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The distinctive style of cooking used to create the rich flavours in Mediterranean food may have been first developed by ancient Greek doctors trying to find ways of treating patients.

A new study of texts written by ancient Hippocratic doctors and philosophers has shown that they believed flavour was a key marker of the nutritional and health giving potency of foods.

Experts behind the research say the ancient Greeks saw food as a key to balancing the health of the human body and some physicians even wrote cookery books.

Foods with strong flavours like garlic (left) and truffles (right) were often prescribed by ancient doctors

They claim that rather than purely thinking about flavour as pleasurable, they also saw it as important for improving foods medicinal qualities.

Ancient doctors such as Galen of Pergamon put particular emphasis on cooking simple ingredients to improve their flavour, a practice that continues in the region today.

He commonly prescribed his patients foods rich in garlic and onions to readjust their 'humours' - the four bodily fluids that they believed influenced health.

Other ancient physicians focused on the the need to use high quality ingredients in cooking at the right time of year.

Plato is also known to have written about the importance of food on health and Hippocrates said: 'Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.' 

Professor John Wilkins, an expert on Greek Culture at the University of Exeter, said this early work may help to explain why the Mediterranean diet is now considered to be among the healthiest in the world.

He said that although many of the ingredients associated with modern Mediterranean food such as lemons, oranges and tomatoes had yet to be imported into the region from China and South America, the basic principals of how ingredients were used appeared to be laid down by these early doctors.

Professor Wilkins said: 'They take flavour as a measure of nutritional potency because that property of astringency in unripe apples or pungency in onions reflects the effect that the food will have on the digested material and ultimately the impact on the humours of the body.

'Galen sees nutrition as a third of the medical art, along with pharmacology and surgery.

'If people had too much thick humour, phlegm in particular, then they needed onions and garlic to thin it. That is a sort of early idea of dealing with too much cholesterol.'

The ancient Greek physician Galen of Pergamon, seen above, believed nutrition was essential for good health

Professor Wilkins said that among Galen's extensive writings on food, he includes recipes for pancakes and discussess the types of bread and cakes that should be eaten.

He also tackles the dangers of milk, which he believed the whey and solids it contains may block the narrow channels in the liver in susceptible individuals.

Many of the recipes he writes about use simple cooking techniques designed to bring to bring out the flavour of basic ingredients.

Galen, who was born in 129AD, is considered to be among the most influential Greek Hippocratic physicians and his texts were widely used.

He primarily believed in humorism, which is based on the idea that an excess or deficiency of four distinct bodily fluids, or humours, influences a person's temperament and health

Among the foods Galen considered at length are lentils, which he recommended boiling only once and seasoning them with fish sauces and olive oil. 

This he says would give them a laxative effect while if they are boiled twice they would have a 'drying effect' on the stomach and bowel.

In one text Galen also described how snails, now a popular dish associated with French food, need to be boiled twice in water to reduce their laxative properties.

Many of the herbs, like those above, recommended by ancient Greek doctors are still used in cooking today

He also emphasised the need to season food such as snails properly and believed that cooking shellfish simply could enhance their properties.

Professor Wilkins, whose study is published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology, said that Galen often recommended tropical spices like pepper, ginger and cinnamon to his wealthier clients.

Other doctors emphasised the importance of fruits and vegetables while only eating sweet foods in moderation.

A Hippocratic text dating to 400BC called Regimen II warns that 'many sweet foods are laxative, but some are constipating, some dry the body, others moisten it'.

The author then classifies foods such as barley, cereals, pulses, fruits, vegetables, meats and fish as being particularly powerful for treating human health.

Wild carrots, mushrooms, radishes and truffles are also seen as being important by doctors at the time.

Galen believed shellfish should be cooked simply, a technique still seen today in dishes like the one above

In some cases ingredients that are no longer used, like silphium, a wild fennel that is now extinct, and flowers like asphodel and muscari are also used in cooking.

Compared to these Hippocratic texts, Professor Wilkins found that authors at the same time who were writing about cooking for pleasure rather than health, like the author Archestratus, a poet from Sicily in the 4th century BC, tended to focus on levels of fat, salt and sugar.

Professor Wilkins said: 'The ancient diet resembled the modern Mediterranean diet but without oranges and lemons from China and tomatoes from S America of course.

'The diet is based largely on the plants of the region, which the doctors generally preferred over imported luxuries.

'Also the ancient Mediterranean area did not sustain huge numbers of animals, so meat was limited, as it is in the modern Mediterranean.

'The soil produced the flavour-rich foods, to make the cereals palatable.'

Ian Marber, an independent nutritionist, said that many of the approaches to cooking outlined by ancient doctors were still used by Mediterranean chefs today.

He said: 'People at that time did not have access to the processed foods we eat today so using simple ingredients like olive oil and fish sauce to flavour food makes perfect sense.

'We see this continuing today in Mediterranean food and the nutritional benefits of this kind of diet is well established.'