Diets | Three Eggs and a Bottle of Wine | 1

Summary

Podcast Summary: Legacy — "Diets | Three Eggs and a Bottle of Wine | 1"
Hosts: Afua Hirsch & Peter Frankopan
Date: May 7, 2026

Episode Overview

In this premiere episode of Legacy’s new series on diets, Afua Hirsch and historian Peter Frankopan take listeners on a sweeping journey through the wild fads and deep histories of how, why, and what humans eat—or don’t. Jumping from 1970s magazine crazes to ancient purification rituals and medieval “starvation saints,” the pair challenge modern assumptions about diets, beauty standards, and the cultural, moral, and spiritual meanings bound into food and bodies. They question whether diet obsession is new to our era or a perpetually human preoccupation, and shine a light on the shifting legacies of “ideal” bodies through the ages.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Opening: The Wild World of Diet Advice (00:48–03:26)

• The “Wine and Egg Diet” from 1977 Vogue
  • Afua introduces the infamous 1970s “wine and egg” diet: 3 eggs, a steak, and a bottle of wine per day.
  • She reads from Diane McMartin, a wine writer who tried the diet and described feeling “exhausted, cranky, and kind of shaky on my feet. I felt like I had gotten stupider… The sadness I felt at night was something else. I love wine, but it’s a depressant. And without a more normal amount of food to help blunt the effects of alcohol, I think I was experiencing a little bit of that sad drunk girl crying in the bathroom syndrome, many of us observed in college.” (Afua quoting Diane; 02:29)
  • Both hosts marvel at the strangeness of diet advice: “Advice from supposedly well-informed quarters about how we should regulate our weight has for a long time been bananas.” (Afua, 03:18)

2. Personal Reflections on Dieting & Food Habits (03:26–12:16)

• Fad Diets, Nutrition, and Wine’s Dubious Role

  • Peter and Afua break down the diet scientifically, noting its lack of nutrition and the rationale (or irrationality) behind such regimes.
  • Discussion on the 1970s American wine boom and the use of cheap “Shablis” as a social marker, not a health move.

• Fasting and Emotional Attachments to Food

  • Afua shares her experience with fasting and the psycho-emotional spectrum it uncovers: “You learn how much eating is more a kind of emotional experience or essential pleasure, rather than actually what your body needs.” (Afua, 07:35)
  • Peter reflects on aging, health priorities, and their shared sweet tooth: “Also in my mid-50s, I’m in slippers alley, where people my age start to fall ill with quite serious complications. So I think it pays off to not think you’re superhuman...” (Peter, 10:11)

3. Diets & Body Ideals in History (14:28–23:27)

• From Egypt to Greece: Early Dieting Practices

  • Afua and Peter trace fascination with food and the body back to ancient Egypt, with its emphasis on bodily purity, ritual cleansing, and laxatives—purging both as health and beauty treatment, but also as a class marker.
  • Peter explains ancient Greek values of moderation, discipline, and their connection to moral virtues, adding, “There’s an idea that you shouldn’t let your impulses govern you, that you need to be strict in what you do. So there's ideas about purification, about rituals, about virtue—these all go back deep, deep roots.” (Peter, 17:03)
  • They debunk the myth that everyone in antiquity looked like a Greek statue—ideals then, as now, often unattainable and youth-centered.

• Modern Parallels

  • Afua observes, “You can’t really disconnect diet and what people are actually eating with what they aspire to eat with what they aspire to look like.” (Afua, 22:49)
  • They note the similarity between ancient Greek athletic ideals and today’s “manosphere,” with men idolizing “Spartan” routines.

4. Spirituality, Fasting, and ‘Starvation Saints’ (24:47–33:47)

• Christian Fasting and the Case of St. Catherine of Siena

  • Afua tells St. Catherine’s story: after refusing a forced marriage, she protested through severe fasting and became what historians call a “starvation saint”—her extreme self-denial was seen as miraculous by medieval peers.
  • Afua reflects: “… among her contemporaries, it was regarded as a miraculous lack of appetite. The ability to have that level of discipline, to starve oneself to that extent, was coming from this kind of divine ordination. And it was becoming very popular in the Middle Ages as a sign of extreme devotion.” (Afua, 27:04)
  • Peter acknowledges admiration for Catherine’s agency but cautions against anachronistically applying modern diagnoses: “I’m always slightly uncomfortable about projections of things we think about today to read through texts to imply things that have modern resonances...” (Peter, 28:15)
  • Afua distinguishes historical spiritual fasting from modern body-image obsessions, noting thinness then was countercultural: “She’s not seeking or achieving more social approval through starvation. On the contrary, there’s a lot of disapproval…” (Afua, 29:41)

• Medieval Body Ideals, Monastic Rules, and Class

  • Discussion of anti-gluttony rules in monasteries (“too fat to get up for night prayers”)—Afua dubs these “anti-fat rules,” drawing laughs and gentle pushback from Peter.
  • Peter highlights how, for the elite, “ample” bodies (like Eleanor of Aquitaine’s) were prized as a mark of wealth and status, in contrast to the thinness born of famine or poverty: “If you’re wealthy, you can afford to eat. If you’re poor, then your diet is… bad. So there’s some element of class in this.” (Peter, 33:13)

5. Changing Ideals and Cultural Pressures (33:47–35:07)

• From “Ample” to “Fit”: Evolution of Standards
  • Afua notes: “Even when body positivity started… it was rarely people who were really overweight. It was women who are basically normal, not really, really thin, that have kind of… more feminine curves. And it’s so interesting that that was seen as radical…” (Afua, 34:11)

6. Looking Forward: Dieting and Health in the Modern Age (35:07–End)

• Peter sets up next episode’s journey from the Enlightenment through the industrialized, media-permeated world, noting how science, travel, empire, and the printing press all transform perceptions of food, health, and beauty.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Advice from supposedly well-informed quarters about how we should regulate our weight has for a long time been bananas.” — Afua (03:18)
• “The sadness I felt at night was something else. I love wine, but it’s a depressant. And without a more normal amount of food… I was experiencing… that sad drunk girl crying in the bathroom syndrome.” — Afua quoting Diane McMartin (2:29)
• “You can’t really disconnect diet and what people are actually eating with what they aspire to eat with what they aspire to look like.” — Afua (22:49)
• “Part of the reason that athletics in the past… is a cipher for manliness, for bravery, and, of course, war… you’re in mint condition because that keeps you safe.” — Peter (19:28)
• “There’s an element of class in this and of wealth and of status… so it’s not that people are thinking about their body in the same way.” — Peter (33:13)
• “Medieval peasants aren’t dieting, they’re trying to stay alive.” — Afua (33:53)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:48–03:26: Unpacking the 1970s “Wine and Egg” diet fad, with a modern trial by Diane McMartin.
• 04:12–11:06: Hosts’ own food relationships, fasting, and the emotional dimensions of eating.
• 14:28–18:04: Ancient Egypt & Greece—purity, moderation, and the roots of dietary self-control.
• 18:04–23:27: The athletic ideal, myths of ancient bodies, the genesis of aspirational physique.
• 24:47–29:41: Spiritual fasting, St. Catherine of Siena, and the origins of “starvation sanctity.”
• 32:09–33:47: Medieval monastic anti-fat rules, body ideals, and shifting symbolism of “ample” bodies.
• 34:11–35:07: Modern echoes—body positivity and how “normal” became radical.
• 35:07–End: Tease for next episode: diets and body image from the Enlightenment to present.

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Tone and Style

The episode is conversational, witty, and deeply informed by both historical scholarship and lived experience. Afua and Peter play off each other—Afua brings journalistic curiosity and personal insight, Peter deep historical context and wry observation—creating an engaging and thought-provoking dialogue.

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Summary Takeaways

• Diet obsession isn’t new—cultures across time have connected eating, the body, beauty, morality, and even spiritual standing.
• Body ideals are always part social construct, part reflection of deeper values or beliefs, whether in ancient Egypt, medieval monasteries, or on the covers of modern magazines.
• Contemporary diet culture often repeats or reframes long-standing fascinations with control, purity, and aspiration—but also mirrors enduring questions about status, identity, and what it means to live well.

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For more on the evolving history of diets and body image, the hosts promise an exploration of Enlightenment science, modernity, and today’s social pressures in the next episode.

Transcript

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[Afua Hersh]

Hello. Welcome to a new episode of Legacy. I'm Afwa Hersh.

[Peter Frankerpad]

I'm Peter Frankerpern. And this is Legacy. The show that explores the lives, events and ideas that have shaped our world and asks whether they have the reputations that they truly deserve.

[Afua Hersh]

This is the Legacy of diets. Episode one, Three Eggs and a Bottle of Wine. Okay, Peter, I'm not saying you look like you need this. This is what Vogue was recommending in 1977. It's called the wine and egg diet. And it's basically self explanatory because this is what you do on this advice for three days straight.

[Peter Frankerpad]

Okay?

[Afua Hersh]

Breakfast, one hard boiled egg, one glass of white wine, dry, preferably Shabli. A black coffee.

[Peter Frankerpad]

I could do that.

[Afua Hersh]

Lunch, two eggs, ideally hard boiled, but poached if necessary. Two glasses of white wine, preferably Shablis. Black coffee.

[Peter Frankerpad]

I could do that too.

[Afua Hersh]

Dinner, a five ounce steak grilled with black pepper and lemon juice. Where's the butter, guys? Remainder of white wine, one bottle total allowed per day. Black coffee. So if you exist on this diet of eggs and white wine and black coffee for three days straight, you will, Vogue told us in 1977, lose five pounds and feel. Well, I don't know how you would feel because I've never tried this, but it sounds absolutely disgusting to me. And there was a wine.

[Peter Frankerpad]

Wait, wait, wait.

[Afua Hersh]

Let me just. Let me just tell you what. Diane McMartin, who tried this recently, she's a. She's a food and wine writer and she did this faithfully for three days and wrote about it. This is what she said. By the end of day three, I was exhausted, cranky, and kind of shaky on my feet. I felt like I had gotten stupider. I couldn't understand simple things people ask me, and I definitely couldn't absorb anything new. I wasn't surprised by how hungry or spaced out I was on this bizarre diet. But what I didn't expect was how it would affect me emotionally. The sadness I felt at night was something else. I love wine, but it's a depressant. And without a more normal amount of food to help blunt the effects of alcohol, I think I was experiencing. Experiencing a little bit of that sad drunk girl crying in the bathroom syndrome, many of us Observed in college. Wow. I don't know what to say, but the reason I open with this is just to say that the advice from supposedly well informed quarters about how we should regulate our weight has for a long time been bananas.

[Peter Frankerpad]

Well, okay, let's just go back to the beginning first. That's a boost to my normal breakfast. As, you know, we talk about it, we always do our sound checks. It's always, I just have a cup of coffee. So as adding a boiled egg and a glass of white wine doesn't sound too bad. Lunch, white wine and some eggs. I mean, there's a steak at dinner. I mean, maybe. Maybe having white wine with a steak is really why people feel bad about it. And Diane felt sort of grotesque. You should be having a really nice, good Burgundy.

[Afua Hersh]

It's the eggs for me. I'm. Maybe this is the Ghanaian in me as well. I'm not a fan of cold food. So cold boiled eggs is just one of those things that makes me think I don't want to be slimmer that badly. Like, I would rather not be slimmer and enjoy the life that I have, you know?

[Peter Frankerpad]

Our youngest son is a teenager. He had to eat a lot of eggs over the course of about a week or two. And he, I think on day three said he just couldn't do it anymore. And I think I think of eggs as quite inoffensive, maybe because I don't have them very often. It's true. I've been in place like Mexico, where you get eggs every single morning for breakfast. And by day. Day, actually by day. Not day three, by day two, you think, I would really like to try anything else. But I always thought that was because I'm having coffee. But the. The diet idea about that, you're correlated diet with thinness and therefore with beauty and the rest of it. So you're not having this Afro to be nutritionally beneficial. It's not to help your body. It's to. It's to think yourself thin. Right.

[Afua Hersh]

I think we can agree on that. I mean, nutritionists weighed in on this diet. It was kind of rediscovered in, like the 2000 and twenties. And nutritionists weighed in, you know, I mean, we can recognize the kind of like, high protein, low carb of the boiled eggs and the steak. The black coffee is a stimulant. It can increase metabolic rates, and it can also be an appetite suppressant. But the wine, like, it's very difficult to explain that. Even red wine, as I think a lot of people will know, does have some nutritional benefits. It contains an antioxidant known as Revesterol, which is found in skin of the grapes and red wine. And that reduces apparently, the risk of cancer and heart disease and can suppress inflammation and blood clots when drunk in moderation, obviously. But white wine doesn't have any of those benefits. And actually, it was really interesting that Diane McMartin, who wrote that account of trying that diet, who is a wine expert, was explaining that in the 70s in America, when they said Shabli, what they really meant was quite cheap Chenin Blanc that was blended with Columbard and Chardonnay. And it was kind of the era of Californian wine production boom. So these were basically like cheap white wines that were plentifully available in America that were being kind of sold as Shablis, because that sounded more chic. So it's not even like great wine, and it has no nutritional value. And actually, when you're not eating enough is pretty bad for you. So I don't know what they were thinking, Peter.

[Peter Frankerpad]

Well, number one, look, you've got to shout out for the 1970s and that Vogue is doing this stuff. I mean, if you're going to. I mean, I don't know how they came up with this diet. I assume over lunch. Maybe Vogue staffers weren't even eating in the 1970s either. But the idea that this is the way to sort of think yourself and drink yourself thin. I don't know. When you say that the wine was Shablis, not even Shabbily, and it was sort of cheap white wine, that democratizes all of this, isn't it? It makes it sort of easier for people to think, you know, what's the cost of your daily meal if it's just coffee and three eggs during the course of the day and a bottle of wine. If you get the bottle of wine for cheap, that sounds like it's quite cost efficient. But I do think if you have not eaten enough, you do, one can get very, very edgy and quite snappy. I don't know. Do you sometimes forget to eat after you? I definitely. Sometimes I work through lunch and I can tell that I'm getting ratty because when people email me, I start swearing at myself. Do you?

[Afua Hersh]

Yeah, I do. I do wonder if the white wine rationale is just to kind of numb the pain of the fact that you're not eating enough and what you're eating is cold eggs. I do. I mean, I've definitely experimented with fasting a lot in the past. I do sometimes fast, and that's completely different to this though, that's not about starvation. On the contrary, actually it's about kind of maximizing your body's efficiency to digest and absorb nutrients. And it's not to stop yourself eating. Like you would never drink wine and it's not even great to drink black coffee. When you're fasting. It's not about like limiting your calorific intake. It's just about letting your body rest and regenerate. So. But I have tried that and I have experienced experience the full range of emotional states that comes when you're fasting. And it is interesting. One of the things I like about fasting actually is that you learn so much about your relationship with food and you learn how much eating is more a kind of emotional experience or essential pleasure rather than actually what your body needs. Because when you're fasting you start to realize when you feel like food versus when you actually feel deficient and you need food to power you. And I think it's. If you don't even know the difference between those, it's difficult to eat in a balanced way, even if you're not on any kind of restrictive system. So I think fasting is useful for that. But yeah, you can get quite cranky and I don't get low energy when I'm fasting. Actually, weirdly, you'd think you would like run out of energy. I can still train and go for a run and go to the gym. It's more that you feel like you miss food and it's emotional rather than physical.

[Peter Frankerpad]

When you say the full range of emotion aphrod, do you mean elation as well? Do you mean stuff at the good end or do you.

[Afua Hersh]

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I feel usually it's, it's dips and flows, but the first day is really, really hard and you miss food and you're in a really bad mood that you've got life. I do three day fasts usually once or twice a year. The first day you really like are really grumpy that you've got no dinner and you kind of like want your latte. Well, these are the things that I like. And then the second day you feel amazing. You feel like your body's reset, you don't have any digestive issues. You feel weirdly energized. Like it's like your body has kind of supercharged itself. And then by the middle or the end of the third day, you start to feel quite low energy and really looking forward to breaking your fast. So you go through all these fates, but I think you should only do fasting if you have quite a healthy relationship with your body and food because otherwise it can fuel disordered eating. And if you worry about your weight, it's a really bad way to lose weight because when you start eating it and you'll regain the weight. So fasting is not a weight loss strategy. That's more a kind of like managing your relationship food, it can have quite a spiritual dimension. Anyway, that's a very long answer to the question of yes, I can get cranky, but I don't eat. But Peter, have you ever, I mean, you know, we're going to talk about diets. Have you ever been on a diet? Do you ever worry about your weight?

[Peter Frankerpad]

As I get older, I'm more conscious that I don't invest enough in my physical health. I mean, that's partly a product of being busy or feeling a bit busy all the time. So I under prioritize and that that then goes quite often with bad dietary habits. I mean I travel quite a lot, quite have to travel quite a lot for work. And so there can be jet lag effects, there could be timing issues that could be working through meetings and missing meals. And so it can be a bad, bad degree. I've definitely, I've always had quite a sweet tooth that, that used to be reasonably forgiving. Now, now as I get older that's a little bit harder, you know. And Also in my mid-50s, I'm in slipers alley where, you know, people, people my age suddenly start to start to fall ill with quite serious complications. So I think it pays off to, to not think you're superhuman and immortal. But I've always, I've always been pretty good with having to do demanding things, so demanding timings. So I've never really had to worry. But I've definitely noticed in the last couple of years that it's been less forgiving. My body aches more, you know, definitely susceptible to putting on a bit of weight here and there. And it's not that I'm worried about my what I look like. It's more that that's a sign that I'm burning a candle at both ends. So my strategy is to be better.

[Afua Hersh]

Yeah, I'm smiling not because any of that is funny, but just because I was thinking about how much I can vouch for what you're saying. Because people listening might not realize how hard it is for us to schedule these recording sessions. Because I travel, but Peter's travel schedule is like next level. So you're never in the Same time zone. You don't have a routine because every day is different in a good way. Like, it's a very interesting life. And also I think we enable each other because when we record in the studio, it is like, who can win at the biscuit supply? I mean, we both love like a Kit Kat or it's old school, a club bar. People who aren't British won't understand this. It's going to sound so weird. Those really like a Twix. Love this. We just. I'm more of a biscuit person. Like, I like a good malted milk or a digestive. So, yeah, you know, when, when you're tired and you have a lot to get through, is that. Again, see that for me, if I was going to say nutritionally, what do I need to power through this podcast episode? I would probably have like a protein shake. But instead I'm like, what's going to make me feel good? I'll have a cup of tea and a biscuit.

[Peter Frankerpad]

And a cream egg. And a cream egg in the break.

[Afua Hersh]

Yeah, that. That's really hitting the mark. Yes.

[Peter Frankerpad]

I'm sure people are listening to hear our own dietary needs and our medical histories when it comes to what we. But we're going to talk about the history of diet, the legacies of diets, the ways in which we're all sitting on thousands of years of inherited ideas from different traditions about what we should eat, why, how, what we should look like, what it does to our bodies. Right. So, I mean, part of the purpose of that is to think about some of the things you've written about afwa, about how we think about our own bodies and about those of others.

[Afua Hersh]

Right, exactly. I think body image says so much about our culture and our values and the pressures that we put on ourselves. What are we trying to conform to, what's being held as the standard? But also something I'm really excited to get into, Peter, is genuine curiosity about whether we've always had this preoccupation with our weight and our body image. Is this something that's kind of fundamental to our species, or is this, as I think many of us think, a very modern thing about the kind of post industrial age and the abundance of food and often cheap, fast, manufactured, processed food and the pressures of media and social media, or is it something more ancient and inevitable? So it's a really interesting story we'll get into when we come back from the break.

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[Afua Hersh]

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[Peter Frankerpad]

So Afro, what I love about doing these podcasts with you is when we talk about the topics we're going to do and we think about diets or spas or thermal baths. I know. We compare our research notes. You're never going to start with the Instagram of 2010. You're going to go back to the ancient Egyptians, the Babylonians. Take us back 4,000 years, which you won't be surprised to know is exactly what I've done for some of the notes I've passed back the other way. So we're starting at the beginning because I think that's the thing that's very interesting to take these long range legacies. But you do that instinctively, right? I mean, I think as a historian I need to. But you're always interested in going back to early systems to think about how those have created these chain reactions.

[Afua Hersh]

This is what I love about doing it with you, Peter. You're the historian and you're so knowledgeable about the ancient world. I'm the journalist and I always want to get deeper into the reason for things. And I always find, you know, you look at the last century or the last 500 years, you end up having to ask questions about the last millennium or the last three millennia. And it's an inevitable process of following your curiosity. Nothing comes from thin air in our culture and in our way of life. You know, always has a backstory. So as is so often the case, this backstory goes back to ancient Egypt. I mean, you might know it a bit going further back, but I found that the Egyptian worldview about bodies and diet showed origins of ideas that I recognize in contemporary life.

[Peter Frankerpad]

Go on, like what?

[Afua Hersh]

Well, there's an emphasis on bodily purity. So the ancient Egyptians have a narrative about purity, about cleansing the body. They use rituals for bodily cleansing, but also laxatives, taking this quite literally kind of purging and allowing for a digestive reset. Now, again, laxatives are not something that I think is always a good idea, but, you know, I think we can recognize what it does. This like purging, especially after a period of excess and this wasn't just for health. This was also connected with beauty, this idea of cleansing from the inside as well as on the skin. And they were heavily into aesthetics and cosmetics, as we know as well. And as in contemporary society, this was not in a kind of socioeconomic vacuum. It was also connected to wealth and status. And as I think many of us will recognize from today, elites who had access to the most excess actually placed a value on. On moderation in ancient Egypt, because that showed a level of sophistication, not just that you can consume everything that you can get hold of, but that you actually care for your body and its appearance.

[Peter Frankerpad]

It's one of those funny things. And in fact, in ancient Greece, too, with people like Hippocrates, who promotes balanced eating and exercise not for your appearance, but for health, that process of denying your cravings, of being able to do things in moderation, of being physically disciplined, is quite closely connected with moral virtues, the ability to resist temptation. I mean, again, that's something you find in lots of different societal systems and belief systems, too. The idea that you should be able to resist what your urges are telling you, that you can deny yourself, whether it's in Buddhism or in the Lord's Prayer, save us from temptation. It doesn't necessarily have to be to do with food. But I think that idea that you shouldn't let your impulses govern you, that you need to be strict in what you do. So there's ideas about purification, about rituals, about virtue, about your body. They all go back deep, deep roots, I think. And that's very interesting, too, because it's not just about athleticism and being fit and healthy. It's about a wider sense of cosmologies.

[Afua Hersh]

But I wanted to ask about the athleticism. I mean, we think of the athletics of the ancient Greeks, you know, gave us the Olympics and their obsession with the male form. You know, we all seen Greek statues with this, like, guy with an eight pack and, you know, these, like, pert buttocks that are actually very much back in the day.

[Peter Frankerpad]

So, Jill, right now.

[Afua Hersh]

So, Jill, how much do you think that appreciation for this very athletic physique was part of the Greek mindset that kind of moralized. Started to moralize over consumption?

[Peter Frankerpad]

It's really interesting. I mean, I think our assumption always is that when you see these statues, that's what everybody looked like in the ancient world, rather than we're clinically obese. And I mean, it's true some of the things that make people overweight are to do with sugars. And so until you've got commercialization of sugar, which is obviously terrible for your teeth. Then it's carbs, and it's sugary carbs and starches that are. That will make you put on weight. But I think that there's a kind of an assumption that because you see these white marble statues of all men looking, well, fit, as a young person might say, with the beautiful buttocks and eight packs, that that's what everybody looks like, rather than they walk down the street, these statues, and think, you know, you've got to be dreaming, or girlfriends or wives say to their husbands, how come you don't look like that? But it's also to do with the ways in which people live, you know, from pre electrical. Well, it goes without saying. People's rhythms are dictated by the hour that the sun will set. They'll dictate it by whether you can have candlelight and what that does to your physiques and also what it does to your sleeping patterns, but also what you do with your time. And if you're carrying things around, I mean, part of the reason why that athletics in the past, as in today, that competition, is of course a cipher for manliness, bravery, and, of course, war, that there is an idea that you're not just in mint condition because it makes you look good or feel good, you're in mint condition because that keeps you safe. And it keeps you safe because you're strong and you can resist attacks from elsewhere. So if you know how to fire a bow, if you know how to run fast, those things are skills that have been learned from ancient societies.

[Afua Hersh]

As you're speaking. Actually, I'm thinking about within the manosphere today. There's this whole movement framed around, think like a Spartan train, like a Spartan, and, you know, all these male influencers who are encouraging modern men to basically try and emulate the lifestyle, I think the perceived lifestyle, because I don't know how actually knowledgeable they are about the reality of ancient Greeks. But it's this romanticization of the idea that these men, just warriors who ate a lot of clean protein and rose with the sun and, you know, went and kind of showed their manliness on the battlefield every day, and that modern masculinity went wrong to the extent it deviated from that.

[Peter Frankerpad]

There's a fantastic book, the photographer, Don McCullen, who's just a fantastic photographer, so many things, but of wars in particular, he's very famous as a war correspondent and a war photographer, did a book. I mean, he's a fantastic artist as well. As everything else did, a book that came out very recently called the Roman Conceit, which is beautiful statues of the ancient world. But because he's photographed them, they're even more beautiful than you might otherwise think, because he knows which angles to take from how the light should work. And when I read it, you know, what you made you think of is where. Where are the fat people? Where are the bald ones? Where are the people who are not. Who are physically differentiated, who've got, you know, who are physically handicapped or who have got disabilities? You know, why are they never portrayed? And I remember when I did a paper at university about emperors and rule, you know, you have these statues, for example, of the Emperor Augustus, the sort of first great emperor of Rome, standing majestic with his biceps bulging and, you know, he looks like. He looks like the real deal. And then you read written reports about what he looked like, saying he was a tiny little man with waxy hair, terrible breath, bad teeth, and then trying to work out what is the reality. So these, these. These depictions of ideals are about sort of often unattainable, you know, and in fact, even if you have a man who looks like that at some point in their life, they probably don't know that when they're in their 50s, 60s, and 70s in the ancient world. So you're capturing these snapshots of an ideal that is about not just about beauty, it's about youth as well. It's about, say, we prioritize the next generation because they're the people on whom our future depends. I guess it's a bit like that with social media today. You know, the big social media accounts tend not to be by people in their 80s and 90s. There are a few grannies and grandfathers out there who attract lots of supporters.

[Afua Hersh]

But it would be like if you judged our era from the covers of Men's Health magazine, you know, which is basically men in their prime who also, because I know a few men who've done Men's Health covers have gone on like, an insane diet for six weeks before the COVID shoot. So they can be in absolutely the best condition. And then they've done like a water fast for the 36 hours before the shoot, something.

[Peter Frankerpad]

Okay, the water fast.

[Afua Hersh]

That's where you're going wrong, Peter. And whenever there is an older man on the COVID of Men's Health, it's because he looks like a younger man, and that's being celebrated. So it's not representative of society, but it does tell you something about the ideal. And as you said, like, well, gel, you know, like, I think a lot of men, if they don't look like that, would like to look like that. And that's why you can't really disconnect diet and what people are actually eating with what they aspire to eat with what they aspire to look like. And it's just interesting to look back at the ancient period and see how connected it was that this was all also geared towards achieving an aesthetic improvement. If not the idea.

[Peter Frankerpad]

I mean, we're going to get there. But I think it's very interesting about the idea of, you know, what we think of taps. You take for granted that people look after themselves. They worry about, they work out, they go to the gym, they're interested in sculpting their body so it looks in absolute mint condition. Obviously it's quite connected to digitization, ability to take photos, to share them, the digital age. But, you know, because I don't think that that's before the film world, I suppose, but in the 18, 1900s, people didn't worry so much about their physiques. You know, you can see that because all the paintings of portly, well rounded rich men in all, you know, in the, in Britain in particular, but elsewhere too. But when we come back, afraid, I want to ask you about thinness being associated with holiness and with piety and self discipline and to think about starvation saints, about the ways in which extra holy people have manifested their devotion through their ability to not eat.

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[Afua Hersh]

So, Peter, I think that we're talking about the Greeks and the moral virtue associated with achieving temperance and a desirable physique. But the Romans took that further and begun to really moralize gluttony as something that showed character weakness and moderation as something to praise. And we all know about Roman overindulgence. I mean, they maybe are really responsible for the beginnings of proper, like binge and purge culture because they would do these insane overindulgence sessions, these huge feasts that would go on for days. But then I suppose that places a higher value on trying to rebound and bring things back to some kind of balance. But when Christianity enters the chat, we get a whole new level of narrative about the connection between fasting and the denial of food with spiritual purity and control of the Body as something that has real spiritual dimensions.

[Peter Frankerpad]

We've talked before about the role that women play in the spread of Christianity in particular and in religions. But tell us about St. Catherine of Siena, who, as it happens, as a quick disclaimer, is one of my absolute favorites for lots of different reasons. Oh, really Interesting. Tell us about Catherine of Siena.

[Afua Hersh]

Yeah, I chose her as someone I thought we should talk about because I think, well, she's kind of regarded as a starvation saint. I mean, it's quite literal, but she's a really fascinating young woman whose life is kind of unexpected in many ways. So she was born in 1347 in Siena, in Italy, in what's now Italy. And against the desire of her parents, she wanted from a young age to devote herself to. To God. So this wasn't parental pressure, but she described having visions from the age of six where she saw Christ in pontifical vestments above her neighborhood church. And she eventually, when her parents tried to marry her off to her sister's husband after her sister died, decided to fast in protest. So she began this massive fast that actually now is being characterized as a form of disordered eating. Actually, like retrospectively, this kind of behavior is now called anorexia mirabilis. So holy anorexia, which is a one way of looking at it, uncomfortable term. But basically, among her contemporaries, it was regarded as a miraculous lack of appetite. That the ability to have that level of discipline, to starve oneself to that extent, was coming from this kind of divine ordination. And it was becoming very popular in the Middle Ages as a sign of extreme devotion. So from that beginning, where she was trying to. I think. I suppose you could also describe it as a cry for help. Her parents are trying to marry her, she's lost her sister, she's being forced to marry her sister's husband. She fasts as a form of protest, and that begins a lifetime of. Of really extreme eating, where she basically lives on water and vegetables. And then at the age of 33, she essentially starves herself to death. Peter?

[Peter Frankerpad]

Well, I think. I mean, I hadn't really thought about.

[Afua Hersh]

Why is she one of your favourites? Just out of total curiosity, because the

[Peter Frankerpad]

agency of women in the Middle Ages, I think, is interesting. She's born in 3047, so that's the time of the Black Death. So this is the time of enormous suffering, a population loss, perhaps of 40%. So death is completely standardized and normal. And she doesn't want to do what it is that her family are telling her to do. So she's incredibly brave. She stands up for her beliefs, and she correlates her discipline and the way she wants to live her life as devotion to Christ. So I think I wasn't so well read up to speed on the fact that she is a starvation saint, but as an inspiration for a woman who's able to take control of her own destiny. So I suppose there's something in that about. I mean, with things like eating disorders, there obviously is something around control and be able to manage every single part of what you do. I'm always slightly uncomfortable about modern projection. Well, not slightly. I'm always very uncomfortable about projections of things we think about today. To read through texts to sort of imply things that have modern resonances. Because that doesn't seem to be the case at all. Because, as it happens, St. Catherine generates a lot of sympathy, a lot of love, a lot of devotion from people in her peer group that I suspect wouldn't be happening in if she was medically and mentally going through lots of difficult times. That was all written about her at the time. And later, that she is someone who puts her faith absolutely first and therefore is somebody who lives her life in a very brave way. So perhaps I need to go back and read those sources a bit more carefully.

[Afua Hersh]

I think you're right that it's difficult to project a modern lens. First of all, the kinds of disordered eating that exist in our society take place in a context where there's so much social pressure to be thin. And that wasn't the case at the time of St. Catherine's life. You know, she's not seeking or achieving more social approval through starvation. On the contrary, actually, there's a lot of disapproval of women using agency, period, but also using starvation to get closer to Christ. It wasn't even something that the religious authorities necessarily approved of. And actually, she kind of earned their respect through her relentless devotion. You know, she continued to have these visions. There's actually a really famous painting of her by the artist Giovanni De Paolo depicting her receiving such blessings from God as a result of the starvation that she receives the wounds of Christ during the Passion, you know, the holy stigmata. So I think that it's a really fair point that, you know, this. What, uncomfortable and problematic as it is. This is a kind of protest. She's going against the grain, know, rather than towards it. And, you know, I mean, people who have extreme spiritual devotion do do extreme things. And I think it is a different case. There's still lots of monks and nuns and people who live in kind of isolation and take these extreme Fasts as a form of spiritual adventure, it's, I think, fair to say that's different from somebody trying to achieve more material gains of being a certain dress size or looking a certain way or conforming to a beauty.

[Peter Frankerpad]

Yeah. And I think even, even the switch to vegetable, we think of today as sort of, you know, vegetarianism, and it's a sort of faddish cult. I mean, Siena, you know, is in Tuscany, just up the road in Assisi in Umbria, about a century earlier, Francis of Assisi talking about the importance of sustainability, the importance of understanding the natural world, of respect for animals, all those kinds of things. And so even those ways of trying to conceptualize what we should be eating and how, why and when, you know, is a bit more, is a bit more complicated. And in fact, quite often these things are about the body and blood of Christ and about how communion is being taken on. So, you know, I think things are careful, we need to be careful. And what is absolutely right is that in, you know, monasteries do become very wealthy, they become a good place to have a reasonably good quality of life, particularly if you're not from a wealthy background. So there are lots of monastic rules that target people from being, I mean, I know you calling them anti fat rules, afraid, but I think they're about obesity and about telling monks, look, if you're too heavy to get up to pray at night, you know, maybe it's worth your while reducing your rations and remembering why you're here.

[Afua Hersh]

Anti fat rules, Peter, what else are you going to call them? In this era, monasteries started to associate. So even if they're not promoting starvation as a way of getting closer to God, they are condemning overeating and obesity as a sign of spiritual inertness. And they create these rules about portion sizes, limiting them. Some abbots complain in their letters about these monks who are basically too fat to get up for night prayers, and they try and reduce rations to keep monks spiritually alert. A Benedictine Abbott in the 1313th century joked that too much meat made his monks slothful and slow as cattle. So I think it's fair to describe this as a kind of like anti fat ideology that's taking hold.

[Peter Frankerpad]

That's what they are. It's just, it's not the academic term, that's all. I take the point, but I mean,

[Afua Hersh]

what's the academic term?

[Peter Frankerpad]

I think it's always about monastic rules, in addition, about the foundations and to think about the charters on which these things are written.

[Afua Hersh]

I'm not even a tabloid journalist, but I just Judged it up for you. You're welcome.

[Peter Frankerpad]

But look, I think it's also the ideas about the body are obviously slightly different. So we've got Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the most famous medieval women, a tiny bit earlier than Catherine of Siena. But, you know, she's praised as being gracious and ample. She's soft, she's full figured and well fed. And those, those are meant as compliments because if you're wealthy, you can afford to eat, and if you're poor, then your diet is, is bad. So that there's some. There's an element of class in this and of wealth and of status. And so I think it's, it's not that people are thinking about what their body looks like in the same way that perhaps in the early modern period onwards, people are more concerned about.

[Afua Hersh]

I mean, this is an era where you're not posing in your bikini on Instagram, like your body is covered. There is a completely different attit towards physical appearance and desirability. And actually, as you said, Peter, there are so many people. We've got plagues and famines, people are starving to death. So medieval peasants aren't dieting, they're trying to stay alive. They're trying to survive bad harvests and plagues. And, you know, the thinness that does show through the clothing that you're wearing is, is not a status symbol. It shows that you're kind of living close to the line. So it is a different time. And that, you know, makes it make sense why someone like Eleanor Aquitaine is praised for looking ample. And I think it's interesting here that she's not being described as somebody who's got like rolls of fat. It's somebody who is kind of soft and full figured. And it reminds me of more recent times when even when body positivity started to kind of come into the mode in like the 2010s, it was rarely people who were really overweight. It was people who are basically normal, like not really, really thin, that have kind of, you know, as a woman, like more feminine curves. And it's so interesting that that was seen as radical because before that there was such an extreme interest in thinness that just to see a woman who actually kind of looked like how the majority of women looked was considered, like, very progressive.

[Peter Frankerpad]

Yeah. But things do start to change then. In the early modern period, I guess we talk about the 18th century onwards. I suppose some of that is because of high levels of literacy, you know, the printing press. I definitely want to do some. An episode of Legacy on that, but the ways in which people are starting to travel a bit more, learning more about themselves. And also in Europe anyway, what's usually called the Enlightenment, where ideas about science are becoming more developed, particularly about things like biology, how does the human body work? And so that starts to drive a few discussions around. What does health look like? What does it mean? And also, as Britain has got wealthy of its empire of sugars and wines, some people are really over indulging in a massive and necrotic way. So when we come back next time for our next episode of Legacy, we're going to think about diets from the 18th century onwards up until the modern age and to think about what it is that in today's world we've learned good and bad from the past. Thanks for listening to Legacy.

[Afua Hersh]

I'm Afua Hersh.

[Peter Frankerpad]

I'm Peter Frankerpad. And don't forget to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast player. You can also watch all our episodes on YouTube, so do make sure you're subscribed there, too.

[Afua Hersh]

And of course, we're on all the socials. All the links are in the show notes for this episode or just search Legacy podcast.

[Peter Frankerpad]

We'll see you on the next episode of Legacy.

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[Afua Hersh]

Is it in you?

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