One of the many controversies touched off by Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman's “cliometric” examination of the peculiar institution concerns slave nutrition. The cliometricians portrayed the slave diet as not only substantial calorically but as actually exceeding “modern (1964) recommended daily levels of the chief nutrients.” This portrayal stands in sharp contrast to a more accepted view that has also found “cliometric” support. Richard Sutch, after reworking the Fogel and Engerman calculations, concluded that Time on the Cross claimed too much, that the caloric intake of slaves was “neither excessive nor generous,” and the diet, far from being balanced, was dangerously deficient in many of the chief nutrients.

This clash of cliometricians over nutrients and nutriments has had the heuristic effect of introducing students of the South to such novel preoccupations as livestock slaughter rates and conversion ratios, the kinds of sweet potatoes consumed, and even the proper way to cook cowpeas. As in so many areas of the study of slavery, “cliometrics” (in this case cliometric calorie counting) has brought a new sophistication to an old argument, and we are satisfied with the Fogel and Engerman findings regarding the kinds and quantities of foods generally available to slaves. Indeed, we have accepted these findings, modified them with assumptions suggested by antebellum literature and black genetic circumstances and then used the amounts of foods in question as the basis for a chemical analysis of the slave diet with an eye to ascertaining its quality.