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Peasants by and large ate pretty poorly, and their diet consisted mostly of bread. They also had an unfortunate tendency to under-nourish children during lean t
by dodobirdlord 6y ago
Peasants by and large ate pretty poorly, and their diet consisted mostly of bread. They also had an unfortunate tendency to under-nourish children during lean times, because the adults still needed to be well fed so that they could farm. This is the reason why the average height of a European man has increased more than 6 inches since the Middle Ages.
- xwdv 6y agoRich artisanal whole grain bread and slaughtered hogs and fish.
- zrobotics 6y agoSlaughtered hogs? Maybe twice a year in a good year on feast days. Seriously, the parent comment was spot-on, by-and-large they lived on the edge of starvation. It wasn't salmon for lunch everyday (in most cases, even every month). >75% of their diet was bread. Sure, 'artisinal'... have you ever chipped a tooth from poorly ground flour or rock inclusions? The bread was more wholesome than what is avaliable in the supermarket now, but how many people outside of developing countries eat a majority grain diet? Bread was the main foodstuff simply because grain stores much more easily than anything else. Salt-curing was only avaliable to the rich, since even salt was tremendously expensive.