User:Nicolevlad/sandbox

Final Draft

Please note: this is how I envision it on the final page. The small font in italics is what is currently on the page and the large font is what I have added. This would be added in the Sugar page, under 2. History. Antiquity would be 2.1 and Middle Ages would be 2.2.

Antiquity

Sugar has been produced in the Indian subcontinent^[3] since ancient times. It was not plentiful or cheap in early times and honeywas more often used for sweetening in most parts of the world. Originally, people chewed raw sugarcane to extract its sweetness. Sugarcane was a native of tropical South Asia and Southeast Asia.^[4] Different species seem to have originated from different locations with Saccharum barberi originating in India and S. edule and S. officinarum coming from New Guinea.^[4][5] One of the earliest historical references to sugarcane is in Chinese manuscripts dating back to 8th century BC that state that the use of sugarcane originated in India.^[6]

In the tradition of Indian medicine (āyurveda), the sugercane is known by the name Ikṣu and the sugarcane juice is known as Phāṇita. Its varieties, synonyms and charactericss are defined in nighaṇṭus such as the Bhāvaprakāśa (1.6.23, group of sugarcanes).^[7]

Sugar was found in Europe by the 1st century CE, but only as an imported medicine, and not as a food.^[8][9] The Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides in the 1st century CE described sugar in his medical treatise De Materia Medica,^[10] and Pliny the Elder, a 1st-century CE Roman, described sugar in his Natural History: "Sugar is made in Arabia as well, but Indian sugar is better. It is a kind of honey found in cane, white as gum, and it crunches between the teeth. It comes in lumps the size of a hazelnut. Sugar is used only for medical purposes."^[9]

“Major empires – Greek, Roman, Islamic, Mongol, Byzantine, Ottoman and European – all absorbed foodstuffs and cuisines inherited from older empires, states and conquered peoples. […] Sugar thus became one of the unrecognized bounties of imperial conquest and power, seized and absorbed by conquers then carried to distant corners of the globe where it shaped new tastes and a demand for the pleasure it brought.”

Middle Ages

Sugar remained relatively unimportant until the Indians discovered methods of turning sugarcane juice into granulated crystals that were easier to store and to transport.^[11] Crystallized sugar was discovered by the time of the Imperial Guptas, around the 5th century CE.^[11] In the local Indian language, these crystals were called khanda (Devanagari: खण्ड, Khaṇḍa), which is the source of the word candy.^[12] Indian sailors, who carried clarified butter and sugar as supplies, introduced knowledge of sugar on the various trade routes they travelled.^[11] Buddhist monks, as they travelled around, brought sugar crystallization methods to China.^[13] During the reign of Harsha (r. 606–647) in North India, Indian envoys in Tang China taught methods of cultivating sugarcane after Emperor Taizong of Tang (r. 626–649) made known his interest in sugar. China then established its first sugarcane plantations in the seventh century.^[14] Chinese documents confirm at least two missions to India, initiated in 647 CE, to obtain technology for sugar refining.^[15] In South Asia, the Middle East and China, sugar became a staple of cooking and desserts.

Southeast Asia

Sugar was a principle ingredient in India as early as 260 BC, due to its importance and symbolism in Buddhism. A German scientist by the name of Karl Ritter believes that the sugar cane was only cultivated in Bengal until the fifth century. The importance of sugar in Buddhism is one of the reasons why both the religion and the ingredient travelled hand-in-hand. As Rachael Laudan says, “where Buddhism spread, so did sugarcane growing and refining.”

Sugar was a mainstay in Buddhist cuisine for both medicinal and religious purposes. Early Buddhism from 260 BCE – 800 CE valued asceticism and purification. Since sugar was made by extensive purification of the sugar cane, they believed it would give them the same ability. “Just as cane juice was refined and purified into sugar, so monks during meditation were refined by the ‘fire of wisdom.’” Medicinally, sugar was used to help with coughs, itches; to disguise the unappealing tastes of other medicinal herbs, and to provide a quick source of energy.

China

Once Buddhism began spreading from India to China, monks figured out how to bring the sugar cane and processing materials with them. Emperor Taizong sent an envoy to India in 647 who brought back six monks and two artisans to establish sugar manufacturing. Once Buddhism reached Japan, the monks realized that sugar cane would not grow well in the colder climate. “Sugar was imported from China at great expense and in tiny quantities”. Sugar was central to Buddhist religion and cuisine, and spread throughout Asia for its praise, even when it was used in small quantities.

Not only was sugar medicinal, but it was also special and reserved for specific spiritual occasions. During Buddhist fasting days, sugar water was allowed to be consumed by monks and nuns. “Sugar was also used in Chinese public rituals such as the ‘Bathing of the Buddha.’” How much sugar was used or known depended on the emperor and the dynasty. Besides monks, only aristocrats would have tasted or heard of cane sugar and it took years for it to become familiar in urban centers.

Middle East

Eventually sugar reached the Middle East and became intertwined with Islam. The Middle Eastern climate was also not great for sugar cane growth, yet the spice became so important that the “Islamic rulers and their agronomists […] pulled off an agricultural revolution in the arid and often exhausted landscapes of the Islamic empires. […] By 1400 sugar was being grown in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, North Africa, Spain, and probably Ethiopia and Zanzibar.” Like with Buddhism, Islamic cuisine began including sugar in several recipes while the empire expanded West. “Wherever they went, the Arabs brought with them sugar, the product and the technology of its production; sugar, we are told, followed the Koran.”

As the very laborious production of sugar spread, the demand for it increased tremendously. Therefore, the manpower behind its production needed to increase. In Morocco and in many other sugar cane growing areas, slavery played a huge role in the growing, extracting, and purification of sugar.

Europe

Crusaders brought sugar home with them to Europe after their campaigns in the Holy Land, where they encountered caravans carrying "sweet salt". Early in the 12th century, Venice acquired some villages near Tyre and set up estates to produce sugar for export to Europe, where it supplemented honey, which had previously been the only available sweetener.^[16] Crusade chronicler William of Tyre, writing in the late 12th century, described sugar as "very necessary for the use and health of mankind".^[17] In the 15th century, Venice was the chief sugar refining and distribution centre in Europe.^[6] Sugar cane was also very necessary for the Crusaders during their long journeys and “saved Crusaders in times of starvation.”

Sugar cane quickly became the popular sweetener in Europe, taking preference over honey. It was more easily produced, transported, exchanged, and preserved. “The cultivation of sugar cane became an important industry in Sicily by the fifteenth century.” Sugar then became much more prevalent in southern Europe, while northern countries like England and Germany continued cooking with honey. In the first century, Sugar was relatively unknown, only to a few pharmaceutical specialists. By the fourteenth century, sugar was imported to Europe due to the Middle Eastern merchants. Then in the fifteenth century, “European householders seem almost to have become addicted to the flavor that sugar lent their foods.”

Not only was the flavor important, but also the medicinal properties which were regarded highly from the humoral theory. “Being warm in the first degree and moist in the second, made [sugar] one of the safest, most appropriate foodstuffs for a human being.” All pharmacists prescribed medicine with a basis of sugar, since it was appropriate for all humors, temperaments and ages according to the medicine of the time. “The quasi-universality of sugar in medicinal prescriptions, from syrups to electuaries to sick-dishes, reflected a growing predilection of the late-medieval aristocratic palate for sweetness generally in the daily fare.”

Notes

Please note: I was working on this project outside of the talkpage, so I posted what I had digitized so that more of my thought process could be seen.

“Sugar cane entered the world of Islam from India. Buddhist cuisine in India had adopted sugar as a basic ingredient as early as 260 BC and, in time, sugar began to influence the cuisine of greatly diverse societies across South-East Asia. Sugar also moved slowly westward from India into Africa, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean. As Islam spread, so too did the cultivation and consumption of sugar cane. By 1400, it was being cultivated in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, North Africa, Spain and possibly Ethiopia and Zanzibar.

“Sugar was on the move – in all directions. In 1258, following the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols, elements of local cuisine began a protracted movement eastwards to China and to Asiatic Russia. Indeed, this global transfer was to be a feature of sugar – it was part of imperial expansion.”

“Major empires – Greek, Roman, Islamic, Mongol, Byzantine, Ottoman and European – all absorbed foodstuffs and cuisines inherited from older empires, states and conquered peoples. […] Sugar thus became one of the unrecognized bounties of imperial conquest and power, seized and absorbed by conquerors then carried to distant corners of the globe where it shaped new tastes and a demand for the pleasure it brought.” (Walvin 7)

Sugar originated in South Asia, but evidence for the processing of sugar – refining sugar from sugar cane – belongs to a much later period. (Walvin 7)

The spread of sugar westward into Medditeranean, specifically Iran, Iraq, Jordan valley, Mediterranean coast of Syria and Egypt: “Sugar cane was being cultivated in Egypt as early as the mid-eighth century and, by the eleventh century, it could be found at various points along the North African coast, on Mediterranena islands and in Spain. The finished product – cane sugar – subsequently found its way, via the Crusaders, to northern Europe in the eleventh century” (Walvin 8)

Sugar in early middle ages in Europe “The first major English encounter with sugar was in Palestine during the First Crusade of 1095-1099. Sugar can saved Crusaders in times of starvation, and nurtured a taste for sweetness (and other exotic commodities) which survivors took home with them. But sugar was both rare and costly, and was naturally restricted to contemporary elites.” (Walvin 9)

Chapter 2

“Karl Ritter, the great German scientist, is accepted as high authority in his research investigations on ancient industries. He affirms that the cultivation of sugar cane was limited to Bengal until the fifth century A.D., and that it was native to that part of India. About the fifth century it was introduced into the Tigris Valley, near the city Jondisapur, and was soon introduced into the Euphrates Valley. Sugar cane was carried into China at a very early date, and has been cultivated in that empire continuously since its introduction. The Grecian and Roman historians refer to the cultivation of sugar cane in western India. The earliest historical records seem to indicate that sugar was obtained in India from the bamboo prior to its separation from the sugar cane.” (Surface 15)

“This saccharine substance, whether it was obtained solely from the bamboo, or from both the bamboo and the sugar cane, was not used as a food for many centuries, but was prized highly as medicine.” (Surface 16)

“There is abundant evidence to prove that by the tenth century sugar was manufactured in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates in sufficient quantities to attract the attention of the traders of other countries. It had ceased to be constructed as only possessing medicinal properties, and had gradually gained in popularity as a delicious food luxury to be indulged in during special feasts.” (Surface 16)

“Sugar-cane plants were carried from Arabia into Nubia, Ethiopia, and Egypt, and were first introduced into Europe by the Moors in the eight century. Until the thirteenth century the cultivation was restricted to Spain, at which time it was introduced into Cyprus and Sicily.” (Surface 16-17)

“Prior to the introduction of sugar cane into Europe, honey was the most common saccharin in use, and was recognized as the standard of sweetness. Sugar proved to be a sweet of far greater utility because of the ease with which it could be produced, transported, exchanged, and preserved. It was also incomparably better adapted to the art of cooking. The cultivation of sugar cane became an important industry in Sicily by the fifteenth century.” (Surface 17)

Scully

“Traditionally the premium sweetner in early medieval kitchens had been honey, and to some extent this naturally produced substance remained in use in the cookery of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Particularly in the kitchens and on the tables of the German states and England its uses seems to have been ingrained, and its relished taste was not wholly abandoned with the growing availability of sugar. […] Into southern Europe, though, came an alternative sweetener, sugar. This substance, relatively exotic although known and used in pharmacological compounds in Europe from the first century onwards, became increasingly common on the fourteenth-century marketplace, thanks wholly to the enterprise of Mediterranean merchants. Produced first in Asian cane-fields and then from the eleventh century on Mediterranean islands, sugar syrup was extracted from crushed cane, clarified, solidified and transported by Arabic dealers to European ports on the Mediterranean. During the fifteenth century European householders seem almost to have become addicted to the flavor that sugar lent their foods.” (Scully 52)

“The inclusion of sugar in a recipe was entirely justifiable in the mind of the medieval cook or physician. He rationalized that the nature of sugar, being warm in the first degree and moist in the second, made it one of the safest, most appropriate foodstuffs for a human being. These very qualities had from time immemorial ensured for sugar a pre-eminent place on the shelf of the pharmacist: virtually all medicines, therapeutic potions, syrups and theriacs prescribed a basis of sugar. By the fourteenth century, sick-dishes – intended for invalids or those recuperating from a disease – can be distinguished in recipe collections from all other dishes intended for those who were healthy, primarily by the presence in the former of sugar. But if sugar were good for the sickly and convalescent, surely it was only reasonable to see it as potentially good also for the healthy. […] Ask the grocer for refined sugar which is hard, white as salt, and brittle. It has a cleansing effect on the body and benefits the chest, kidneys, and bladder … it is good for the blood and therefore suitable for every temperament, age, season and place. Artificially white, it is very effective for tightness in the chest and when the tongue is unusually drr. It would be remarkable if everyone who could afford to in the fifteenth century did not indulge what was quickly becoming a very sweet tooth” (Scully 52-53)

“Fruits and nuts were regularly preserved in the Middle Ages in either sugar or honey, just as they are today. Sugar offered two advantages as a preservative: it was itself manifestly durable, it did not corrupt other foods or become corrupt over time; and, when liquefied, the manifest fineness of the particles that composed it allowed it to mix intimately with other foods and in some sense to bond closely to them. […] ‘The quality of sugar then almost crosses over into the qualities of those things to which it clings in the preparation.’ For the same purpose some cooks suggest using a sweet wine that has been boiled until most of its liquid has evaporated. The resultant syrup coated and permeated the foodstuff, warming and drying its complexion.” (Scully 57)

“A third sort of ingredient in late-medieval sick-dishes should be mentioned, and that is sugar. Owing in part to the increased availability of this semi-exotic substance and in part to the nature which learned Arabic scholars ascribed to it, sugar became during the fifteenth century one of the most valued and common ingredients in all sick-dishes. To some extent the quasi-universality of sugar in medicinal prescriptions, from syrups to electuaries to sick-dishes, reflected a growing predilection of the late-medieval aristocratic palate for sweetness generally in the daily fare.” (Scully 189)

Mazumdar

“Sugarcane was introduced into southern China either from Southeast Asia or from easternmost India probably no earlier than the third century B.C. The basic term used for sugarcane now is ganzhe […]

“Most Chinese agricultural treatises and pharmacopoeias did not distinguish varieites, but differentiated types of cane according to usage. The main distinction made was between cane cultivated for making sugar versus cane cultivated for cheweing fresh as a variety of fruit. There were other varieties cultivated only for medicinal use. The sugarcane species most widely cultivated in China for making sufar prior to the twentieth century were hybrids of the species Saccharum sinense.” ( Mazumdar 15)

“There were three ways in which sugar was used in making up therapeutic prescriptions: to enhance the properties of other herbs and potions, to disguise their unpleasant taste, and for its intrinsic properties of providing quick energy.” (24)

“Monasteries used sugar in other ways, blurring the line between medicine and noursighment. Fasting monks and nuns consumed watered-down versions of cane sugar and molasses; these sweet drinks did not violate a fast unlike more concentrated forms of cane sugar.” (25)

“Sugar was a potent food; this discussion of the uses of sugar as ‘medicine’ rather than ‘food’ was not restricted to Buddhist circles. In the thirteenth century the ‘medicinal nature’ of sugar formed the core of a theological debate in the Christian church – did eating spiced sugars violate a fast?” (25)

“Sugar was also used in Chinese public rituals such as the ‘Bathing of the Buddha.’ The celebrations surrounding the birthday of the Buddha (usually the eight day of the fourth month) included a procession of all the Buddha images in the city and a ritual bathing of the images and icons. The sugared water in which these images were bathed was then distributed for its blessed properties.” 25

“From all accounts then, cane sugar was far better known at the end of the Tang than in earlier times. But it was still not a commonplace item. As late as the reign of Daizong (763-779), the emperor saw fit to bestow twenty stalks of sugarcane on a subject as a ‘rare and wonderful gift.’ Not until the Song period did cane sugar become a familiar item in urban China.” 28

Mintz

“”It is not until about 500 A.D. that we get unmistakable written evidence of sugar making. The Buddhagosa, or Discourse on Moral Consciousness, a Jindu religious document, describes by way of analogy the boiling of juice, the making of molasses, and the rolling o balls of sugar. […] In a report by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius in 627, when he seized a palace dwelling of the Persian king Chosroes II near Baghdad, sugar is described as an “Indian” luxury. Between the fourth and eight centuries, the major sugar-fabrication centers seem to have been the coast to the west of the Indus delta (coastal Baluchistan), and the head of the Persian Gulf, on the Tigris-Euphrates delta. Only after the eight century was sugar known and consumed in Europe itself; and only from the same time do references to cane growing and sugar making around the eastern Mediterranean begin to appear. Sucrose was practically unknown in northern Europe before perhaps 1000 A.D., and only barely known for another century or two.” (23)

“Between the defeat of Heraclius in 636 and the invasion of Spain in 711, in less than a single century, the Arabs established the caliphate at Baghdad, conquered North Africa, and began their occupation of major parts of Europe itself. Sugar making, which in Egypt may have preceded the Arab conquest, spread in the Mediterranean basin after the conquest. In Sicily, Cyprus, Malta, briefly in Rhodes, much of the Maghrib (especially in Morocc), and Spain itself (especially on its south coast), the Arabs introduced the sugar cane, its cultivation, the art of sugar making, and a taste for this different sweetness.” 23

By 996 sugarcane was being grown across North Africa and on several Mediterranena islands, including Sicily, as well as being the subject of agricultural experimentation in Spain itself. (24)

“Wherever they went, the Arabs brought with them sugar, the product and the technology of its production; sugar, we are told, followed the Koran” 25

“Slaverly played a part in the Moroccan sugar industry and probably elsewhere; a slave revolt involving thousands of East African agricultural laborers took place in the Tigris-Euphrates delta in the mid-ninth century, and they may even have ben sugar-cane plantation workers.” 27

“A decisive step in sugar technology came with the invention the vertical three-roller mill” 27

“The Crusaders gave many Europeans the opportunity […] to familiarize themselves with many new products, sugar among them. The Crusaders learned about sugar under pressing circumstances, we are told.” 28 – the First crusade was in 1096-99 “Soon enough the Crusaders were supervising the production of that same sugar in the areas they had conquered, as in the kingdom of Jerusalme (1099-1187), until it fell to Saladin” (28)

“Europeans became producers of sugar (or, better, the controllers of sugar producers, in conquered areas) as a consequence of the Crusades. The decline of the Mediterranen sugar industry has traditionally – and for the most part correctly- been attributed to the rise of a competing sugar industry on the Atlantic islands” 28-29

Laudan

Buddhism 260 BCE – 800 CE

“The earliest cuisine emphasized steamed or boiled rice, sugar and ghee” (103)

“Just as crude ore had to be refined in the fire to release the pure shining metal, so raw wheat or sugarcane had to be similarly refined to extract the pure white flour or the gleaming sugar. Culinary processes such as sugar refining and bread baking were thus potent metaphors for spiritual progress.” (104)

“Royal and monastic gardens and large estates transplanted, ennobled, and grew sugarcane, rice, grapevines, tea, coffee, and other crops essential to the new cuisines.” (106)

“[Ashoka] encourages an emerging Buddhist cuisine, probably similar to the other emerging cuisines of Jains and reform-minded Hindus, that was based on cooked rice granules, dhal, ghee, sugar confections, and sweetened fruit drinks” 107

“First, from early on there was a high ascetic cuisine that used the most desirable grains and expensive ghee and sugar […] Second, Buddhist cuisine downplayed meat and alcohol, favoring alternative proteins and drinks, as well as rice, butter, and sugar” 109

“Ghee and sugar were alchemical-medical-culinary substances. Both were made by applying purifying fire to highly corruptible materials – milk and sugarcane juice – turning them into auspicious, incorruptible golden treasures that lasted even in the tropical heat. […] just as cane juice was refined and purified into sugar, so monks during mediitation were refined by the ‘fire of wisdom’” 110

“Sugar soothed hacking coughs, calmed itchy anuses, and disguised the taste of bitter medicinal herbs and tonics made with the emblic myrobalans.[…] Both sugar and ghee might be eaten by the spoonful or used in cooking to add their flavor and power to entire dishes.” 110

To extract juice from sugarcane, no easy task, the Indians adapted the ox-powered mortar and pestle already used to grind oil seeds. They chopped the cane into short lengths and placed it in the waist-high mortar. Then […] they attached the ox to the pestle mechanism to extract the juice. It seems probable that this juice was regarded as already having been cooked by the heat of the sun, as milk had been cooked by the heat of the cow.” 110

“Plants were imported, improved by breeding, and distributed. […] twelve sugarcane varieties were brought into cultivation from China. Sugar palm came from Southeast Asia.” 114

“Hindus offered sugar and ghee to the gods. […] Sigar appeared in the ceremonies that marked the passages of life.” 114

“The better understanding of Buddhism acquired by these monks was ultimately responsible for the introduction to China of Indian dietary theory, monastic rules, ways of processing butter and refining sugar” 119

“in 647, the emperor Taizong sent an envoy to India charged with learning the secrets of sugar making. He returned with six monks and two artisans, who established sugar manufacturing south of Hangchow, where the climate was favorable to sugarcane, so that it changed from the exotic plant of southernmost China mentioned by Jia Sixie to an increasingly important crop. […] Like the Indians, the Chinese used milk to whiten sugar, though they used their own edge-runner presses rather than the Indian ox-driven pestles and mortars. The Chinese produced several grades and kinds of sugar, most of them soft and brown” (120)

“Sugar was now found in recipes, and confections were availbale as a street food” 126. 850-1350 CE

“The Japanese court adopted the typical Buddhist trio of butter, sugar, and rice. […] Sugar was imported from China at great expense and in tiny quantities. The eighty bundles of sugarcane that the Chinese monk Chien-Chien reportedly imported in 743 did not grow in the cold climate.” (128)

“Where Buddhism spread, so did sugarcane growing and refining” 130

Islam 800-1650 CE

“White, evoking brightness, happiness, hope, the moon’s restrained purity, and the color of the caliph’s clothes in the mosque, was gound in white bread, milk of almonds…. White sugar.” 138

“’To enjoy sweets is a sign of faith,’ the Qur’an says” 138

“Sugar, with its magical, alchemical properties, could be substituted for the honey” 138

“Sugar processing, probably adopted from India, was improved with new methods of crushing and boiling, particularly in Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Cane was peeled and split, crushed first in an edge-runner mill, then netted and crushed again in a press, the juice from both pressings running into a single tank. Boiled and filtered three times, it was then allowed to drip through conical pots. The solids were dissolved and boiled with a little milk to clarify them to white refined sugar (quand). The syrup that dripped out was collected and reprocessed into lower0quality sugar.: 139

“Islamic rulers and their agronomists […] pulled off an agricultural revolution in the arid and often exhausted landscapes of the Islamic empires. They encouraged the westward transfer of “Indian” crops as they were then called – sorghum, rice, sugarcane, citrus […]. By 1400 sugar was being grown in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, North Africa, Spain, and probably Ethiopia and Zanzibar. Irrigation systems were mended or created for sugarcane and fruit trees.” (143)

Nicole- While you have a good outline here and some potentially strong sources, there is no draft as such for us to comment on. You have a lot writing to do over the next two weeks. Perhaps your draft is living elsewhere?

Article Outline

Sugar has historically been an important food item since Ancient Times affecting trade, cuisine, and religion throughout Eurasia.

• Sugar in ancient roman civilisations
  • used as a preservation method (necessary for growing of population and transporting of food)
• Sugar in early buddhism
  • Highly processed and refined sugarcane as a form of purity
  • diet based on a lot of sugar, which they went to great extents to attain
• Sugar in early christianity
  • limited in the very beginning for avoiding bodily pleasures

Sugar also impacted the Middle Ages tremendously, as there had been quite an advancement in its production and refinement.

• Sugar in early Middle Ages
  • abundantly used
• Sugar in late Middle Ages
  • In Islam: abandon molasses and refine the sugar refinement process, advanced sweets, quince paste, moving into Iberian peninsula and make membrillo.
  • Economic divide: peasants did not have access to expensive and rare sugar, but high class used it abundantly

Final topic and sources

I decided to edit the "Ancient and Medieval Times" of the sugar page. As I said below, there are many facts that go against what we have read and discussed in class, claiming that sugar was unimportant before the Modern Age. I plan to add information about sugar's role in the beginning of religious communities like Buddhist and Islamic, and its symbolism. Also, I plan to add more about the transition sugar made from being healthy to unhealthy into the Renaissance. I will also investigate whether or not the information and sources that are on the page are valid.

Initial bibliography:

2. Rachel Laudan's article: "The Birth of the Modern Diet"
3. Sydney Mintz "Sweetness and Power"
4. "Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to knowledge and Practice." Nancy G. Siraisi
5. Scully, Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages
6. Rüdiger Schmitt, "Cooking in Ancient Iran" www.iranicaonline.org
7. Wilkins et al., Food in Antiquity
8. Mazumadar, Sugar and Society in China
9. Sabban, "sucre candi" "industrie sucrière" and "savoir-faire oublié"
10. Kieschnick, Impact of Buddhism
11. Daniels and Daniels, "Origin of the Sugarcane Roller Mill"
12. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves
13. Achaya, Indian Food

ect topics

sugar - the "ancient and medieval times" section under history is lacking and goes against what we have learned in class, claiming that sugar was mainly unimportant until the crusaders brought it back. So far in class, we have seen the great importance in sugar throughout many different regions and religions.

restaurant - add to the History section of this page, which has some good information but could have more, especially under France.

blancmange - add more about the history of it being savoury and the health factors that led to its creation. Maybe I could also research how it went from being savoury to sweet and a pretty worldly dessert.

humoral theory - although this is fairly complete, I could add the three principles of salt, sulphur and mercury.

fasting - this page focuses mainly on the different religious purposes of fasting, but maybe I could add a historical section to this, including different fast meals.

Article Evaluation

kefir

• First, the article cites many facts with no citation. It does indicate that the citation is needed but it is confusing to read very specific statements surrounding kefir with no backing.
• The article lacks any type of historical information on where kefir was first made/consumed.
• The "Regional consumption" section could be better divided and probably has more possible regions that use the product.
• Under Probiotics, the articles states that, "The significance of probiotic supplements remains unproven" and cites one opinion scientific paper and another article from 2012 that only claims more research is needed.

Article to edit

Urban agriculture - I will add a broader section about United States.

Wagyu - I plan on adding a couple paragraphs about Wagyu cow slaughter and whether or not they fall under the Humane Slaughter Act.