SC - Period pig info

[Mark S. Harris]

>From "The Year 1000" by Robert Lacey & Danny Danziger:
page 58 -
"Mutton was not a particular delicacy, Wulfstan's memorandum of estate
management described mutton as a food for slaves, and pork seems also
to have been considered routine.

The relatively small amounts of fat on all these meats would be viewed
by modern nutritionists with quite a kindly eye. Saturated fat, the
source of cholesterol with its related contemporary health problems, 
is a problem of the intensively reared factory-farmed animals of recent
years, with their overabundant "scientific" diets and their lack of
exercise. All Anglo-Saxons would have been shocked at the idea of
ploughing land to produce animal feed. Ploughland was for feeding
humans. So farm animals were lean and rangey, their meat containing
three times as much protein as fat. With modern, intensively reared
animals that ratio is often reversed. 42"

That footnote is:
42   Hagen, Second Handbook, p93.

The Bibliography has:
Hagen, Anne, A Second Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Food and Drink: Production
and Distribution.  Hockwold-cum-Wilson: Anglo-Saxon Books, 1995.

This pretty much echos my thoughts on the situation.

Ann Hagen has quite a lot to say about Anglo-Saxon pigs and their
raising. I will quote some of her info in another message.

- -- 
THL Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas           stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****