Antebellum Slave Diet: Nutritional or Not?

African Americans were forced into a horrific lifestyle during the slavery period in the United States. A very integral characteristic of the slaves’ lifestyle was their diet, a vital component to the slaves’ sustainability as they were forced to work hard for many hours a day. The slaveholders were responsible for the appropriation of foods to each slave or each slave family. The slaveholder’s mind was always on one track when it came to his or her business, maximize production and minimize expenses to gain the most profit. The amount of food for the slaves was severely cut to the bare minimum to minimize expenses, which affected the slaves both physically and psychologically. The purpose of this essay is to identify the African American slave diet, explain its insufficiencies, and analyze how these insufficiencies affected the attitudes of the slaves during the antebellum period in the United States. Also, Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, the authors of Time on the Cross, argue that the slave diet was not only sufficient, but that it was more nutritious than the modern African American diet. Fogel and Engerman are incorrect in concluding that the diet of the

African Americans fought through the insufficiencies and malnutrition in their diet which was forced on them during antebellum slavery. The slaves were forced to eat spoiled meats and weevil-eaten corn, and were bound to work strenuously for hours upon hours on the southern plantations. Primary documents state evidence that the slave diet was extremely low in essential vitamins and minerals, thus discounting Fogel and Engerman’s argument stating that the slave diet was more nutritious than the diet of modern African Americans. Eugene Genovese supports this essay’s malnourishment argument stating, “The diet to which the slaves were subjected must be judged immensely damaging, despite assurances from contemporaries and later historians that the slave was well fed.”

Provision grounds were a very important aspect of some of the slave plantations for the African Americans, as they were given some freedom to maintain a garden of fruits and vegetables. The benefits of the provision grounds were two-fold for the slaves. First, the slaves who were given provisions grounds by their master were able to maintain a garden of edible foods to supplement their staple foods of corn and salt pork. Garden vegetables such as collard greens, yams (at certain times of the year), and watermelon were among a few of the items grown on the provision grounds. All of these foods provide generous doses of essential vitamins and minerals for the overworked and underfed slaves. Secondly, if the provision grounds were kept up well, and cared for, the slaves were left with food for themselves as well as extra food that could be sold at the food market in the nearest town or to surrounding plantation workers for a bit of extra money. This was a great way for women to get involved in the daily commerce and economy of the southern states despite being oppressed by slavery. If the slave

First of all, Fogel and Engerman analyze their information by looking at the numbers only, and their numbers aren’t even that clear. They believed that they could come to rational dietary conclusions by simply running numbers, collected from plantation documents, into graphs. While the numbers in the graphs may be correct as to how much meat or corn was eaten by slaves, Fogel and Engerman and their graphs do not take into consideration the quality of the food that the slaves were given to eat. Some of the meat and corn rations they were forced to eat should not have even been labeled as food. John Brown recalls his meal rations on a Georgian plantation saying, “Our allowance of food was one peck of corn a week…We never had meat of any kind…the corn was always of inferior quality, and weevil-eaten…it did not yield in meal what it would have done had it been sound.” First-hand accounts such as this are common and provide astounding evidence of the insufficiencies of the slave diet. Henry Bibb, a slave on a southern plantation recalls an recurring incident with salt pork, “I have often seen the meat spoiled when brought to us, covered with flies…and even worms…when we were compelled to eat it, or go without any at all. These accounts clearly display that the foods the plantation slaves were given, spoiled meat and inferior corn, lacked the quality to be considered nutritious foods. For Fogel and Engerman to claim that the slave diet was nutritious is ignorance, as they never considered the quality or the actual quantity rationed to each plantation slave. Fogel and Engerman even tell their audience that “surviving plantation records are not complete enough to permit documentation of the average amounts of each of the foods purchased for slaves or of the quantities of meats and fish that slaves obtained through hunting and fishing.” Instead of attempting to find other conclusions, the authors drew data f

Some topics in this essay:
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