I just finished an interesting book about the history of food in European modern history.  That is defined by the end of the Medieval period up to the Industrial Revolution in England.  The first half was about what people , food and religion, which wasn’t what you would expect.  Fasting was a large part of the topic, or the absence of food, as it has been used so much by so many different Christian doctrines.  One wonders if fasting was also a way to prevent shortages and control distribution of food, since not everything was as reliably plentiful then as it is now, and the name of the church was how this was institutionalized in conjunction with the ruling classes.