Nutrition History (From Parts Unknown)
14 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsthe histories behind nutrition
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Episodes
The History of Beriberi
March 02, 2021 05:40 - 33 minutes - 46.1 MBThis is the story of beriberi. For more than 1500 years, beriberi was known as poison wind affliction, a sickness produced by chronic exposure to damp winds. In reality, beriberi is caused by the absence of a vital nutrient in the diet (vitamin B1) the human body requires in amounts less than one thousandth of a gram per day— the same amount that could fill a standard vitamin capsule 500 times. It would take decades of gruelling and relentless front-line work to establish the connection ...
Sugar: Superfood of Medieval Times
December 06, 2020 23:40 - 23 minutes - 32.4 MBIn Episode 13 of Nutrition History from Parts Unknown, we're talking on sugar, the unlikely superfood of medieval times. We'll be tracing the emergence of sugar in fine medieval cuisine and discussing its importance in maintaining a health humoural complexion, as well as its many medicinal applications.
Medieval Plague Regimens for Bubo-Free Living Pt. 2
September 26, 2020 20:45 - 18 minutes - 24.8 MBIn Episode 12 of Nutrition History from Parts Unknown, we're continuing where we left off in Episode 11, talking on the 14th century medical community's response to the Black Death of 1347-51. This response was most exhaustively detailed in a genre of literature known as 'Plague Regimen'. These were popular medical manuals which provided the reader an understanding of the pestilence's origins, and advised on lifestyle interventions to prevent catching the disease. The advice of the Plague ...
Medieval Plague Regimens for Bubo-Free Living Pt. 1
August 27, 2020 00:57In Episode 11 of Nutrition History from Parts Unknown, we're talking the 14th century medical community's response to the Black Death of 1347-51. This response was most exhaustively detailed in a genre of literature known as 'Plague Regimen'. These were popular medical manuals which provided the reader an understanding of the pestilence's origins, and advised on lifestyle interventions to prevent catching the disease. The advice of the Plague Regimen focused on the six medieval lifestyle fac...
The Early Days of Protein Science
June 11, 2020 03:07 - 43 minutes - 82.9 MBOn Episode 10 of Nutrition History from Parts Unknown, we’re dishing out three stories on the early history of protein and its role in the nutritional sciences of the 19th century. The first of these stories delves into the French Gelatin Controversy of the 1830s. Next up we’re talking on a Justis von Liebig and his Extract of Meat, and we’ll finish up with a history of the confrontation between vegetarianism and the meat-centred dietetics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Asian and American Ginseng Histories
April 05, 2020 17:40 - 39 minutes - 75.5 MBIn episode 9 of Nutrition History from Parts Unknown, we are talking about one of the oldest and most renowned herbal medicine in the history of the world—ginseng. Ginseng has a history spanning thousands of years and three continents— it’s story is one filled with various intrigues and some chicanery, connecting an unlikely cast of characters including Manchurian emperors, French Jesuit priests, and a famed American woodsmen. Ginseng has always ranked among the most important and valuable...
Vegetable Eating in the Middle Ages: Pt.2
February 11, 2020 18:49 - 34 minutes - 66.2 MBIn Pt.2 of Vegetable Eating in the Middle Ages, we'll discuss the broadening of the medieval European vegetable resume with additions from the Arabic World and the Americas, the rediscovery of horticulture and renewed interest in botany and gardening among Europe's elite in the Late Middle Ages, and the gradual breakdown of the Gallenic-humoural biases against vegetables.
Vegetable Eating in the Middle Ages: Pt.1
December 16, 2019 04:10 - 48 minutes - 80.6 MBIn Pt.1 of Vegetable Eating in the Middle Ages, we're tracing the history of vegetable consumption in Medieval Europe following the Fall of Rome. We'll cover the actual eating of vegetables across the three orders of medieval society(the nobility, clergy, and peasantry) and the impact liturgical fasts humoural dietetics had on vegetable eating. Episode 1 wraps up with a conversation on fruit eating in the medieval period.
The History of Pellagra
October 28, 2019 02:45 - 45 minutes - 77.2 MBIn episode 6 of Nutrition History from Parts Unknown, we are tracing the origins and history of the disease of nutritional deficiency known as pellagra, a disease which claimed over 100,000 American lives in a relatively short course of 100 years. These numbers may not seem especially high when compared to the toll infectious disease like typhoid or cholera claimed(which tally in the millions)—but pellagra is not an infectious disease—it is a disease caused by a dietary deficiency, more spec...
The Last Famine Hero—Potato
July 11, 2019 01:11 - 38 minutes - 64.1 MBIn episode 5 of Nutrition History from Parts Unknown, we are picking up where we left off in Episode 4, tracing the persistence of bread eating amidst a series of grain crises and famines which struck Europe in the heart of the premodern period which inevitably toppled bread’s status as the unanimous champion staple-food of Europe. Europe did all it could to hold onto its bread throughout the turmoil of the 16thand 17thcenturies, but eventually had to surrender to the reality that other stap...
Renaissance Europe: The Golden Age of Bread Eating and Bread Dietetics
May 08, 2019 00:33 - 31 minutes - 53 MBIn episode 4 of Nutrition History from Parts Unknown, we are taking it back 500 years to the glory days of bread, a time when Europe’s medical community was unanimous in its praise of bread as a health food. Bread became Renaissance Europe’s most widely celebrated dietary staple. It was thought to promote wellness through a number channels: Its sticky and elastic gluttinous proptires were considered essential to a well-functioning digestive tract its warm, moist thermic properties were ...
The History of Scurvy
March 24, 2019 00:58 - 1 hour - 109 MBFor more than 300 years, scurvy was the greatest menace to maritime exploration and long-distance seafaring. The true cause of the disease-Vitamin C deficiency-eluded physicians and medical thinkers until the early 20th century. In episode 4 of Nutrition History From Parts Unknown, we're delving into history's many zany theories on why scurvy occurred, how to treat it, and why it took so long for science to come around to the reality that scurvy was a disease resulting from a lack of access ...
spirulina: pond scum for the win
January 20, 2019 00:20 - 30 minutes - 59.1 MBIf you came across it in its natural environment, you might dismiss spirulina as pond scum, but this subtropical autotroph is gram for gram among the most nutritious foods on Earth. Hot take alert? Not so much. Spirulina is an evidence-based stud, a food supplement packing an incredibly rich nutritional resume and a robust body of research endorsing its therapeutic benefits. Get scum.
The Herbal Adaptogens of Soviet Russia
November 14, 2018 06:09 - 37 minutes - 60.1 MBEvery society gets the remedy it deserves. This is the story of how Soviet Russia birthed the modern adaptogen, a class of herbal tonics unrivalled in their ability to confer protection against all manners of stress. Discover the beginnings of eleuthero, rhodiola and schisandra, and other herbal adaptogens, and how they fuelled the economic, athletic, and interstellar endeavours of the USSR.