When it comes to progress, most people tend to assume that newer is better. But that’s not always the case. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence that our modern diet (full of processed sitting and sedentary grains and whatnot) is causing most of the health problems so popular among young people today. For our cure we must look to the past — getting back to the basics and healing ourself with food, as our ancestors did.
You don’t have to live in the Middle Ages to enjoy the health benefits of this medieval diet. All the foods that you’ll need to follow this plan can be found at most Medieval Times and traveling Renaissance Fayres (I know, I know, the Renaissance isn’t strictly period-accurate, but we’ll get to that in a later chapter).
You’ll start to notice a difference almost right away. Fleeing from Vikings will get easier. You’ll have more energy for weaving and illuminating manuscripts or whatever. People will say “Oh, my God, is that Margery of the White Hands in that danse macabre, or one of the whirling, dancing corpses of personified death?” And you’ll smile, because only you know the truth.
Day One – Serf Day
5am – Rise at dawn (be sure to sleep with your entire family in one room, preferably on the floor, the night before).
Breakfast – Small beer and rye bread (be careful of St. Anthony’s Fire). Plow.
Lunch – Dried saltfish and rye bread. Plow.
Dinner – You have run out of rye bread. You find a beet. Plow some more.
Day Two – Monk Day
3am – Rise before dawn and pray until you pass out from blood loss (hair shirt required for blood loss).
Breakfast – 1 imperial gallon of small beer. Look at a piece of bread, then offer it to the Holy Mother and Queen of Heaven for your sins.
Lunch – You do not deserve lunch.
Dinner – You do not deserve dinner. Attend compline instead.
Day Three – Baron Day
Breakfast – Damson plums soaked in wine, followed by chestnuts thrown directly into your open mouth by a laughing maiden.
Lunch – Goat wrapped in peafowl, an entire deer wrapped in ham-hocks, a pig’s face, baked apples, a roasted hedgehog stuffed with quince.
Dinner – One giant turkey leg and a goblet of wine. Preserved citron and spiced figs for dessert.
Day Four – Cathar Day
Breakfast – All visible matter, including the human body, was created by Satan; it is therefore tainted with sin. Eating is a sign of mortal weakness.
Lunch – Undergo the consolamentum. Flee to Northern Spain.
Dinner – Something light, maybe fish.
Day Five – Corrupt Monk Day
See Baron Day, adding 4 imperial gallons of Corsican wine.
Day Six – Crusader Day
Breakfast – Whatever venison you have drying on the back of your saddle. Ride 40 miles.
Lunch – Raze something. Eating at midday stirs up the blood.
Dinner – An enchanted meal served by ghostly figures in the hall of the Fisher King. Sleep for 40 years.
Day Seven – Memento Mori
Breakfast – Nothing; you have the bloody flux.
Lunch – Nothing, you have puerperal fever.
Dinner – Holy Communion.
Tags: food, historical accuracy, history, the middle ages, workout plans
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Ahaha yes! Much better than Paleo!
I once read that in the Five Points neighborhood of NYC (Gangs of New York) a lot of men were paid for labor in potatoes and the average male diet was like 11 pounds of potatoes a day and THAT’S IT.
man every time we have a lunchtime meeting at my job they give us a box of squagels and expect gratitude. nothing has improved since History times.
if they won’t get us real bagels (and they won’t) I am going to ask for a pound of potatoes instead. good cost-cutting measure plus a potato is a fine thing.
I just looked up “squagels” and… why? why is this a thing?
because there is a kind of art of the abominable that you see here perfected. the circular shape of the bagel in its right form is no accident; it is the shape of the earth, the shape of the sun, the shape of a woman’s belly when great with child. the form of the bagel in the mind is a ring of endless light. some say that the opposite of a profound truth is not a lie, but another profound truth, but I do not believe that this applies to the truth of the bagel. the squagel is a perversion whose criminal perpetrators, I suppose, think they are seeking some rigorous freedom, like de Sade, but like with de Sade, serious philosophical principles are lost in contemplation of the obscene excrescence of their creative product.
something something Kristeva something something abject something something unheimlich squagels something.
Well that’s the best answer I could have hoped for, and now I want a bagel.
you will, perhaps, be pleased to know that even the word “bagel” is derived from the yiddish that’s derived from the diminutive of the middle/old high german “boug,” which is related to the old english “beag,” which means RING.
(and so, when i read about kings giving away rings and gold and whatnot, i like to think of them passing around heaps of everything bagels.)
you better believe I am pleased. Someday a beautiful youth will innocently offer me a bagel meaning only friendliness by it and on that day he will be trapped in the yoke of betrothal with me. I will eat that engagement bagel and every morning he will be forced to gift me one anew.
Well, I just fell in love.
what on god’s green earth is a squagel
I coulda sworn it was that exercise one does for one’s no-no parts.
Isn’t there some thing about how men can live on potatoes alone but women can’t, because . . . I forget why. Lack of iron, maybe? Some nutrient essential for ladies but not dudes. I can’t seem to find internet data to back this up, but it’s in my brain somehow. Anyone know?
the potatoes all sink into our uteruses and interfere with the production of yellow bile
But what if you move around a lot, will that keep the potatoes out of our uteruses?
no, only rigorous protesting, change.org petitions and Planned Parenthood will keep the potatoes out of our uteruses.
There was a Straight Dope column about how it was possible to live on just potatoes, milk and oatmeal, which was the diet of the poorest Irish laborers prior to the potato blight. Here’s the
link .
Here is a story about the executive director of the Washington State Potato Commission eating nothing but potatoes for 60 days, presented without comment:
“Voigt’s potato-diet blog … a document of ‘an increasingly broken and desperate man.'”
every day is baron day over here
Literally, I’m planning to eat a massive turkey leg for dinner, with a goblet of delicious homebrewed beer, and a citrus pudding for dessert. Oh haaaaaaaaay.
I forgot to put my damsons and laughing maiden in my lunchbox for work though :(((
Don’t forget about gout! Gout is a vital part of Baron Day.
baron day errryday
I see wire-frame glasses were very popular in the medieval era.
It’s the salt & pepper shakers that made me cross before I shook it off.
Somehow this gave me a vivid image of a dance move:
Cross yourself!
Now shake it off!
Just make sure to leave room for the Holy Ghost!
Pairs well with the Circumcellion workout plan, wherein you accost passers-by and beat them briskly with a wooden club.
If you’re starting out, aim for 10 overhead chops x 1 passerby; you can add in lateral strikes as you up your sets. Before you know it, your abs will be screaming gaude, gaude, laudate in deum!
Love you so much Mallory.
Surely, processed sitting will kill us all.
Also, were monks just drunk all the time? That explains things.
Small beer’s not that alcoholic, really, like the 3.2% stuff they sell in KS grocery stores. That’s why they gave it to children! (Medieval folk, not Kansans.)
Gotcha. I am amused by the thought of little buzzed Kansan children, though.
Weak beer was also way safer than water, in terms of microbes
I feel this is the appropriate time to mention that one of my husband’s “friends” gave up food for lent. So he’s just drinking beer for 40 days.* So now you know why friends is in quotation marks.
Calories do not count from any food tossed into your mouth by a laughing maiden.
BRB, getting a laughing maiden*to toss chestnuts into my open mouth. (*OK, my husband.)
Day Two – Monk Day
3am – Rise before dawn and pray until you pass out from blood loss (hair shirt AND SELF-FLAGELLATION required for blood loss).
You may think self-flagellation goes without saying, but you’d be wrong.
Is this the replacement for Feel the Burn?
People were so much healthier back in The Old Days! If we all ate like medieval serfs we’d lose so much weight. I mean those beets were straight from the earth – organic!
you will, perhaps, be pleased to know that even the word "bagel" is derived from the yiddish that's derived from the diminutive of the middle/old high german "boug," which is related to the old english "beag," which means RING.
(and so, when i read about kings giving away rings and gold and whatnot, i like to think of them passing around heaps of everything bagels.)
for an hours’ rather hilarious diversion: the supersizers (giles coren&sue perkins) eat medieval. youtube giveth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSox2oNSAYU).
YES!!!!
Weak beer was also way safer than water, in terms of microbes
Why would I flee from Vikings? Have you not seen that Hemsworth boy who’s playing Thor? I assume, because it’s Hollywood, that it is quite historically accurate.