[Discuss] Armies and food

[Kerry Seifert]

On Jan 14, 2008 4:13 PM, Robert Croson, Jr <robert at arcm.com> wrote:

> On 14 Jan 2008 at 12:53, Timothy Collett wrote:
>
> > I'm not saying that, in volume or mass, the soldiers necessarily
> > actually eat 5 times what an equivalent number of civilian peasants
> > eat.  But I would say that, given *what* they eat, it is not at all
> > unreasonable to count it as 5 times the amount of nutrition.
>
> Did you even stop to consider the numbers on this, because
> they're just plain ridiculous. But, since you started the discussion
> of nutritional value of the food, let's take it all the way.
>
> First, assume that we're talking about the amounts of food that a
> human being requires to live at normal, *non-starvation* levels.
> Because that's what we're really talking about: How much food a
> soldier consumes vs. how much a peasant consumes when they
> are both being well cared for.
>
> Assuming that even the hardest working soldier actually
> consumes and uses 3000 calories a day (which is 50%(!) more
> than the average, healthy human being should consume), you're
> saying that a peasant would consume 1/5th the nutritional value
> of that, which is 600 calories a day. That's insane. It is impossible
> for a human being to live on 600 calories a day. You could
> possibly make an argument that a person could survive on 1200
> calories a day, but that person is not going to be in any kind of
> physical shape to do the work that a medieval peasant would be
> required just to survive. (1,200 calories for a normal person is
> below the level at which the body's starvation instinct kicks in.
> Your matebolism slows down and you actually accumulate fat
> faster, even though you're eating less!)
>
> Yes, they are peasants. Yes, we can mistreat them, torture them,
> beat them up, make them work and live in filth, yadda, yadda,
> yadda. That's part and parcel of the game, and I'm not advocating
> anything else.
>
> But what you're saying is that a soldier, in the normal course of
> performing his duties, consumes 5 times the *calories* of a
> peasant. That's preposterous. I could possibly agree to 200% of
> the caloric intake. But 500%? Not a chance.
>
> And just to be complete, this has no bearing on the actual type of
> food that the person eats. It's all based on nutritional value. The
> soldier can get his 3,000 calories of venison, beef, prime grade
> wheat flour, etc., and the peasant can get mealy grain, mouldy
> bread, and a once-a-week bonus of stringy chicken. That doesn't
> matter, since we're talking caloric intake.
>
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Ugh, are we getting into this?  By nutritional value, I think what was meant
was something more like monetary value of the food.  BM doesn't distinguish
between expensive cuts of meat and moldy bread, food is just food.  The
point is, a farmer might eat a whole lot of food to keep himself going, but
he's not going to eat a whole lot of *expensive* food.  When soldiers roll
in, they're going to be all high and mighty because they're not civilians
AND they're in the employ of a noble, so they're going to raid whatever food
stores there are for simply the best, and probably consume 5x the VALUE of
food of a peasant, if not all that much more in nutrition.  Since BM doesn't
make the distinction, the only way to explain eating 1.5x food that costs
3.33 times as much (arriving at 5x peasant consumption) would be to remove 5
units of food per soldier for every 1 unit a peasant would eat.
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