pottery culture (Itan et al., 2009). The earliest evidence for cheese making came in northern Europe from the sixth millennium BC. The presence of abundant milk fat in ceramic vessels perforated with holes, indicates the vessels being us...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Contributors
• Chapter 1: History of eating habits, food cultures and traditions in Western Europe
• Chapter 2: Western food cultures and traditions
• Chapter 3: Nutrition and health, traditional foods and practices on the Island of Ireland
• Chapter 4: Food, nutrition and health in the UK
• Chapter 5: Food, nutrition and health in the Netherlands
• Chapter 6: Food, nutrition and health in France
• Chapter 7: Food, nutrition and health in Germany
• Chapter 8: Common nutrition and health issues
• Chapter 9: Environmental sustainability issues for western food production
• Chapter 10: Legal and regulatory issues in the EU: Elements affecting traditional and ethnic foods in the law of the EU and two of its Member States: the UK and the Netherlands
• Chapter 11: Traditional food, legal and regulatory issues in Switzerland
• Chapter 12: Future outlooks
• Index