Two thousand years before Ancel Benjamin Keys, American biologist and physiologist, coined the term Mediterranean Diet as a nutritional model inspired by the food habits widespread in some countries of the Mediterranean basin, then recognized by UNESCO, in 2010, as a protected asset in the oral heritage list and intangible assets of humanity, Galen of Pergamum (Pergamum, 129 – Rome, circa 201) had already intuited and codified the benefits for the body and human health of a diet inspired by the principles of what will become the Mediterranean Diet in the future. The great Greek doctor whose points of view dominated Western medicine for centuries represents an exceptional case: for his position between medical science and philosophy, nutrition and traditions, for the variety of his interests and for his boundless production literary. Galen was therefore a doctor (indirect pupil of Asclepiades the Younger) and a philosopher at the same time. Emperor Marcus Aurelius considered him a professional philosopher who practiced medicine as a marginal activity: "first among doctors", but "unique among philosophers". In reality, for Galen, author of a text "The best doctor is also a philosopher", one cannot be a good doctor if one does not know logic, physics and ethics, that is the set of "authentic philosophy" (which according to Galen is contained above all in the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition, but also in the Stoic one).
Galen's Greek text "The properties of foods" written in the 1823nd century AD is a unique document in the history of nutrition capable of providing us with a lot of information on the ingredients available on the table of the Roman people at the time. The text had been reorganized by Kühn in XNUMX in Leipzig, starting from two previous versions. Galen was of Greek origin, and in Greek he composes his work, since his predecessors were all of Greek origin: Theophrastus, Dioscorides and Hippocrates. Although the Kühn text already contained the Latin translation, the inevitable loss of many nuances is undoubtedly already in the first passage from Greek to Latin. One of the key words of all the Galenic doctrine was the "κρᾶσις" or the balance existing in nature, in food and in man of the condition of matter: hot, cold, dry and humid. The state of health or disease of man derives from the balance or imbalance of these extreme conditions (“ἄκρα”). The term "κρᾶσις" will be translated into Latin as "temperamentum" then erroneously transposed in some medieval and Renaissance texts as "temperamento" which takes on a very different meaning in Italian.
Cereals, legumes, vegetables and fruit: Galen already identifies the principles of the Mediterranean diet
The text contains all the elements of the current Mediterranean diet, with a clear preference for cereals and legumes, vegetables and fruit, both fresh and dried (pine nuts, walnuts), fish (mullet and mullet). Of the three books, only one addresses food of animal origin, of which it does not neglect the so-called fifth quarter in full respect of food waste. In particular, in the first two books, 122 foods of plant origin are described, in the third book little attention is paid to meat, compared to seafood and fish.
The vision of the foods is exquisitely that of a doctor, since Galen is probably addressing an audience that is already familiar with the denominations and their availability. In describing peaches, for example, he shows that he knows very well the fate of the food bolus "It should be noted that this is common to all foods that have a bad taste, are moist and gelatinous, and that can easily pass through the digestive system ; for this reason it is advisable to consume them before all other foods. In fact in this way they pass quickly and facilitate the digestion of other foods. If, on the other hand, they are taken last, they also alter the other foods" (VI, 593). In fact, the question of whether it is more correct to take fruit before or after a meal is age-old, but Galen knows that the food bolus is "wet and gelatinous" (ὑγρὰ δὲ καὶ ὀλισϑηρὰ) and that it is able to slow down the digestive process. A correct food style today provides for the improvement of the sense of satiety by slowing down the digestive process, contrary to Roman times when foods were not very refined and it was necessary to speed up their evacuation, otherwise there would be painful intestinal fermentation (“ϕυσώδης”).
Another great insight: the effects of foods on the digestive system
Galen as a doctor is much solicited by foods that can easily be evacuated (“διαχώρησις”) compared to others that engage the digestive system (“ἐπίσχεσις”) and which considerably increase the faecal mass (“περιττωματικός”). This profound knowledge of the digestive process also leads him to differentiate breads according to their bran content (“πιτυρώδες”) and their ability to nourish. Galen demonstrates true clear knowledge of nutrition, in fact in another of his works he expresses with extreme lucidity a close connection between the production of energy and heat "because a hot condition is typical of both energy and strength" ( “ὡς ϑερμὴ κρᾶσις ἄλλη μέν ἐστιν ἐνεργείᾳ, δυναμέι δ'ἄλλη”) (I, 560); it is no coincidence that caloric foods are those able to develop strength, and, among these, he indicates bread or even raisins. (VI, 484-485).
Galen perceives very clearly the concept of the dry substance of foods, in fact if the water of constitution is removed from the food as it is, its dry substance will be available within which we find all the nutrients necessary for life (“ Carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins and mineral salts. He concludes that heavier foods are also more nutritious than the more watery ones. He is also very clear on the nutritional adaptation of population groups with respect to the climate and will express it in a very linear way in another of his works "if someone of sound constitution and who lives in a temperate territory, moved to another region which is hot and humid in spring, being in a hot and humid condition, will adopt a hot and humid diet” (X, 509).
He didn't know gluten but studied heavy wheats
Although Galen did not know gluten, he had nevertheless observed that the heaviest wheats are those that produce the most tenacious doughs that can stretch the most (“ϑεάσῃ γε μὴν καὶ τὸ σταῖς αὐτῶν γλίσχρον ἱκανῶς, ὡς ἐεν ἕλκεσϑαι μὴ διασπώμενον”)(VI, 482 ) and therefore are able to tolerate longer machining. A first intuition on antioxidants can be perceived, for example, already in his attention to yellow wheats (“αἱ τίϕαι δὲ καὶ τῶν πυρῶν εἰσι ξανϑότεραι”) (VI, 522). There are many curiosities that emerge from the description of the food and that have their roots in traditional Italian cuisine, one of these is the "sfincione" from Palermo which is defined as "washed bread" precisely because of the greater quantity of water used to make the batter and which makes it particularly light "Its lightness is observed through its weight and by the fact that it does not immerse itself in water, but that it floats like cork".
In fact, the sfincione is made by cooking the batter in the oven and then adding tomato or other condiments. The batter is very light due to its high water content and the porosity conferred by the alveolation due to the evaporation of its own water makes it spongy and light. The ancient custom of drying the fruits to consume them during the winter such as blackberries (“κᾂν ἀωρότερά τις αὐτὰ ξηράνας ἀπόϑηται”) (VI,589) does not escape reading. that for figs and raisins, but which suggests the harvesting of blackberries and subsequent drying when in nature it was possible to make lucrative stocks. They are very important elements of knowledge as they escape any archaeological evidence, as many sites have yielded seeds, but could not yield dried fruit.
Some foods described in the text leave us amazed, such as rice, which will enter the European diet only in the late Middle Ages, and sugar which is however defined as "aerial honey". It is not liquid honey, nor is there any mention of the activity of bees, but real plant exudates which crystallize on the leaves when there are sudden changes in temperature and water. These exudates, probably powdery, were collected by spreading large sheets of fabric on the ground on which they were made to fall by shaking the foliage. Dioscorides had not hesitated to speak of honey sugar (“Περὶ σαγχάρου μέλιτος”).
Even then he was suggesting extra virgin olive oil as an alternative to butter
Galen does not speak of the properties of extra virgin olive oil, although he mentions it numerous times as a nourishment, already as an alternative to butter (“διὸ καὶ σκευάζουσιν ἐξ αὐτοῦ τὸ καλούμενον βούτυρον”) which, however, seemed to have been used for rubbing after bathing by the Nordic populations which lacked oil. Little mentioned are the cheeses even if a shy yogurt appears in the description of him. Among the innumerable curiosities black chickpeas (“μέλανες δ'εἰσὶν οὗτοι καὶ μικροὶ κατὰ Βιϑυνίαν μάλιστα γεννώμενοι”) from Bithynia, a region of Turkey very close to his native Pergamum, are described for the first time. Today these legumes are quite widespread in Puglia, of which they constitute a particular biodiversity.
The complexity of the work will allow us to gradually detail many unique aspects, due to the great wealth of ideas, including nutritional ones.
The Galenic conception of food permeates Roman and medieval culture to such an extent that in Salerno, in the garden of Minerva, the four guiding principles of correct nutrition (hot, cold, humid, dry) are materialized in the flowerbeds and in the cultivated plants . In addition to the four elements present in the food, the four degrees of intensity possessed by each food are also depicted; the metabolic balance of the human body derives from the balance of the qualities possessed by the foods present in the daily diet.
