There is also the fact that various micronutrients and macronutrients are necessary to have a functioning immune system and self repair capabilities. Vitamin A, D, C, Iron, protein, selenium, copper etc. all play a role in the bodies ability to repair wounds and fight off infections.
I assume you’re including typical (excessive) portion sizes as part of a modern diet, rather than just the quality if the food its self. If people understand their caloric needs and adjust the amounts of foods available the eat accordingly, the modern diet shouldn’t cause obesity or disorders.
Modern, for sure. Even elites had to use salt and spices to cover the taste of spoiled meat. Out of season availability, fair distribution, protection from disease and rodents, hygienic cooking methods and access to water were surely issues in some places.
17th century Kings were thrilled to be drinking water with sugar, and Escoffier called this the finest drink ever.
According to this article medieval peasants had decent diets - when there weren’t famines due to war or climatic disturbances, and outbreaks of disease like dysentery and ergot poisoning due to contaminated food and water.
Peasants would not have eaten nearly as healthy diets during winter and late spring, which is one huge advantage modern U.S. diets have - the availability of fresh greens and fruits.
Chestnuts and hawthorn haws are both high in vitamin C. Also winter greens (kale, cabbage) are rich in vitamin C…
This is wrong. If anything, they ate a *greater *variety of foods *because *they ate seasonally, practiced various forms of wild foraging and of the things they did grow, they had more varietals (where do you think all those “heirloom” varietals of everything from carrots to apples have their start?
They might have had variety over the course of the year, but at any given time of year, you had few options available. Nowadays, if I want a vegetable with my dinner, I can get any vegetable I can think of, no matter what time of year. Back then, if you wanted a vegetable, it was whatever the fields were producing right now, if anything.
You are arguing “pre-agricultural societies”
Trancephalic is arguing: * preindustrial *
He is correct: Plenty of* preindustrial foods* were worse for your teeth than candy.
as side note:
The OP is asking for: * agrarian peasant in England from 1000- 1300 CE .
And yes, we eat far healthier.
Now yes, you could go back then, as a noble or rich middle class, and eat better than today. But few did. Nobles ate all sorts of bad stuff. Gout and tooth decay were common, as well as a host of other dietary issues.
One other way the medieval diet was probably a little healthier - all the meatless days in the Catholic calendar. More fish in the diet as a consequence.
I disagree. Largely, this is because they ate many things we wouldn’t consider worth eating - so, for instance, not only chickens and ducks, but any songbird was fair game. And not just iceberg lettuce, but any reasonably palatable green. Very few of us still eat the green tops of our carrots, for instance. They did. And sure, they may only have had wrinkly apples and no cold-stored kiwifruit - but they had dozens of varieties of apple, we generally have 3 or 4 in any supermarket. Obviously, this doesn’t apply in times of famine. But ordinarily, there would have been quite a variety. Sure, we have refrigeration and the like, but for *most *people, that just means year-round bananas, not a diversity of fruits.
I dunno about the rest of you, but I could not survive on a diet of medieval peasant.
Absolutely a modern diet. No contest. Now if it were pre-agriculture hunter-gatherer (from a successful tribe in an area with plenty of game and no drought) versus a modern diet, it might be a more charitable comparison.
Well, people really ought to eat carrot greens–they are delicious and healthy–but it’s not true that the only alternative is iceberg. Perhaps you’ve noticed, for example, the vogue for kale? And my local Trader Joe’s carries at least 5-6 varieties of apple, often more. (And there is still regional diversity by the way–you can’t find Macintosh or Empire apples in CA. Maybe at a Whole Paycheck.)
Also, I don’t think that eating songbirds is an indication of how great the choices were. If you were a noble, eating lark’s tongues was a delicacy. For a peasant, eating a lark was a sign that you didn’t have better, more calorie-rich choices–maybe because you already ate your chicken and ducks had gone south.
I believe that the idea that middle ages people were using spices in order to cover the taste of spoiled meat is a legend with no basis in fact. Meat has been very well preserved until very recently by salting or smoking it.
And elites could very easily procure themselves fresh meat if they wanted to. You can slaughter an animal any time you want, if you have the money, so it would make few sense to assume that wealthy lords and ladies would find themselves forced to eat rotten meat (while somehow being able to afford extremely expensive spices to cover the bad taste).
“Most people” are not urban trendsters. “Most people” have the iceberg and tomato slice on their big mac or DoubleDown as their two a day, IME.
Yet most people are going to get a Delicious…
I didn’t say they were great choices. Just that they had them.
As asked, the question is hopelessly one-sided: The modern diet is incomparably better, because there are consistently reliable sources of food and because modern food is hygienic. These advantages far outweigh any nutritional advantages that medieval peasants might have had.
The more interesting question, I think, is whether the medieval peasant’s diet actually did have nutritional advantages (assuming no famine and disregarding hygiene). And in that regard, consider the peasant’s diet as it actually existed, and not what a nutritionally knowledgeable modern person would have eaten if taken back in time. Yes, the peasant had food that was all local and natural, with no added sugar, pesticides, or preservatives other than salt. But the peasant was likely overreliant on a small number of staple foods and probably ate too much salt, since that was the only preservative. The peasant was also at risk of scurvy, a scourge that has entirely disappeared from the modern world. I’m inclined to think that the modern diet, for all its flaws, was probably more nutritious.
Does anyone use gruit in it?
But also fetal rabbits, which I’m sorry are just not healthy. They actually cause negative calories from all the vomiting because, y’know - fetal rabbits! 
Many people eat well-developed duck embryos today, don’t really see the difference.
This is pretty absurd, and the implication outside of the enlightened “urban trendsters” nobodies eats vegetables is frankly ridiculous. You can walk into nearly any supermarket in America and find between four and six varieties of apple, depending on the season. Sure, certain varieties have advantages due to being long-lasting or easy to harvest, but that’s not a downside except in the fevered imagination of food nuts.
Fresh fruit you can actually eat beats imaginary food that doesn’t exist, no matter how good your imagination.
Second, nobody in Medieval anywhere had “dozens of varieties” of anything. Even in season, you would have access to one variety of apple, or any other fruit or vegetable, if you were lucky. If you didn’t happen to live near an orchard, then you might be able to gather some apples of a random tree that happened to be on your land, or barter with a trader. They were likely to be rather sour if not grafted by an experienced grower.
We have. It’s…interesting. For people who have been raised of hops in beer, it is definitely an acquired taste. Several commercial brewers make seasonal beers using spruce tips, gale, and in Scotland, heather.
Eww, me either! :eek: