Farm laborers historically ate a lot of calories just to be able to get through their days. Their calories weren’t very appetizing, but they had to eat a lot because they burned a lot.
That makes sense to me but I’d really need to see the data on how many calories they ate in 1700. I notice I would still be surprised if an average farm laborer in 1700 in prime age ate more than 2400 kcal/day. It’s not really relevant to my main point but if you have some data proving that I would be interested to see it.
Per Jeffrey L. Singman, Daily Life in Medieval Europe, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999, P. 54 − 55 (and text copied from https://stores.renstore.com/food-and-drink/dietary-requirements-of-a-medieval-peasant), “A prosperous English peasant in the 14th century would probably consume 2 − 3 pounds of [rye, oats, or barley] bread, 8 ounces of meat or fish or other protein and 2 − 3 pints of ale per day”, which works out to about 3500 to 5000 calories per day.
That same page lists various farm chores as burning 1500-7500 calories over an 8 hour period, so assuming some mix of those plus the normal base calorie burning easily adds up to over 3500 calories.
This post (https://oureverydaylife.com/321257-the-peasant-diet.html) cites “research published at Eastern Kentucky University” to say that “an average medieval person burned between 4,000 and 5,000 calories per day … A typical diet for peasants delivered between 3,500 and 4,500 calories, about or just under the need.”
If you’d like I can do more academic research, but these independent sources all roughly corroborate each other so I’m personally satisfied.
One note is that the food eaten historically was much less appealing to eat. I don’t think they were eating 3 pounds of bread because they really liked oat bread, but rather that they needed it to survive doing hard manual labor for 8 hours a day.
Reported numbers vary quite a bit (perhaps in part because the physical activity intensity of training or warfighting also varies), but you might be interested to know that soldiers in training or active duty might hit something like 4000-5000 kcal/day in energy expenditure, maybe thousands more for outlier people and/or circumstances.
How much did city dwellers in the early 20th century eat? There must have been a period when people were not doing so much manual labor but before the obesity epidemic.
A lot of city dwellers then were doing manual labor (factory lines, construction), but I’m really not sure about the office workers from them. It’s a good question!
Farm laborers historically ate a lot of calories just to be able to get through their days. Their calories weren’t very appetizing, but they had to eat a lot because they burned a lot.
That makes sense to me but I’d really need to see the data on how many calories they ate in 1700. I notice I would still be surprised if an average farm laborer in 1700 in prime age ate more than 2400 kcal/day. It’s not really relevant to my main point but if you have some data proving that I would be interested to see it.
Per Jeffrey L. Singman, Daily Life in Medieval Europe, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999, P. 54 − 55 (and text copied from https://stores.renstore.com/food-and-drink/dietary-requirements-of-a-medieval-peasant), “A prosperous English peasant in the 14th century would probably consume 2 − 3 pounds of [rye, oats, or barley] bread, 8 ounces of meat or fish or other protein and 2 − 3 pints of ale per day”, which works out to about 3500 to 5000 calories per day.
That same page lists various farm chores as burning 1500-7500 calories over an 8 hour period, so assuming some mix of those plus the normal base calorie burning easily adds up to over 3500 calories.
This blog post (https://www.worldturndupsidedown.com/2011/08/how-many-calories-did-they-eat-in-day.html?m=1) looked at a shopping list from the 1860s and found that men ate about 3500 calories per day while women ate about 2500 calories per day. I’m not sure what audience this was aimed at (farmers? factory workers?) but clearly it’s more than 2400 calories per day.
This post (https://oureverydaylife.com/321257-the-peasant-diet.html) cites “research published at Eastern Kentucky University” to say that “an average medieval person burned between 4,000 and 5,000 calories per day … A typical diet for peasants delivered between 3,500 and 4,500 calories, about or just under the need.”
If you’d like I can do more academic research, but these independent sources all roughly corroborate each other so I’m personally satisfied.
One note is that the food eaten historically was much less appealing to eat. I don’t think they were eating 3 pounds of bread because they really liked oat bread, but rather that they needed it to survive doing hard manual labor for 8 hours a day.
Thanks, that’s interesting. Intuitively I would not have expected them to be burning so many calories.
Reported numbers vary quite a bit (perhaps in part because the physical activity intensity of training or warfighting also varies), but you might be interested to know that soldiers in training or active duty might hit something like 4000-5000 kcal/day in energy expenditure, maybe thousands more for outlier people and/or circumstances.
How much did city dwellers in the early 20th century eat? There must have been a period when people were not doing so much manual labor but before the obesity epidemic.
A lot of city dwellers then were doing manual labor (factory lines, construction), but I’m really not sure about the office workers from them. It’s a good question!