re: Medieval farmers ate 7000-9000 calories a dsy

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Wasn’t the average man only 5’3 or so back then?

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The average man was indeed smaller than modern men…bc of poorer nutrition.

This number seems impossible. I don’t think a modern power lifter eats that many calories per day.


Also, the Middle Ages spans 1,000 years and a lot of different countries. Food output varied greatly by geography.

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These guys also ate very differently than we do now. Hell, bone marrow was a staple for them. good size chunk of that from a sow is good for 2k calories by itself. Throw some offal with marrow and some veggies in a stew and you probably get to 5k without breaking a sweat.

Plus the whole dying at the ripe old age of 40 made them less worried about abs and more worried about feeding the machine.

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OK. Let's talk about this. Between your post and the OP, just how many acres, men and livestock head are we talking about? In Europe, in the MAs?

English Farming Requirements in the MA

This guy doesnt talk calories. He just tries to get to GAAP type numbers for supporting a person throughout the year.

He cant seem to get there based on more or less accepted population numbers. So are the numbers of people alive wrong or are the harvest numbers wrong?

Stuff like this fascinates me because human powered work has a limit. What it cost to split wood 1000 years ago is the same as today using the same tools.

Philbrick actually covers this in Bunker Hill. The bostonians from the country were well fed and big and burly and quite frankly assholes because they grew up working the land. They tied up with the rich soldiers from VA during the Revolution because they were better dressed and had more money even though the poorly dressed massholes were bigger physically.

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Michael Phelps was eating 10000 cal per day while training for Olympics so I’d imagine that 7-9k figure is pretty accurate.

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He's 6'4" and training for the olympics

That's a lot different than an average dude doing farm work all day

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Medieval farmers ate 7000-9000 calories a dsy

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Yeah, thats a made up statistic

And again, we are talking about mini ice age Europe. It was very cold. Cold people eat a lot more than warm people. It’s a body heating attribute. And they had no indoor heating.

I don’t know if the 7000 calorie diet is true or not. The person who said it is a published historian but they were being conversational so they could have meant very specific criteria. I don’t know. But I do think it’s very likely they did eat at least twice as much food S people today

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This guy doesnt talk calories. He just tries to get to GAAP type numbers for supporting a person throughout the year.

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Right. So you mention marrow and pork. OP, bread and 7-9K calories per basic medieval farmer. 1 guy. Per man, given simple acreage yield, growth/harvest and livestock need plus their acreage and feed/water needs per animal, what would you expect a man to own/work to believe the OP premise? Not even taking in consideration for storage considerations.

I worked on a farm as a kid and did sports, that was close to my calorie intake back then.

Nah

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Are you suggesting they Ate the children

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I am not, but you do you. Write a poem about their plight!