re: Medieval farmers ate 7000-9000 calories a dsy

How do they know this?

Brian Shaw consumes 12k calories and he is MASSIVE. 6’8” 400 lbs

I don’t think L&C were exploring with fricking giants

Sure. Get Undaunted Courage based on the journals of both Lewis and Clark. It's a great read.

The calorie estimates were not done by Clark. Only amounts, descriptions, and poundage of food acquired before and during the expedition. Others extrapolated calorie estimates later.

Just as important as the food descriptions by Capt Clark was reading what these men accomplished on a daily basis. Our society today is so soft (myself included) that it's hard to believe what these men did.

ETA: Up to 9 lbs of meat a day for a man per Clark himself. LINK !

Although you were being as sassy as I was, I also thought of At Home by Bill Bryson for more insight on daily life in medieval times. No calorie counts but fascinating.

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Bodybuilders and power lifters who are 300 plus pounds and work their arse off have to make themselves miserable to consume that on a daily basis

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And that’s with easy access to a variety of foods.

Oh the TV show Alone, there is a big focus on calorie burn. When people are building their shelters or hunting/foraging, the contestants are burning 5k+ a day easily. I can see expenditures sky rocket when everything is manual and you have to walk everywhere. Even worse in cold weather.

They did have access to more calorie dense food as well. French and Italian food are heavy with creams and oils. Someone else mentioned beer and mead, which people drank all day too. Most diets were grain and oat based. I don't believe meat was that prevalent, especially with limited ways to store it..

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Oh the TV show Alone, there is a big focus on calorie burn. When people are building their shelters or hunting/foraging, the contestants are burning 5k+ a day easily

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There is nothing “easy” about burning 5k calories every single day. That’s extreme work.

Lance Armstrong burned roughy 5500-6k calories a day during the Tour de France. That’s as grueling as it gets, and that was for “just” 21 daysThat isn’t really sustainable everyday workloads

When I was in peak college tennis shape, I would have days burning 5-7k. Definitely not a sustainable life

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I don't know if this is true or not but what I do know is that before industrialization took root, people awoke in the morning and worked all fricking day long. They had to eat mass quantities and even then, they were often skinny as shite. Constant, unyielding manual labor will do that to you

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If they truly worked that much then there is zero possibility to consume 8000 calories purely due to the amount of time needed to consume 8000 calories. Something has got to give, you don’t work a 12 hr day from dusk til dawn and also have the time to consume 8000 calories.