English Version | Eat your (baby) food

07 Feb 2023
By Nuno Miguel Dias

You wouldn't believe how long porridge has been vital in man's diet. But just to give you an idea, it may have been responsible for our getting this far. Many spoonfuls later, it continues to delight children and adults alike.

You wouldn't believe how long porridge has been vital in man's diet. But just to give you an idea, it may have been responsible for our getting this far. Many spoonfuls later, it continues to delight children and adults alike.

Habemus Pulticula, and I will explain why... Because if it were Habemus Papa would be too obvious a pun. I am here to provide a little general culture, which never hurt anyone. So, let it be known that the Latin for "There is already a Pope" or, literally, "We have a Pope", the text read by the Cardinal Protodeacon (the oldest of them all) to announce that a new Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church is appointed (while outside, in St. Peter's Square, ordinary mortals are only entitled to see white smoke coming out of the chimney), is Habemus Papam. On the other hand, in the same dead language, Habemus Pulticula means that the porridge is already served, i.e., "Jorge Miguel, put down your cell phone and come sit at the table, fáxavôre." Pulticula was, therefore, what the Romans of lower social stratum ate while the privileged consumed garum (garo), that luxurious condiment that consisted of the brine of blood, and fish guts (and the best was Portuguese, say the good tongues). It is a generic term meaning just "porridge." Its abbreviation, puls, defines the staple food of the common Roman, which consisted of a mixture of cereals roasted, ground, and then boiled with water. Barley was the most common variety, but wheat and spelt were also widely used (isn't spelt now called "ancestral cereal"?). Consumed at jentaculum (breakfast), prandium (lunch), or cena (dinner), it replaced in many households meat, fish, and even bread, goods that were not within everyone's reach. In the case of children, as well as people with more money, water was replaced by goat's or sheep's milk, and it is not known what they would have against cow's milk, and even today they are still fed up with it in Campania, where the mozzarella cheese (and its derivative provola affumicata) is from buffalo, a ruminant with obvious differences besides the shape of the horns. Our distant cousins, the creators of Western civilization, were unknowingly taking the first steps in what has come to be called "artificial baby food." That is, given the impossibility of feeding a newborn baby with the mother's milk it needs so much

for its development, the solution lasted until 1860, the year it became available in its commercial form. Several containers, intended for infant feeding, have been found in use since the Bronze Age. Literature also refers to it, from the Greek physician Soranus of Ephesus in the 2nd century, through the first printed books of the 15th century (where clinicians and surgeons proved to be aware of the risks of artificial feeding), to 17th-century manuals where there are even recipes. During the 18th century, the consecutive publication of the subject evolved from a mere public health concern to a moral ideology. More or less like condoms today. Of course, all these ignored economic pressures, caused many mothers to shorten, or even ignore, the breastfeeding period, leading not only to problems in the children's development but also to a "cultural movement" that employers, amid the industrial revolution, grabbed tooth and nail and that would only be overcome with the Revolution of 1917 and the creation, in the USSR, of the Low Birth Rate and Breastfeeding Leave, examples later followed by all of Europe, which, in the 20th century, saw the Social State as a model that, today, is at serious risk. And the signs are not few.

It is from this point on, until the 19th century, that the first childcare books appeared. Widely published, they are veritable treatises where, in the chapters dedicated to feeding, they cure about the virtues and dangers of artificial feeding, with specific recipes for each type of porridge. With this came the more technical definitions still used today. In English, of course, a distinction is made between porridge, namely: pap, a semi-solid food made of flour or bread crumbs cooked in water, with or without milk (and which has led us to call the same kind of food "porridge," just as we call a cake "muffin"). Gruel, a thinner porridge resulting from boiling cereals in water or milk (the term stuck, and even today the English refer to any food with a watery, unappetizing appearance as "what a gruel"). Finally, panada is a preparation of various cereals or bread cooked in a broth. All of these fall under the common name of porridge, meaning what for us corresponds to porridge or porridge. Porridge can be obtained by milling oats, wheat, rye, or rice (in its earliest forms it could be millet, hemp, barley, chestnut, and acorns), heated or boiled in water or milk. It is associated, by prejudice, with the UK's more rural communities and poverty (with Charles Dickens, in his A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist, being largely responsible for this idea) and, by common sense, with feeding the sick or as part of the process of introducing babies to adult foods. Often, its consistency leads to its consumption being drunk rather than eaten. The pap has, in its making, a gigantic African colonial influence. Originally, it is called ugali, posho, or sima, but each African country has its name (a hundred or more). In Angola, for example, it is funge, which will make it easier to identify for the reader eager to try exotic food. Traditionally, it is made with corn flour and its consistency does not allow it to be drunk, unlike gruel.It is from this point on, until the 19th century, that the first childcare books appeared. Widely published, they are veritable treatises where, in the chapters dedicated to feeding, they cure about the virtues and dangers of artificial feeding, with specific recipes for each type of porridge. With this came the more technical definitions still used today. In English, of course, a distinction is made between porridge, namely: pap, a semi-solid food made of flour or bread crumbs cooked in water, with or without milk (and which has led us to call the same kind of food "porridge," just as we call a cake "muffin"). Gruel, a thinner porridge resulting from boiling cereals in water or milk (the term stuck, and even today the English refer to any food with a watery, unappetizing appearance as "what a gruel"). Finally, panada is a preparation of various cereals or bread cooked in a broth.

All of these fall under the common name of porridge, meaning what for us corresponds to porridge or porridge. Porridge can be obtained by milling oats, wheat, rye, or rice (in its earliest forms it could be millet, hemp, barley, chestnut, and acorns), heated or boiled in water or milk. It is associated, by prejudice, with the UK's more rural communities and poverty (with Charles Dickens, in his A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist, being largely responsible for this idea) and, by common sense, with feeding the sick or as part of the process of introducing babies to adult foods. Often, its consistency leads to its consumption being drunk rather than eaten. The pap has, in its making, a gigantic African colonial influence. Originally, it is called ugali, posho, or sima, but each African country has its name (a hundred or more). In Angola, for example, it is funge, which will make it easier to identify for the reader eager to try exotic food. Traditionally, it is made with corn flour and its consistency does not allow it to be drunk, unlike gruel. In Portugal, the 20th century was decisive in the consumption of porridge. Because advertising came in and made the very old and simple addition of cornstarch to water much more refined with the inclusion of cocoa powder and vanilla, albeit in minimal quantities. The flours appeared. More specifically, the 33 and Amparo flours. Differences between them? One had malt, the other did not. They were only dethroned by Cerelac and Nestum Mel. However, the porridge texture no longer appealed to the palate of the more recent generations, who prefer cereals, that dangerous Americanism with the same amount of sugar in a bowl as we should ingest during a week. And speaking of health, let's also talk about irony. Has anyone ever thought that humans only discovered grain and its cultivation when they became sedentary (they stopped being nomadic gatherers), meanwhile it is 2023 and it is extremely dangerous to eat grain if we lead a sedentary life? No? I didn’t think so. 

Translated from the original on Vogue Portugal's The Innocence Issue, published February 2023.Full story and credits on the print issue.

Nuno Miguel Dias By Nuno Miguel Dias

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