Oh, no doubt eating for pleasure has a very long history in the West (and East, and other regions) but Epicurus was something as rare as a man who didn't do manual work in antiquity where 99% were farmers, soldiers or slaves who either didn't have their own plots of land, or did so and still ate poorly or even starved because that was the reality of life. I think it's safe to say that Epicurus lived a very privileged life - how many Greeks could study philosophy let alone start his own school? - and that his dietary ruminations never reached nor could be implemented by the waste majority.