Dietary Advice and Fruit-Eating in Late Tudor and Early Stuart England

This article investigates an apparent contradiction between the growth in the popularity of fruit-eating in late Tudor and early Stuart England, and the generally held contemporary medical view that many types of unprocessed fruits were inappropriate to a healthful diet. The first section analyzes a broad range of household accounts and other sources of evidence to determine the extent to which fruit formed part of the daily fare of the English population. The second section looks at the advice offered in a broad cross-section of dietaries and botanical works with regard to the eating of fruit. Finally, as the manners in which fruits were eaten are discussed, it will become clear that they could often be accommodated within the humoral body, and that there was less of a discrepancy between dietary advice and fruit-eating than may seem to be the case.