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BMJ: 'What if sugar is worse than just empty calories? An essay by Gary Taubes'

ringi said:
Anyone other than the very rich did not have access to this type of food often and the apples etc did not keep for more than a few months.
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Well as we are all descended from princes and kings our ancestors ate quite well. If not healthily.

The poor made do with :

Rye or barley bread
Pottage ( a type of stew)
Dairy products such as milk and cheese products
Meat such as beef, pork or lamb
Fish - if they had access to freshwater rivers or the sea
Home grown vegetables and herbs
Fruit from local trees or bushes
Nuts
Honey

Some may say the poor had a better diet health wise that is if they where lucky enough to get enough of it.
 
There would also have been eggs, and meat from chickens, ducks & geese.. And geese were encouraged as a strategic bird on account of their feathers, which were needed to make arrows. And various British foreign trade delegations used a LOT of arrows. Our early trade and foreign policy practices could get rather.. pointed.

But there's some fascinating texts on food and agriculture from history. I was trying to remember Columella's text, and found this reference to early food & agriculture writers:-

https://hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/Hort_306/text/lec19.pdf

and Columella's De re rustica is translated here:-

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...lumella&hl=en&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Everything you wanted to know about creating your own authentic Roman farming estate. Caring for your.. employees would need updating to fit with modern labour laws, but medieval serfs often didn't have it much better.
 
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