This depends very heavily on what era and region you’re talking about. Basically, the denser the population, the less meat-based diets generally were, at least for the general population.
If you look at Europe in the Middle Ages, diets drastically changed when the Black Death thinned out the population in the 14th century. Before, people had to use much of their arable land for grains, because it’s just more economical in terms of space needed. Afterwards, because of the decline in population, people ate a lot more meat just because there was relatively more space in relation to the population
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But would you agree their foods were much “cleaner”? No matter how much meat each population ate, with nothing being processed or anything like that.
In my opinion, the important thing to remember is mankind has had the same basic nature since it began. Large and strong men have always inspired others. The body has always been considered a work of art and beautiful. Vanity is as old as mankind as well as the desire for self improvement. Many cultures uch as the ancient Greeks, put a lot of emphasis on male muscularity and a curvy graceful woman. The term “looks like a greek god” is a common phrase used today. They were incredibly intelligent and people were improving their physiques even back then by slinging iron, increased/controlled diet and through manual labor.
Much of the muscularity was attributed to good genetics the same as today. People selectively bred humans and animals in order to produce purpose specific lineages. Just a theory but I would suspect there were some very, very incredible physiques back in the day, because of selective breeding.
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In some ways, yes of course, but I think people often tend to idealise the past overmuch. It always depends on what time and parts of the world you try to compare to the situation today. If you look at the pre-modern era in general, since the onset of agriculture, in most times and places, diets were much less varied than they are today. The majority of many people’s food was made up of a relatively small number of different grains. Then there are famines, which are much (!) less frequent and severe now than they were not too long ago basically everywhere on earth. Many people today make bad food choices, people in the past usally had precious little to choose from. (Oh god, that sounds so overdramatic…)