Like other ancient civilizations, the basic ancient Greek foods were cereals, legumes, oil, and wine. Many ancient Greeks lived in Magna Graecia (Megale Hellas), so the food of the Romans overlaps that of the Greeks. There were, of course, other influences on ancient Greek foods, especially from Asia. We know the Greeks had a wide variety of […]

Chickpeas, according to Athenaeus, were introduced by Poseidon (II.55b). He does not offer further information, presumably because he considered it basic knowledge among his readers. Pomegranates, that follow in the list of ancient Greek dinner cooking recipes, apart from their distinctive color also have a sweet and sour taste, and are equally old. A pomegranate was […]

Ancient Greek dinners often led to symposiums. A people who enjoy companionship, eating with others, followed by singing, dancing or conversation and who hate a lonely meal, could do lettle else but invent the symposium. It is the logical next step in a coherent view, an existential pholosophy: I eat, discuss, sing, dance, therefore I […]

It would be a serious omission to end this brief account of ancient Greek nutrition without making a passing mention of wine. Other than a daily beverage, wine in essence was regarded as food, and figured prominently at every meal, breakfast included.

Tradition holds that Greeks have always consumed more fish than meat. They preferred oily fish such as mackerel, skoumbri (common mackerel), sardines, bogue, whitebait, anchovies, and eel, all of which are of high nutritional value. This preference for oily fish is manifested in the well-known popular saying: “Everything at its time and the mackerel in […]

With the exception of banquets and Homeric heroes, meat-eating was fairly limited. In general, meat was festive fare, reserved for public or private special occasions. This was attributed not to a general, early tendency of the ancient people for vegetarianism, but to the same reason that forced Greeks in the early 20th century to virtually […]

The relatively large-scale consumption of legumes and cereals is another nutritional characteristic that markedly sets apart ancient Greeks from other European peoples. Legumes and cereals were the fare of the poor and constituted the dietary basis for the majority of Greeks who could not often afford expensive meat, both in ancient and more recent times. […]

Another difference that distinguishes the ancient Greek diet from that of Northern Europeans was the consumption of vegetables and fruit in vast quantities. In fact, certain ancient Greeks, such as Plato, Callimachus and the Pythagoreans, strongly advocated vegetarianism. Certainly, the fruit and vegetables consumed by the ancient Greeks were not the same as those avialable […]

There is no doubt that olive oil is the most typical Mediterranean staple. It is the first ingredient that comes to the mind of laymen and nutritionists whenever mention is being made of the Mediterranean eating habits. The latter occurs because only in the region of the Mediterranean is olive oil so omnipresent in the […]

It appears that in classical times Greeks ate two meals a day, although in the pre-classical period daily meals amounted to three. Breakfast was usually called “αριστον” [ariston] and in the Byzantine period the participle “αριστευσας” [aristefsas] signified not only the student who had earned a mark above “very good” but also someone who had […]