A Year of Sallets: Advice for Healthy Eating From the 1600s

A Year of Sallets: Advice for Healthy Eating From the 1600s
Think beyond lettuce—Evelyn's broad definition of a salad included room for edible flowers, foraged finds, and plants or plant parts we might overlook. Nelli Syrotynska/Shutterstock
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When we think of food in the past, it is often images of Henry VIII with a table groaning with meat dishes that springs to mind. But in fact our ancestors knew more about the health benefits of eating salads—normally thought of as a cold dish of herbs or vegetables—than we might think.

By looking back to the sustainable self-sufficiency of the past, we find there is a lot we can learn about the variety of the historical salad dish, which costs next to nothing, has no carbon footprint, and might even be beneficial to our health.

Catie Gill is a lecturer in English at Loughborough University.
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