Most people leave few clues as to their daily diets and food habits.
Among the holdings of the Law Library, however, is evidence from legal documents and institutional records which can provide at least a theoretical picture of the diet of people living in controlled situations, such as prisons, asylum, slavery and the military. Some notion of the diet of the slaves in French and British colonies can be gleaned from France's Code Noir and occasional contemporary observations. The words of some of these official sources must be taken with a grain of salt. We cannot be sure that all slave-holders adhered to the Code Noir , or that the patients at the Ohio Lunatic Asylum always ate as well as the annual report would seem to indicate. An accurate description of Newgate.