The diet of the labouring poor in England, 1550-1750

"It is estimated that diet accounted for a majority of household expenditure for poor families, perhaps as high as 70%. It has also been asserted that the bottom 20% of the population consumed so few calories that they could not have done more than 65 minutes of heavy work a day! Yet, apart from the work of Shammas, there has been little empirical work on just what form such consumption took. It is often assumed that the diet of the poor consisted of little more than bread, pottage, cheese and a little bacon, but only a limited number of sources have been consulted, and most from the eighteenth century. The aim of this paper is provide a much broader empirical investigation into the diet of the poor by looking at a wide rage of institutional accounts, servants in household accounts, estimated budgets from the mid-sixteenth century until the end of the eighteenth century, as well as pamphlets on diet to see what working men, women and children, as well as the sick and old ate, both in terms of calories and nutrition. In the past great emphasis has been placed on the budgets of Eden and Davis from the 1780s and 90s, but these were years of very high prices. Poor house diets have also been studied, but most inmates were the young and old. Here I will examine a wider range of diets. I will also examine what types of foods were eaten, and what were considered healthy and good for work within humeral medical theory. Beer and meat especially seem to have constituted a much, larger portion of some diets than is generally assumed, being considered good for work. A pound of beef was often a penny cheaper than a pound of cheese, for instance. The slaughter of livestock was also crucial in providing leather for the economy. Diets also changed over time, and more importantly fluctuated yearly according to changes in price."