Charles C. Mann at The New Atlantis:
Sometime in the 1980s, an unprecedented change in the human condition occurred. For the first time in known history, the average person on Earth had enough to eat all the time.
Depending on their size, adult humans need to take in about 2,000 to 2,500 calories per day to thrive. For as far back as historians can see, a substantial number of Earth’s inhabitants spent much of their lives below this level. Famine and want were the lot of many — sometimes most — of our species.
Even wealthy places like Europe were not protected from hunger. France today is famed for its great cuisine and splendid restaurants. But its people did not reach the level of 2,000 to 2,500 calories per day until the mid-1800s. And even as the French left famine in the rear-view mirror, starvation was still claiming hundreds of thousands of Irish, Scots, and Belgians. As late as the winter of 1944–45, the Netherlands suffered a crippling famine — the Hongerwinter. More than 20,000 people perished in just a few months. Food shortages plagued rural Spain and Italy until at least the 1950s.
In poorer regions the situation was bleaker still.
More here.
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