> According to Galen, food “is probably the most important of all medical subjects,”

Just remember that in medieval times growing food was the job of the majority of men. Men also were the people most likely to be educated and actually write and talk about things and so food would be something on their mind. They would be growing it and thus writing about it. contrary to modern ideas men actually appeared to have done a lot of cooking: women were not common in the army (different cultures had different perspectives on women with the army. Some would have more than others, but in any case, you would have men as the vast majority) so men would have had to do at least some cooking. Even your common peasant farmer man would likely spend a significant amount of time out in the field at lunchtime where the women are not around and so would have to fend for themselves for their lunch.

I bring the book up to point out that no one has ever asked what women were doing and what was important. This is something historians are looking at now when trying to piece together what must have been happening. As a general rule, you can say that every woman was spending the vast majority of their working hours making thread so they could have clothes, but since women were rarely the ones who were writing, we have almost no historical record of clothing. What we do have is often from tailors who would be a male and thus something that occasionally a man would write about.

Outside of monasteries, the intersection of men who were literate and men who were directly involved in food production was tiny.

Farming men weren’t cooking their midday meal out in the fields; they took some bread and maybe some protein out with them at the start of their working day.

you would probably like the book Invisible Women. Touches a lot on this subject and how there is so much "missing data" when we talk about these things and it carries through to the modern day