Food: A history by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Macmillan, £20, ISBN
0333901746
THE Roman Clodius Albinus was known to consume “500 figs, a basket of
peaches, ten melons, twenty pounds of grapes, 100 golden warblers and 400
oysters at a sitting”. Yet, says Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, “The triumph of
heroic eating was not considered selfish”. At many periods of history gluttons
have been seen as patrons of agriculture, just as Charles Saatchi is of modern
painting. At his enthronement feast in 1466 the Archbishop of York offered “400
swans, 2000 geese…1000 egrets…608 pikes and bream…” But in modern Japan,
say, rarity and exquisite preparation matter far more than mere quantity, while
modern Western cooks emphasise the freshness and localness that were once
commonplace.
Here is a fine addition to the literature of food: fact, insight and
brilliantly chosen quotes. The science and politics could be tighter, however.
Modern evolutionary psychologists have more to say than Fernandez-Armesto does
on why people’s food habits are so bizarre. And although modern science has much
to answer for and the human population may soon level out, it is too glib to
suggest that “we can look forward with some optimism to a future in which the
world’s population can be fed by traditional farming”.
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