Tavole monastiche: aspetti e curiosità su cibo e bevande

The topic of nutrition and monastic diet has been and continues to be at the center of many interests, spiritual and scientific, but also functional, economic and tourist-promotional. The same "Mediterranean diet", included in the heritage of intangible assets protected by UNESCO, is not immune because, if there is a historical root to this model codified in the twentieth century, this must be sought in the medieval tradition and in the Benedictine diet adopted for centuries in Montecassino. It is in fact from that balanced dietary system, defined in chapters 39 and 40 of the Regula Benedicti on the quantity of food and drink of the monks, that everything descends and is linked, on the one hand, to the peculiarity of the rural agricultural and productive context of southern Italy, and, on the other, to the wise combination of foods, such as cereals, legumes, dairy products, eggs, vegetables, fruit, little meat, with a preference for fish, and little wine