What did the poor in ancient times eat? How many meals do they eat a day?

As the saying goes, "Food is the most important thing for the people". Eating has always been the most basic livelihood issue in China for thousands of years. Due to the limitation of productivity level and social and economic development conditions, the food of the ancients can't be compared with the food of today. Now there are fish and meat, and rice, oil and salt are all available. So, what did the ancients in China eat? Next, let me explain it to you.

How many meals a day?

Let's first look at how many meals the ancients ate a day.

Nowadays, three meals a day has become the basis of eating in China, but for the ancients, three meals a day did not exist. Before Qin and Han Dynasties, people only ate two meals a day. Due to underdeveloped agriculture, the grain output is not satisfactory. Eating two meals a day depends on people. When the harvest is not good, it can also be reduced to one meal a day, or one meal every few days.

But after the Song Dynasty, because the economy began to prosper and agriculture improved greatly, night markets began to appear, so two meals a day became three meals a day. But it only works for the rich, and the poor still have two meals a day.

Family meal

What are you eating?

What did the poor usually eat in ancient times? Think about it, it's perfect. And with the different dynasties, the food in the poor people's rice bowls is not fixed. Why is this happening? The main reason is that many crops we see today are not ancient, but from different dynasties and different places.

For example, in the Western Zhou Dynasty, there was neither rice nor wheat. Whether poor or rich, the staple food is millet, which is what we call millet today. Now it is usually used to cook porridge in the morning, but at that time it was the staple food of two meals a day. The difference between the poor and the rich is that the poor may only eat corn, while the rich can eat more meat dishes.

corn

After the Zhou Dynasty, wheat began to spread in China, and the situation gradually improved. At this time, steamed bread began to appear, but steamed bread needed a lot of flour to be steamed, and it was only the food of the rich at that time. What do poor people eat? It's still mainly baked wheat cake. This way of eating was learned by Ban Chao from the Western Regions in the Han Dynasty, not invented by the poor in China.

At the same time, there is another food crop, which originated in China and is also the favorite of the poor. That is well-known soybean, which was called "Shu" by the ancients. This is one of the most common ingredients, which is easy to grow and has strong vitality, but it is not very full, and it is also one of the common foods for the poor in ancient times.

soybean

Eat meat?

As for meat, ordinary people can only eat one meal of pork during the Spring Festival, and the poor basically don't even think about it. Interestingly, the ancient elite basically did not eat pork. In their view, eating pork is a very bad thing. Usually eat beef and mutton. Because cows have the function of plowing fields, they will never take the initiative to slaughter them except for natural death. So beef is scarce and mutton is eaten more.

Until the Song Dynasty, Su Shi invented Dongpo meat and brought it into the elite. Only then did pork move from the table of the poor to the table of the rich. But whatever meat it is, it doesn't taste much better. In ancient times, when oil, salt, sauce and vinegar were scarce, most meat smelled fishy and didn't taste very good.

It is worth mentioning that the sweet potato introduced to China in the Ming Dynasty brought revolutionary changes to the food of the poor in China.

Sweet potato originated in South America and was brought to China by businessmen who went out. Because of its satiety and high sugar content, short cultivation period and strong adaptability to the environment, it quickly became popular all over the country and became the favorite food for the poor. It is precisely because of the introduction of sweet potato that the problem of "food" was alleviated from the root, and the population of China in the Ming and Qing Dynasties also ushered in a blowout.

Of course, there are inferior foods such as wild vegetable dregs, which are also the food of the poor. Until modern times, the poor still eat, and people who have experienced those years are familiar with it.

sweet potato

It can be seen that what the poor in ancient times ate is a long story. There is no oil and salt, basically some fairly simple coarse grains. It looks quite green and healthy now, but if you keep eating these, it will easily lead to malnutrition. It's hard to imagine how the ancients survived. If you cross back, it is estimated that you can't survive three meals a day.