The Roman Diet
The typical Ancient Roman diet for the poor consisted of vegetable soup and either bread or porridge made of whole wheat (porridge is made of boiled, cracked grains. The only porridge regularly eaten in Amerce is oatmeal, made of oats). If we take the amount of wheat consumed to be that given away as welfare in Ancient Rome, that amounts to 2326 calories/day. This is adequate for total calorie requirements, but the wheat will also need to meet the protein requirements. A man requires approximately 60g or protein per day, depending on body weight. Unfortunately, the protein quality of whole wheat is only 0.42, that is only 42% of the wheat protein goes toward the daily protein requirement. The daily allowance handed out by the Roman authorities provided about 90g of protein in the wheat and 42% of that is 38g. This is inadequate.
The diet does not fare well in vitamins or fats. A supplemental source of fats are needed, such as olive oil. As for vitamins, the wheat diet would be deficient in vitamins A, B12, C, D, E and K. Cabbage can supply some vitamin C, and this appears to be the most readily available vegetable, although our Roman man would have to eat a lot of cabbage. Carrots can supply vitamin A, if they are consumed with fats, since vitamin A is fat-soluble.
A diet such as this is boring. The poor Roman man could hear of feasts that he could not attend, but with his inadequate diet his health would suffer unless he augmented it. This was, incidentally, also the diet of the Roman soldier; they rarely ate meat. The soldiers diet was based on a daily ration of two pounds of wheat and barley, supplemented by beans, pork-fat, beer, wine and oil. The soldiers carried their own hand mills, which they used to grind the grain into flour. They then baked the flour into bread (probably unleavened). With few vegetables it is a boring and unbalance diet.
The Medieval Diet
We turn now to the Medieval diet. If you were a poor man living in Europe during the Dark Ages, what might you expect to eat? Our evidence comes detailed records of consumption at a school, as well as expenditures for various classes of people at monasteries.
In general, the agricultural revolution of the Dark Ages yielded not just more food, but a wider variety of better quality food. Much more peas and beans were grown and eaten; both are better sources of protein than grains such as wheat. More vegetables were grown and they were more widely available.
A dietician evaluating the diet of schoolboys for the years 1364-65 rendered the following opinion: adequate protein, but lack of milk might make the diet deficient in calcium. They don’t get enough vegetables (what schoolboys like vegetables?) and the diet is probably low on fats. The diet included meat 216 days per year and eggs 109 days per year. Soup (mostly spinach and cabbage) mostly of various kinds was served every day. Aside from the possible deficiencies in vitamins A and C, and an imbalance between calcium and phosphorous intake, the schoolboys could be considered to be well-nourished.
Other evidence backs up the idea that in the Dark Ages, people were well-nourished. In 1289 on the manor at Ferring belonging to Battle Abby, carters expected cheese in the morning and meat at lunch, in addition to bread. Workers building a spire were offered wine, cheese, meat, rye bread and bean soup.
On the farms, a typical farm village would have the houses, and surrounding the houses a ring of vegetable gardens and after that the fields. Vegetables, beans and wheat were the usual diet, supplemented by meat, particularly in the fall. By comparison with Ancient Romans, the Medieval European was ‘full of beans’, which are a much better source of vegetable protein than wheat. There would also be eggs, cheese and milk in season (cows were allowed to go dry in the fall and winter when feed was scarce; during the summer the excess milk was made into cheese.). Aquaculture was extensively practiced so that there was a sufficient supply of fish for Lent.
There is little doubt that on average a commoner was quite well-nourished during the Dark Ages, and moreover that whatever deficiencies existed in the diet were due to ignorance and not to a lack of money or availability. He expected, and ate, a wide variety of foods. Bread was still the staple, but it wasn’t the only thing on the diet anymore.
Comparison between Roman and Medieval Diets
If you were taken back in a time machine and asked to compare the diet of a common person in Ancient Rome and Medieval Northern Europe, anyone would choose the Medieval diet. It is much more balanced and nutritious. It is also a more interesting cuisine. No one would pick the monotonous Roman diet.
The contrast is between the lower classes because the upper classes always eat well, whether in Rome or Europe. It is in the diet of the lower classes that the Christian emphasis on helping the poor makes itself felt.
There is some evidence of the effect of a superior diet. For example, female fertility was very low in the Roman Empire; the Roman writer Columella (4-70 AD), in his treatise on farming, Res Rustica, mentions that he offered inducements to slave women who were unusually prolific: three children earned an exemption from work and four children her freedom. That doesn’t seem very prolific, in fact it is barely above the replacement level. The Roman Empire, over time, depopulated, whereas in Medieval Europe the population surged. This is what you would predict knowing that the diet was better in Medieval Europe.
Why it matters
The late Lynn White, Jr. was one of the first historians to point out the technological progress made during the Dark Ages as well as the role of the Church in promoting it. The response to his book, Medieval Technology and Social Change, prompted a colleague to ask: why do your Birmingham critics sound as though you had raped all of their daughters? Those vitriolic responses give you some idea about the depth of feeling of conventional historians to the new discoveries. White was exploding the myth of the Dark Ages, because if people ate better and lived better in the Dark Ages, then there really was no Dark Ages from which to wake, and the humanist myth that humanists had rescued humanity from Christianity would need to be revised.
The myth is not true, in fact it is exactly the opposite of the truth. Christianity rescued the Ancient world from the grip of ignorance and superstition. In Ancient Greece, supposedly ‘scientific’, in order to erect a water mill you had to go to a priest to propitiate the water nymph of the stream, since she would be doing the work of turning the water mill. That doesn’t make it easy to engineer a water mill, since the amount of power output is entirely under the control of the water nymph. Classical civilization had an abundance of superstition and a smattering of science.
The myth that there was a Dark Ages is just that – a myth. It has no basis in reality. It is an obstacle to acceptance of the Faith on the part of millions of potential converts, and that is why it matters.
Sources
Roman diet
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/romans/family_and_children/
Poor Romans – bread, porridge and vegetable soup
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae
Distribution of grain in Rome
Forbes, R. J., Studies in Ancient Technology, Vol III, 2nd edition, 1965, E. J. Brill, Leiden Netherlands, p. 103.
Diet of Roman soldier
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_Digestibility_Corrected_Amino_Acid_Score
Protein quality of wheat
Medieval diet
Gimpel, Jean, The Medieval Machine, 1976, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, pp 50-58.
