Food, Health, and the Extended Body

Abstract A relationship between food consumption and body size was firmly established in the early modern period. Medical advice on how to become fatter or thinner centred around changes in one’s food habits which would be tailored to a person’s age, gender, and humoral balance. Following the holistic nature of Galenic medicine, however, this chapter shows that food consumption was just one part of a wider array of health practices used by early modern people to alter body size, as numerous external forces (or non-naturals) were recognized to determine the fatness or thinness of the body. Moreover, the fatness of human bodies was closely related to the fatness of the foods, and specifically the animals they consumed, as well as the environments in which such animals were bred. Management of body size thus reached beyond the boundaries of the body, and began well before diners encountered a dinner plate.