Following on from my post earlier in the week about medieval diets, Lee requested a bit more information about the diet of the common as muck peasants. We know less overall about what the peasantry ate in comparison to gentry, aristocracy and the church - all of whom tended to keep detailed records of expenditure. We also know more about the richer commoners and less about the downtrodden peasants that compromise the class in popular perception. That said, there are accounts here and there of lesser commoners food, so we have a vague idea of their diet. Prior to the Black Death (mid-14th century), times were generally harder economically for the lower levels of commoners. The very lowest levels would have usually subsisted on pottage (oaten gruel with a few bits of dried peas and beans), barley-bread (inferior to wheat bread), ale and, in the good times, eggs and cheese. Meat would have been rare, and limited to a few scraps of bacon in the pottage. The body needs around 1,900 calories day-to-day for anything more than bed-rest. A peasant doing manual labour would often be burning in excess of 3,000 calories per day (sometimes much more), especially during the long summer days and at harvest. Most of a peasants calories would have come from the pottage - around 1,800 - and a further 550 from the weak ale (2-3 pints per day). That comes to a total of around 2,350 - barely enough to survive on for the average modern man in England (who needs around 2,500), let alone for a farm-working peasant. Eggs and cheese however would likely add to around 1,100 more calories per day, for a total of around 3,400. For a peasant doing manual labour, thats a much more healthy number. This was recognised in medieval times, and farmers (who might be commoners, gentry, aristocracy or the church) would usually lay on feasts or provide extra food around harvest time for their workers. After the Black Death, the lot of the peasants improved quite a bit. There was more food available (owing mainly to the massive drop in population which the country didnt recover from for centuries) and more money for the peasantry. A harvest worker in the 13th century got up to 3,500 calories per day, while an early 15th century harvest worker got over 5,000. This change was neither immediate nor uniform though and there were pockets of peasantry living in pre-Black-Death conditions throughout the Wars of the Roses. Its finally probably also worth mentioning the Church. Monks are often portrayed as being fat - this is accurate. According to the Rules that governed how members of an Order should live, a normal monk would get access to 4,500 calories on a fasting day, and 6,000 calories on a normal day. Most monks lived quite sedentary life-styles - hence its not surprising that most of them were quite obese.
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 18:20:03 +0000
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