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I think that depends in part on who your ancestors are -- I.e. do you have genes from a carnivorous culture?

My exhusband is part Viking, basically. They ate a lot of meat, in part because they lived so far north that you couldn't grow enough plantbased foods. My ex ate a very high meat diet. Our sons eat less meat than he did, but they are 1/4 Norwegian whereas he is 1/2. Still, they tolerate more meat in their diet than I do. I am convinced there is a genetic component here.

(Yes I know: Anecdotal and all that.)



The vikings actually were mostly crop farmers. Due to the weird way Caribbean waters flow up through the Atlantic and past Brittian.

http://www.danishnet.com/info.php/vikings/farming-152.html


Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that Vikings only ate meat. Just that they appear to have eaten a lot more meat than most other Europeans (I am mostly German and Irish in ancestory). That isn't inconsistent with my point that genes likely influence one's tolerance in this regard.

Even the site you link to talks about lamb and other meat being a regular part of the Viking diet. In Europe, the children's rhyme "peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold" refers to the common practice of serving some sort of hot meal at lunch and cold leftovers at dinner. Peas porridge was likely either vegetarian or had very little meat in it. When I had some poetry class in college, it pointed out that "Greasy Jane stirs the pot" suggested a servant in an upper class household preparing a dish containing meat, which was something of a luxury item. The "greasy" imagery indicates it contained meat. Peasants could not afford meat on a routine basis. Further back in history, Romans ate far more eggs than meat.

My ex was a history buff. We talked a fair amount about things like that.

Sorry for the sloppy wording earlier.




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