Peasants by and large ate pretty poorly, and their diet consisted mostly of bread. They also had an unfortunate tendency to under-nourish children during lean times, because the adults still needed to be well fed so that they could farm. This is the reason why the average height of a European man has increased more than 6 inches since the Middle Ages.

Rich artisanal whole grain bread and slaughtered hogs and fish.

Slaughtered hogs? Maybe twice a year in a good year on feast days. Seriously, the parent comment was spot-on, by-and-large they lived on the edge of starvation. It wasn't salmon for lunch everyday (in most cases, even every month). >75% of their diet was bread.

Sure, 'artisinal'... have you ever chipped a tooth from poorly ground flour or rock inclusions? The bread was more wholesome than what is avaliable in the supermarket now, but how many people outside of developing countries eat a majority grain diet? Bread was the main foodstuff simply because grain stores much more easily than anything else. Salt-curing was only avaliable to the rich, since even salt was tremendously expensive.

> Peasants ate very well, they had to, in order to work the fields.

If one doesn't care about the health of their workers, actually, one doesn't really need to feed them much.

If one doesn’t give a fuck then there’s also no reason to deny them either. Peasants are responsible for feeding themselves.

Perhaps my impression of the state of agricultural yields [0] and fealty payments is incorrect, but I don't think most peasants had enough food to be considered well nourished by today's standards. Sure some grew their own food, but the labor was much more involved than today and they didn't get to keep all of the food.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_Middle_Ages...

>Salmon were considered peasant food, a peasant would go by the river and fish one up for lunch.

Not without the permission of whoever owns the stream they wouldn't.