Food & Drink
Volunteer rationing in the First World War depended on patriotism, but that could only go so far.
While modern vegetarianism is concerned largely with issues of animal welfare, its roots are to be found in the desire to promote spirituality by curbing humanity’s excessive appetites, argues Erica Fudge.
Medieval understanding of the soul and the body meant that a saintly life was a life of physical restrictions. Katherine Harvey explores the extreme suffering bishops put themselves through, from weeping and celibacy to starvation and, sometimes, death.
As politicians consider the introduction of a sugar tax to improve the nation’s health, Harry Cunningham recalls a tragic incident from 1858, which forced the British government to rethink its regulation of pharmacists.
'Tea' has at least five meanings: the shrub, originally from China (camellia...
There was no period in the past when people did not try to manipulate nature in order to provide a more varied and nutritious diet, argues Annie Gray. We will need similarly ingenious methods in the future.
Physicians recommended aphrodisiacs to assist fertility during the 17th century, with foods such as oysters, sweetbreads and caviar considered...
In this engrossing book, Mark Hailwood opens the doors on one of the least understood institutions in the history of British drinking. Charting...
This is the best history yet written of a British institution. Like Panayi’s earlier work, Spicing Up Britain: The Multicultural History of...
Olivia Williams takes issue with some of the wilder assertions and anachronisms contained in Thomas Maples’ otherwise engaging 1991 article on the 18th-century gin craze.
