Plain Fare. By modern standards, the Greek diet was rather plain and lacking in variety, and heavily based on grains (wheat and barley in particular). As one scholar observed: "The typical Greek meal consisted of two courses: the first, a kind of porridge; the second, a kind of porridge"—a humorous exaggeration, but not always that much of one, especially for the poorer classes or in times of scarcity. For the modern student looking at the Greek diet, what is most striking are the absences: foods that were not eaten because they were not known to the Greeks (potatoes, tomatoes, sugar, corn, citrus fruits, coffee, tea, and bananas) or because the Greeks simply did not care for them (butter, beer, and milk). The diet, however, was in many ways similar to that followed in modern Greece, in particular in its dependence...