Healthy meat

 The current belief (for most anyway) is that meat isn't really part of a healthy diet. We're told about societies where people routinely live past 100, and how they all eat dried beans, garlic, ancient grains, kale, and olives (or something like that).  In the US beef tallow and full-fat dairy products are experiencing a bit of a resurgence, but the overall consensus is that red meat is not healthy.

The Middle Ages thought about things differently.  For them, red meat was both a luxury and a health food.  Most people, most of the time, ate a basically vegetarian diet, a lot of bread (whole wheat for the most part), whatever vegetables were in season, dried beans and lentils, with the occasional egg or piece of cheese to round it out.  The wealthy added in red meat when they could get it, but other than the annual pork-fest (eat a whole lot of fresh pork at pig roundup time in November, salt and smoke the rest and try to make it stretch out for six months), peasants ate red meat very rarely.

(Those skeptical about the wonders of the whole-grain and kale diet might point out that medieval people rarely made it out of their 50s, but we're not going to talk about that now.) 

Monks ate a vegetarian diet all the time (as did even the wealthy on Fridays and during Lent, though fish was OK then), with one exception.  If they were sick, they needed beef broth! Everyone knew that a sick person needed something strong and nourishing, and beef broth did the trick.  Abbots would look with deep suspicion at monks who "got sick" with remarkable frequency, needing to spend time in the infirmary receiving sustenance.

Beef broth of course comes from boiling beef, with probably a few spices, some honey, and some onions to give it a little extra, if being eaten by someone not entirely ill.  (No potatoes for stew of course, as potatoes are New World, and no carrots, as carrots were not yet domesticated.  Maybe some turnips.). All medieval doctors agreed that boiling meat was better for you than roasting it, even though a lot of people preferred the roast-meat flavor (I certainly do).

An interesting work on nutrition written (and rewritten) during the Middle Ages was  "De observatione ciborum," or as we might translate the title, "Comments on Food."  It was originally written in the sixth century by a physician named Anthimus, in exile from Byzantium (where he was doubtless known as Anthimos). He came both to the court of the Ostrogothic king Theoderic the Great and to the Frankish royal court to serve the Merovingians.

He believed that if you ate the proper foods (including meat), and in the proper way (no gobbling or stuffing oneself), one would not need medicine.  (Sounds sort of New Age-y.  Everything old is new.) He listed several dishes that would (supposedly) help one recover from such ailments as dysentery or a fever.

Given that medicine at the time relied heavily on theories of humours, with blood-letting a big feature, and that the many powders and tinctures doctors might suggest had most definitely not been tested against a placebo, maybe one really would do better with some nice beef broth.

Anthimus is noted today not only for his healthy-living tips but some of his comments on typical behavior of the Franks.  For example, he said that they considered raw bacon a great delicacy.  (Not entirely clear if it was smoked and salted but just not fried, or if it was plain raw pork belly.  I think I won't be a Frank.)

Anthimus's work was copied and expanded in subsequent centuries.  It reappeared at the Carolingian royal court, where again it discussed a particular kind of diet as uniquely Frankish, an aspect of cultural identity.  It continued to be used and quoted at the courts of the powerful through at least the twelfth century.  We are what we eat, and the idea of building healthy living on a proper diet has a very long history.

Abby Riehl of Purdue University is making an extensive study of Anthimus and his work.

© C. Dale Brittain 2026

For more on medieval health and disease and other aspects of medieval history, see my book Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.  Also available everywhere in paperback