How to Eat : An Ancient Guide for Healthy Living

How to Eat : An Ancient Guide for Healthy LivingAuthor: Bubb, Claire Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 Published on 28 January 2025 by PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS in the United States as part of 'the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers' series. Hardback 296 pages, 11 b w illus. 123 x 180 x 27 324g A delicious feast of ancient Greek and Roman writings on living well by eating well Today, were stuffed with dietary recommendations from every direction. Social media, advertising, food packaging, diet

Author: Bubb, Claire

Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500

Published on 28 January 2025 by PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS in the United States as part of 'the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers' series.

Hardback | 296 pages, 11 b/w illus.
123 x 180 x 27 | 324g

A delicious feast of ancient Greek and Roman writings on living well by eating well Today, we’re stuffed with dietary recommendations from every direction. Social media, advertising, food packaging, diet books, doctors—all have advice on what, how much, and when to eat. This would have been no surprise to ancient Greeks and Romans. Their doctors were intensely interested in food, offered highly prescriptive dietary advice, and developed detailed systems to categorize foods and their health effects. How to Eat is a delectable anthology of Greco-Roman writings on how to eat, exercise, sleep, bathe, and manage your sex life for optimal health. It also gathers ancient opinions on specific foods of all sorts, from how to deploy onions to cure baldness and cabbage to get sober to whether lentils are healthy and why arugula increases your sex drive.

With lively new translations by Claire Bubb, and the original Greek and Latin texts on facing pages, How to Eat features voices from medicine, philosophy, natural history, agriculture, and cooking, including Hippocrates, Pliny the Elder, Galen, Seneca, Plutarch, and Cato.

While medicine and science have obviously changed enormously since the classical world, and some Greco-Roman beliefs about diet now appear hilariously off the mark, How to Eat reveals that much of their advice still resonates—and all of it is fascinating.