If they managed to survive plague and pestilence, medieval humans may have enjoyed healthier lifestyles than their descendants today. Their low-fat, vegetable-rich diet - washed down by weak ale - was far better for the heart than today's starchy, processed foods.

It sounds like a grotesque form of medieval torture: a punishing, detox program which means no food must pass your lips for nearly three weeks. Just about all you are allowed to do is drink a mixture containing husks and clay - and that's not to mention the DIY colonic irrigation.

I can still remember the first day I became hooked on the Food Network. It was about 3 years ago at University in London, Ontario, when I was sitting on my couch (most likely a tad hung-over) watching TV and debating whether or not to go to class.Just as I was motivating myself to get up, I came across Rob Rainford smoking some medieval looking

According to the Tax Foundation, taxes now consume more than 38% of the average family's budget. That is more than is spent on food, clothing, housing, and transportation combined. Compare this to the plight of medieval serfs. They only had to give the lord of the manor one-third of their output -- and they were considered slaves.

Forget beer: mead, that ancient alcoholic beverage made from honey, is making a comeback.

Medieval cuisine refers to the foods, eating habits, and cooking methods of various European cultures during the Middle Ages, a period roughly dating from the 5th to the 16th century. During this period, diets and cooking changed across Europe, and these changes helped lay the foundations for modern European cuisine.Bread was the staple, followed by other foods made from cereals, such as porridge and pasta. Meat was more prestigious and more expensive than grain or vegetables. Common seasonings included verjuice, wine and vinegar. These, along with the widespread use of honey or sugar (among those who could afford it), gave many dishes a sweet-sour flavor. The most popular types of meat were pork and chicken, while beef, which required greater investment in land, was less common. Cod and herring were mainstays among the northern population, but a wide variety of other saltwater and freshwater fish were also eaten. Almonds, both sweet and bitter, were eaten whole as garnish, or more commonly ground up and used as a thickener in soups, stews, and sauces. Particularly popular was almond milk, which was a common substitute for animal milk during Lent and fasts.Slow transportation and inefficient food preservation techniques prevented long-distance trade of many foods. For the most part, only the wealthy, especially the nobility, could afford imported ingredients such as spices, so their cuisine was more prone to foreign influence than the cuisine of poorer people. As each level of society imitated the one above it, innovations from international trade and foreign wars gradually disseminated through the upper middle class of medieval cities.In a time when famine was commonplace and social hierarchies were often brutally enforced, food was an important marker of social status in a way that has no equivalent today in most developed countries. Aside from economic unavailability of luxuries such as spices, decrees outlawed consumption of certain foods among certain social classes, and sumptuary laws limited the conspicuous consumption among the nouveau riche who were not nobility. Social norms also dictated that the food of the working class be less refined, since it was believed there was a divine or natural resemblance between one's labor and one's food, so manual labor required coarser, cheaper food.