HIST 3554 Study Guide - Summer 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Mediterranean Cuisine, Wine, Watermelon
HIST 3554
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
• How do we think about the Mediterranean and How do we think about Food?
• Why do we eat?
▪ To keep us alive
• Major Physiological and Symbolic Functions of Food
▪ To provide energy through the sun via plants
▪ To provide matter for body substance → We are what we eat
• Which Kind of Eater Are We?
▪ Special Omnivores
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma
▪ (umans aren’t guided by instinct and can make failed food choices. Trial and error
is the human response, as well as learning + memorizing (collective learning)
▪ Why all of the sudden is the problem back of the omnivore’s dilemma?
• Food traditions and highly processed + engineered foods causes
health defects
• The Concept of a Food Taboo
▪ Something that can be eaten, but that shouldn’t be eaten. Never permanent/stable,
depends on availability
• Humans perfectly edible but we dont eat them
• How do we think about food? The Food Nutrition System Model
▪
• Making Sense of the Mediterranean
▪ The history of the mediterranean is the history of constant change
• Making Sense of Italians and Food
▪ There is distinct differences of Italian food to American food culture
• Four Major Differences
▪ Food and Place
• Food matters to place Cibe e Territorio provides identity to food and
quality to food. Place matters to people campanilismo = local identity
▪ Food and Time
• Time matters for food; respect seasons and mealtimes, food prep, and
consumption
▪ Food and Knowledge
• Good food literacy, production and process, cooking, and literacy at the
table
▪ Food and Rules
• Spaghetti and meatballs never served together, pasta is a main course
• Bolognese needs tagliatelle (flat noodles) not spaghetti
• Bread not eaten with pasta
• Bread and olive oil eaten before first course is not italian
• Only during Fettuna when olive oil fresh pressed in Nov./Dec.
• Cappuccino only in morning, espresso after meals
• No food contests/drinking contests, all about measure
• Not anything goes; red wine should go with red sauce
• Florentine bistec usually served bloody rare
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
• Let Food Be Your Medicine: The Classical Greek Concept of Diaita, Humoral Theory
and the Cultural Significance of Bread, Wine, and Olive Oil for Ancient Mediterranean
Civilizations
• What is History
▪ It is a recorded, therefore it is opinion based and may be biased
• Human Food Procurement in History
▪ Strategies to obtain food - nomadic hunting gathering and farming
• What is Farming and what is Domestication
▪ Farming is the domestication of plants and animals
▪ Domestication is the human controlled change of the genetic makeup of plants and
animals done via selection: survival of the fittest (Darwin)
• Three Classical Civilizations on Italian Ground (who, when, where)
▪ Etruscans
• Wall paintings show beautiful dress code; Catholic Church still follows
• Fiesole in the outskirts of Florence is an old Etruscan City
• Gender equality in the Etruscan Society
• Food Culture - cereals barley → wet them for good digestion
▪ Romans
• Long distance trade routes - Roman Roads for over 50,000 miles
• Ancient Rome - all about resources: amount of food determines how
successful a city is
• London - first city after fall of rome to reach 1 million inhabitants
• Florence - Ponte Vecchio oldest building in the area
▪ Greeks
• Magna Grecia Great Greece in Southern )taly → specifically Naples
• The Mediterranean Triad - bread, wine, olive oil
• Gods were assigned to supervise these foods
• The Concept of Civilization
▪ Civilized versus natural: nature is given to us; civilized is man made
• Food as a Marker of Civilization (3 Dimensions)
▪ The Selection of Food
• Civilized (more processed: man made)
• Bread
• Wine
• Olive oil
• Barbarian (derived from nature)
• Milk
• Meat
▪ The Art of Food Preparation
• Two major reasons food needed to be prepared was for: better taste and
more healthy
• More Healthy
• Greeks believed only prepared food was healthy to eat because of
Hippocrates
• Greek physician who was the father of western medicine
due to radical paradigm change → allows people to explain
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Special omnivores: the omnivore"s dilemma, to provide energy through the sun via plants, to provide matter for body substance (cid:498)we are what we eat(cid:499, (umans aren"t guided by instinct and can make failed food choices. Something that can be eaten, but that shouldn"t be eaten. It is a recorded, therefore it is opinion based and may be biased: human food procurement in history. Hippocrates: greek physician who was the father of western medicine due to radical paradigm change allows people to explain how the world works. It explained how sickness is not sent by the gods and it has a natural basis. It gave scientific explanation for health and disease: conviviality and the greek symposium, the art of eating together, the symposium (greek banquet, celebrating a person/event over food and family (special meals) Separate food and wine consumption in order to separate gender. Garum = fermented salted fish sauce = like our ketchup. Cultures in the mediterranean: religion in history.
