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The characters' diet on the recent Showtime Tudors series was a bit half baked. Literally-way too much of it was raw, and that would have never flown in the Tudor court.

This is just one example of what a waste it is that so much of the time spent in dramatizing history is needed just to deal with the prevalent myths out there. For instance, when someone does a historical movie or series, it might go through the producers' minds, well do we want to get accurate information on this, and maybe look like a bunch of nerds, only to be repaid for our trouble by the inevitable zillions of responses claiming we were actually wrong if we bothered to take the time to get it right?

Even academic historians attempt to counter misconceptions in the bulk of their work, so the hassle of dealing with the low quality of common historical knowledge is probably one of the main reasons that authenticity in the entertainment industry's historical dramatizations is probably not worth the trouble. And so whatever common perceptions there are get reinforced rather than ever corrected even with this good opportunity to reach mass audiences. There are so many of these decisions that probably shaped the Showtime series that I can't even count them, but one that I noticed what they had characters eat, when to have them eat, what to have them eat with, etc.

The creators likely came down on the side of simplifying the historical details in favor of the main plot. I can't think of why, otherwise, they would have Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon eating raw grapes served to them off of a plate. This is ridiculous for several reasons. First of all, eating fruits and vegetables was very rare in the first place, especially for the meat-eating nobility. And if there was going to be fruit in a dish, it wouldn't have been raw. That was seen as unhealthy and unsanitary at the time.

Mostly from the late middle ages and before, fruits were baked into what we would probably think of as more like Indian-style chutneys, and in fact diets in the whole of Eurasia were more consistent before wealth enabled some nations to differentiate themselves. And along similar lines, most food and drink was much more heavily spiced than we would expect from the image that gets perpetuated of people eating off of a big leg of lamb or something at Renaissance banquets, etc (again, the source of history for most people ends up being perpetuated myth).

In the pre-modern era most food even in Europe was more consistent with how third world diets often are today, everything is chopped up together and heavily spiced with whatever that is available to preserve it and probably to disguise the unsavory flavors. That actually makes a bit of sense. Europe was probably first to be able to show status (the wealthy showed status by everything they did) by serving fresh food that didn't need such heavy treatment, and that is why the more bland diet ended up being associated with Europe.

But you would never guess this from the grape-plucking, raw apple crunching, and leg of lamb roasting that always happens in the background in costume productions to give them that genuine historical 'flavor' so to speak. Kind of an unfortunate state of affairs that in order to seem realistic there is the pressure to perpetuate falsehood.

Learn more about this author, Carol H. Morgan.
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