Early Middle Ages were probably a point in history where Europeans were at their highest level in terms of overall health and quality of life.
Antiquity and Renaissance were both overcrowded, urbanized, with bad living conditions and worse food.
Antiquity and Renaissance were both overcrowded, urbanized, with bad living conditions and worse food.
No antibiotics, modern sanitation, internet, refrigeration orcentral heating, not much education, massive infant mortality and no way to travel faster than a horse. I don't see how that equates a high quality of life.
Would you swap places with them - given that you are far more likely to be a serf than an aristocrat?
All and all, your objections a) completely miss the point and b) are kinda weird.
Also, you are wrong. Meat stews were not just eaten, but the mainstay of the medieval peasants diet: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2019/may/medieval-peasant-die...