For example, I developed a new way to buy food, and my mother also learned to buy food online, and also learned to use 4 apps to compare prices to grab food; For example, don't go surfing after work and weekends, and honestly stay at home with your lover and children; When chatting with my family, I don't know if some people's habit of eating strange game can be completely changed after this time. Will mom and dad's generation develop the habit of online shopping for food? And in the future, there should be more people wearing masks on the street than before.
Eating habits are all the same. But some special events in history will lead to some turning points and some changes.
Plague, in fact, has always been accompanied by people's birth, people are evolving, and viruses are also a new generation. After the plague passed, syphilis and smallpox appeared, and after defeating syphilis and smallpox, AIDS and coronavirus appeared. Of course, our human cognition is limited and we can't keep up with the update speed of the virus. But from another perspective, virus is actually the driving force of human cultural progress. We can see this from the history of mankind.
If we take stock of the plagues that have occurred in human history, there must be the name of the Black Death. This disease claimed one third of the population in Europe in the14th century (25 million people died in Europe because of the Black Death, but you know that the world population was only 400 million at that time), and it also affected the eating habits of Europeans. Of course, the Black Death brought many influences, but our theme today is to see the world through diet, so the focus is on the influence on diet.
Let's first look at how the Black Death came about. Available data show that the Black Death originated in Asia. It was this virus that caused the Black Death. This virus is called Yersinia pestis, and it was carried by Mongolian gerbils. Therefore, the first human to carry the pathogen of the Black Death was the Golden Tent khanate, one of the four great khanates in Mongolia.
How did the Asian virus spread to Europeans? We should start with the conflict between Mongols and Venetians. In the14th century, Venetians always took slaves from Mongolia. Of course, the Mongols quit and there was a conflict between the two sides. They went all the way to Kafa, a city in Ukraine today, which was a very important trading port controlled by Venetians at that time. The Mongols couldn't capture Kafa legal person for a long time, and finally came up with a bad idea, that is, the plague prevailed in the Mongolian army at that time, that is, the Black Death. The Mongols had a brainwave and used a trebuchet to throw the bodies of soldiers with plague in the army into Kafa City.
It is conceivable that once these bodies are thrown in, the officers and men and ordinary people in Kafa City have no idea what happened, and unlike the Mongols, they probably have this virus in their living environment since childhood. The lethality of a brand-new virus to human body is enormous.
As a result, someone in Caffari immediately showed the same symptoms as the corpse thrown in: a large number of dark spots appeared on the skin, blood and body fluids flowed out, high fever persisted, and mental disorder occurred. Death after onset 1 or 2 days. So before people in Kafa could understand that the Black Death had spread in the city, the Mongols took this opportunity to break the gate of Kafa.
What is the most terrible thing? At this time, some wealthy Venetian businessmen living in Kafa saw that the situation was wrong and ran back to Italy with their property. This is how the Black Death was brought to Europe.
After the epidemic came, Europeans panicked. As soon as I panicked, I began to look for various ways to cure the disease. What strange way to wipe a lump with stool, take a bath with urine, put a toad on your chest and put a virus or something.
This is also very interesting. In fact, the human response to panic has always been like this. A while ago, some of us robbed Radix Isatidis and Rhizoma Coptidis, which is also a so-called therapy that became popular without textual research.
What lifeline did Europeans find later? It is sucrose. For Europe at that time, sucrose was a particularly rare high-grade commodity. Because sucrose depends on sugarcane, and the latitude in Europe is high, sugarcane is difficult to grow. Therefore, sucrose has become a panacea for all diseases. Of course, sucrose itself is delicious, and eating it will make people feel happy. In addition, scarcity has deepened.
At that time, the Italian medical center was called Salenitana Medical College, and the textbook wrote: "Sucrose is effective for fever, cough, chest tightness, chapped lips and stomach diseases."
Great, Europeans are crazy about hoarding sucrose, and they are also added to various foods in different ways. It's a bit like what we China people eat to keep fit, that is, to cure diseases and keep fit.
Although all kinds of publicity are being promoted now, the high-sugar diet is unhealthy, and many bloggers do human experiments, such as eating only refined food and drinking only sugary drinks for a month. But the habit of eating sweet has not been corrected by Europeans until now. I ate a snack in a Commonwealth country in 20 15, which was particularly sweet and still fresh in my memory. Therefore, the low-sugar diet advocated now is actually a confrontation with the inertia of eating habits in continental Europe for hundreds of years.
After the Black Death raged in Italy, it slowly spread to France and London. The Black Death was so serious that Britain and France had to call a truce. At this time, Scotland took advantage of the outbreak of plague in England and began to attack England. As a result, it can be imagined that it was "killed" by the Black Death virus.
Slowly, the Black Death spread in continental Europe, and finally spread to northern Russia, the end of Eastern Europe. What does this mean? It means that Europe has completely fallen. Finally, 25 million people died of the Black Death.
The population of Europe has fallen sharply. What are the problems brought about by the population decline? That is, the labor force will be reduced and materials will be scarce. When materials are in short supply, prices will soar and labor costs will increase. In fact, before this, Europeans' production methods and eating habits were similar to those of the orientals, and they were mainly based on farming. We mainly grow rice and millet, while Europeans grow wheat.
Similarly, meat and fish are rare high-quality protein. Many farmers make a living by hiring laborers or renting fields, but with fewer people, they can't hire serfs, and many fields have to be abandoned.
But no, people still have to eat. So they changed cultivated land into pasture, because pasture doesn't need meticulous care like grain, and one person can manage more area and more livestock. Because of this, meat, milk and eggs have become popular among people.
If you go to Europe now, you can go to their supermarket, where cheese products can be covered with several freezers. Cheese is a food with high energy density. Generally, it takes 1 kg cheese and1kg milk to make it. Now many parents in China buy cheese for their children, because the energy of a small bite of cheese is equivalent to a glass of milk. Therefore, since the Black Death ravaged Europe, the intake of protein by Europeans began to be significantly ahead of that of orientals.
The Black Death directly influenced the history of Europe. Promoting changes in eating habits is only one aspect. The Black Death was also the driving force of the Renaissance, which indirectly opened the era of great navigation. Once the era of great navigation began, it accelerated the change of the world diet pattern.
What does the Black Death have to do with the Renaissance? Because Europeans think it's useless to believe in God. God can't even protect his servants, and many clergy have died. The Renaissance emphasized resisting theocracy and pursuing realism.
So, on the one hand, Europeans think that Asian spices can diminish inflammation and cure diseases, on the other hand, Europeans don't believe in religion, and clergy urgently need to go farther and wider to preach, so the era of great navigation began.
Great sailing will bring more changes. Columbus discovered the new continent. Peanut, corn and sunflower in the United States have high oil yield and are easy to grow, which makes our oil cost lower today.
Potatoes and sweet potatoes are native to America, with high yield and strong satiety. They are the staple foods with the highest yield per mu and can feed more people. Population explosion occurred in Kanggan period in China, which was related to the introduction of potatoes and sweet potatoes. Pepper, which originated in America, opened a new era of condiments.
In the final analysis, the opportunity of diet development, the great voyage, has a causal relationship with the Black Death.
Perhaps, embracing the social structure and value iteration brought by the plague is the ladder for the growth of a country and a nation.