Delicious, healthy, and good for digestion: Medical discourse present in the consumption of fruit, preserves, and compotes in sixteenth-century Portuguese America

Abstract

One of the major challenges the European colonizers faced in sixteenth-century Portuguese America was adaptation to their new environment, especially nutritional obstacles. Obtaining the human body’s daily calorie requirements may have been one of the more strenuous tasks in colonial dynamics. Their diets were composed of what was available; in this context, native fruits took on an important role, especially when consumed in the form of compotes and preserves. Our goal is to highlight the importance of colonial sweets, identify how they were consumed, and show the relationship between this activity and the medical discourse which was present in sixteenth-century Europe.