4 ms·
> It's only in the last two generations that other beverages have supplanted water. Prior to that it was a rare thing. It's only in the last six generations th
by semi-extrinsic 4y ago
> It's only in the last two generations that other beverages have supplanted water. Prior to that it was a rare thing.
It's only in the last six generations that water has supplanted beer (typically "small beer") as a beverage. Prior to that it was a dangerous thing to drink water unless you lived far out in the countryside.
- kstenerud 4y agoI doubt this very much. Beer costs money to make, and very few people would have been able to afford it. We also see much more recently that 3rd world countries didn't do this, either. People drank water.
- semi-extrinsic 4y agoWhy doubt it? People made beer at home from barley and water and mugworth, it was decidedly not expensive. Today the Czech Republic is the country with the highest beer consumption per capita, at 140 liters per person per year. Germany clocks in at 99, and the US is at 72. In the late middle ages, the average in Britain was 300 liters per person per year. In 1830, Americans over the age of 15 consumed more than 31 liters of pure alcohol per year. If that was all in 7% beer, it corresponds to 1.2 liters of strong beer every day. Probably quite a bit was also in whiskey, which was cheaper than milk back then.
- UIUC_06 4y agoVery true. People did drink a lot more back then (even John Adams had some hard cider with breakfast), but also, the alcohol content of their wine or beer was probably pretty low.