The life expectancy in 1521 in Europe was between 30 and 40 years of age. The poorest people ate mostly bread and beans. They suffered from plague, tuberculosis, and an assortment of other maladies in addition to cancer.
Today, you can buy a ten pound bag of chicken for $6.98.
Today, you can buy a ten pound bag of chicken for $6.98.
https://twitter.com/margaritaevna95/status/1449068254857777159
This brings us to an interesting linguistics point. In the Middle Ages, because poor people couldn't afford meat they couldn't raise or catch, only the rich ate the better cuts of meat. The poor could raise a few chickens, and pull some fish out of the river, but not much more.
In England during this time, English was a dying language—the third most spoken in the land. Latin was the language of the educated, the scientific community and such, and French was the language of the nobles and upper class folks. Only the poor spoke their native English.
Because the nobles spoke French, they used French words for the food they ate: bœuf, mouton, porc, etc. The poor used English words for the food they ate: chicken, fish. Which is why we have separate names for the animal and food for fancier meats, but not for chicken and fish.
So basically, the English language has separate words for most animals and their meats precisely because 500 years ago, the poorest people could NOT afford all that "organically raised meat."
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