1. Modern food, for all its well rehearsed problems, is preferable to the peasant diet, or so I've been arguing for years. Perhaps it's time to have another go at explaining why.
Conversation
2. Most pre-industrial societies (take that as shorthand please) depended (and still depend) on a small number of staple crops, usually grains or roots, sometimes others such as plantains.
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3. A major reason why is that only these crops have a high enough yield/calorie/nutrient to area ratio to support the population.
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4. Annual "hunger seasons" were common because low yields and the problems of protecting the stored harvest against decay and predators meant that these societies tended to run short.
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5. More severe hunger, even famine, occurred if the harvest was destroyed by bad weather, pests, or warfare, for example, because it was impossible to transport relief supplies more than a few miles (unless there was nearby navigable water).
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6. Diets were typically low in protein, fat, and key vitamins and minerals. Deficiency diseases and gastrointestinal diseases were common problems.
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7. Women labored hours a day using their body weight to pound or grind grains, or spent hours searching for fuel, or carrying water.
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8. Among the worst predators ("big rats" according to one Chinese saying) were other humans who robbed or taxed the "surplus," creating hierarchical societies in which a tiny elite lived off the labor of the majority.
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9. This is not to say that some times were not better than others. In Europe, for example, the peasantry lived much better following the dramatic drop in population caused by the Black Death. And everywhere there was feasting after harvest.
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10. Nor is it to say that the food could not be tasty and even nutritious. If you eat only tortillas, you develop a very fine palate for tortillas, which today are much tastier in small villages than in cities. & nutritious eaten with beans and a few wild greens, chiles, squash.
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11. Nor is it to say that men and women did not take pride in their work nor that they did not approach it intelligently, nor that they did not enjoy the beauty of their surroundings.
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12. It is to say that life was all too often insecure, subject to exploitation, and lacking in variety and opportunity. That, I think, is the reason so many were pushed by hardship to leave the land.
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13. Today in wealthy countries "peasant" life is constantly romanticized. Think, for example, of the gulf between restaurant 'cocina povera' or the 'Mediterranean diet' and what poor Italians ate in the 20s and 30s.
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14. So I regret that , whose incisive talk at the I very much enjoyed, took me to be "brazenly condescending" about the varied groups described as peasant. To my mind, what would be condescending would be to diminish the struggle they faced with such courage.
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