12 Historic Meals (So We Can Taste The Past)

What did people eat on the Titanic? What was the first food eaten on the moon? Why do we even care? 

You are what you eat. Or at the very least, what you eat says a lot about you and your cultural context. Food is a necessary part of life, but often we don’t learn about food when we are taught about history. Learning about past food can be revealing, and at the very least humanize historical figures who seem “above” the petty mortal need to consume calories. It’s not often we think about Lincoln or MLK snacking on some carrots, but they obviously ate a lot of food within their lifetimes. 

For that reason, we selected 12 historical meals that give us insight into the time, ranging from extravagance to horror. How we feed the people we oppress shows how we view their humanity. How we celebrate with food can show how we value our own humanity.