Historian's write that it was Pythagoras who first established a dietary regimen for people, what we would today call dietary recommendations. His was a vegetarian program, except that meat was allowed for Olympic athletes. Pythagoras was a boxer in his youth. He despised beans, but liked the pulses (peas). Daily walks accompanied his regimen's And these were the practices of Plato and Socrates. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, stated let food be your medicine, but did not establish a new dietary program. Galen, the Roman physician (100 AD) would create a new regimen, with his "Properties of Foodstuffs". His programs was Pythagoras turned upside down. The emphasis of Galen, and the Roman's was consuming as many different types of animals and fish as possible.
The dark age's would offer no further advice on diet until the days of Paracelsus. Early 16th century, Paracelsus would despise beans, and reconnect the principle's of Pythagoras and the neo-Platonic philosophies, leading to the vegetarian, nature-cure hygienist diets of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Vegetarian, with food combining recommendations and fasting as important components of a healthy diet.
European cultures had their own traditional diets, but when America emerged, we became Roman again, and ate fish, foul and animals in excess. In the late 1800's states would establish agricultural departments that crafted the standard American Diet (SAD), with no basis of science or health, the future FDA and USDA would become bookkeeper's who recommended that we eat what we have. What we store, and nothing else. With the government's continued reclaiming of the Roman Empire way of feeding the troops, it is no wonder that diet books have been best sellers for over a century. Almost all of them are ill founded, lacking comprehensive understanding of the species, and nutritional properties found within our foods. Next week, I give a basis foundation for you to craft your best regimen.
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