Related to your observation about average body temperature having declined?
Old records of European food budgets for the most part suggest that even typical peasants were shockingly well supplied with calories. Despite this, these people ended up thin and stunted, sometime by as much as six inches: it really looks like average metabolism has changed.pic.twitter.com/2Li2BXTecS
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That's the idea, yeah
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Agree with the probable lack of protein. Calories themselves only allow you to expend more energy, does not affect growth.
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People were spending much more calories at the time
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given that merely walking, not briskly, for an hour burns 2-300 calories, I imagine working hard for several hours a day (what did they average? farming isn't a 9-5 steady job) would require a far higher calorie budget than we're used to today
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Your numbers are goofy because they're including calories that would have been burned if you were doing nothing. Running a mile, regardless of speed, only burns about 100 extra calories, which is why people who exercise to lose weight are usually disappointed by the results.
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The might have received the roughly the same number of calories on average but what about the experience of a bad harvest or two. Basically no-one today in the developed world has gone more than a day hungry involuntarily.
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Apparently about 1 in 4 harvests "failed" in Tudor times - really hard to imagine. (Harvest Fluctuations and English Economic History, 1480-1619 By W. G. HOSKINS)
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Pathogen load. They were unclean
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how about nutritional imbalances? calories might be plenty. but if it's deficient in some parts maybe it can't be effectively used by the body?
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