Our understanding of food and health is, arguably, primarily culture-based. Most cultures develop their own ideas about the relationship between food and health. While today we like to think the study of food and its effects on our health is based purely on science, a good argument can be made that it is not (Chen 2008). This is not to ignore or deny the work done in nutrition science, but even that science is culture-bound. What is considered proper and healthy to eat can be based simply on social custom or folk medicine, or it can be attached to a grand theory of the functioning of the body and the role of food in the maintenance of health. The food of India, for example, is understood within the Ayurvedic system. Another comprehensive health tradition is related to Chinese medicine and its influence on Chinese cuisine. Every culture has its ideas of what is healthy and unhealthy, complete with explanations. Also, traditional ideas of illness and health embedded in folk remedies remain strong over many generations, even when existing alongside professionalized medicine (Hand 1976, 2). There is no reason to assume this was not also the case in medieval Europe, where, no doubt, folk medicine existed side by side with (and perhaps sometimes was indistinguishable from) professional theoretical medicine. While some historians deny the existence of a ‘popular medicine’, or posit that what we refer to as popular medicine was simply a bastardized version of theoretical medicine, others take the opposite view (Gentilcore 2004). Folklorists and anthropologists know that theories of medicine (and the role of food within folk medicine) are pervasive, sometimes borrowing from a written tradition, but also influencing that tradition.