Medieval Diet and Demography

There is no simple and straightforward association to be made for the Middle Ages between diet and demographic behaviour. We can and do risk certain assumptions regarding this relationship, however. These assumptions include correlations between the behaviour of population and the overall availability of food, and the consequences for demography and health of limited food availability, in terms of quantity and also of range and quality. We might also argue, with some justification, that large-scale population movements were not occasioned by diet. Background mortality and crisis mortality, the consequences of endemic and epidemic disease, may have had significantly greater roles to play in the demographic history of the period.