There's little in the way of firm data until the sixteenth century or generally later, though we know that agricultural productivity was low by modern standards - the very factor that kept urban populations down until recent times (overall under a tenth even in relatively well-performing Europe until the 14th century and under a fifth into the 19th): indeed for England, Bruce Campbell's calculations show that there just wasn't enough food available to feed some of the higher numbers of mouths often suggested for the pre-Black Death peak (and I consider even his 4.8m too high).

Urban incomes tended to be higher in monetary terms, but so too were prices, as foods had to be brought in from the countryside or from remoter markets at a time when transport of bulk produce added appreciably to cost even before intermediaries' markups. Carlo Cipolla (Before the Industrial Revolution, Methuen 1976) reports that 60% of households in Pavia in 1555 had no grain reserves, a condition which in farm households would indicate direst poverty or incipient famine.

Another consideration is the composition of the average diet, heavily reliant on grain ("our daily bread") with livestock produce generally a luxury - probably not beyond average means, but to be used sparingly: as late as 1800 European meat consumption averaged only 20 kg annually, with England famed for its 45 kg. Even where adequate, diets would necessarily have tended to be leaner with fat in short supply compared to today's abundance.

Urban households may on the whole have enjoyed higher per capita food supply than rural ones owing to readier access to markets and wider choice - and it has to be recalled that people have long tended to move from country to town, an unlikely aspiration if the prospect was hunger. And elites of town or country doubtless enjoyed a more than adequate diet. But for most life in both remained a struggle to make ends meet until the 19th-century rise in incomes and emergence of intercontinental shipment of staple foodstuffs.