Re: Chapter 5:
The author overestimates the weight of a pig in those days. Due to poorer diet, and less advanced breeding techniques, the typical hog weighed in at somewhere between 68-90kg (significantly less than the author's estimate.) Even if you keep as much of the meat as possible, around 28 percent of the animal is just inedible, (hair, bones, etc.) Yes, you can save the bones for broth, and the blood for blood sausage/black pudding, but you can't count that in the estimate due to different nutritional value (it's not meat). So you're left with somewhere between 43 and 56 kilograms of meat for the year. Not to mention that preservation techniques can alter the nutritional profile, the amount eaten from one pig is probably less than the author's estimate. It is probably true however that a family might slaughter two pigs instead of one.
In any case, it is true during the late medieval period, families ate far more meat than they would in the following centuries (due to a population boom, the rising popularity of grain, economic difficulties etc.)
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