Cornell’s archive holds notes from the Herrington Food Science lectures, c. 1951-1961, which were part of a basic course in the history of nutrition for undergraduates.
The professor quoted an obscure treatise on egg incubation by William Bucknell for its description of food in Europe. Up to a third of Englishmen, according to Bucknell, “subsist almost entirely, or rather starve, upon potatoes alone, another third have in addition to this edible, oaten or inferior wheaten bread with one or two meals of fat pork or the refuse of the shambles per week …”
Bucknell said continental Europeans ate far worse fare: “Fish, soups made from herbs, a stuff called bread, made from every variety of grain, black, brown and sour such as no Englishman would eat; olives, chestnuts, the pulpy saccharine fruits, roots, stalks and leaves, not infrequently the barks of trees, sawdust, blubber, train oil with frogs and snails, make up a good part of the food of the greater portion of the population of Europe.”
Not bad! (Except for the tree bark, sawdust, blubber, and train oil)
Jonathan Robins 