Caloric Consumption in Industrializing Belgium

This article provides estimates of Belgian food consumption in 1812 and 1846 using a national food balance sheet approach. These estimates are then converted into caloric intakes for adult male equivalents. Despite many accounts of an absolute pauperization of the Belgian population during this period, caloric consumption per equivalent adult male is shown to have merely stagnated between 1812 and 1846. There is indirect evidence that inequality in caloric consumption increased at the same time. Energy cost-accounting exercises reveal that the residual caloric quantity available for physical exertion was minimal for large sections of the population.