OIL THROUGH THE CENTURIES

The importance of nutrition for humans is in being able to create an increasingly vast energy mix

aimed at the efficient survival activity of the species.

During the Paleolithic Homo Sapiens had hunting, fishing and gathering as primary sources of food spontaneous vegetables (fruits, seeds, roots, tubers, mushrooms).

Our ancestors had to eat mostly raw foods or because they didn’t have them yet discovered the fire, or because the use of it was occasional. Few plant products were suitable then for human nutrition.

The first culinary practices appeared in the Neolithic about 10,000 years ago when man became settled, beginning to cultivate the land and domesticate animals. Only in ancient Rome, yes talks about cooking, which becomes an art with the aim of gratifying the palate and not just the stomach (nutriat spiritum non caro). The cooks of the time widely used oil which was an element fundamental of the Roman diet. Marco Gavio Apicio, in his famous cookbook De Re Coquinaria, lo mentions it in more than three hundred recipes.

Oil was used for seasoning, cooking and to fry. It was also a basic ingredient in preparation of sauces and food preservation.

After the fall of Rome, in the Middle Ages, the Church and the Papacy played an important role which, with the liturgical calendar which banished the carnivorous diet from the table in favor of the vegetable one, favored the use of vegetable oil as a condiment for vegetables, beans, lentils and chickpeas. Not everyone could use olive oil, a prerogative of the social and religious elite; for all the others, alternative vegetable oils were available, such as walnut or almond oil.

This social/food subdivision, incredibly, is the first real step both towards modern cuisine and towards the famous zero kilometer, today the pride of catering.

Over the centuries, foods have also evolved: the need to satisfy multiple meals a day has favored the spread of recipes that are on average less fatty and better performing on a nutritional level. Scientific progress has made possible a series of processes for the safe processing of food, allowing, with the use of oil, the long preservation of meat and vegetables.

So vegetable oils, and not just olive oils, play an important role in modern nutrition. Both in their use in purity, both for conservative purposes, and as a base for doughs and yeasts.

Plant seeds are currently collected all over the world.