suet and lard, not malt beverages


This is from the Christian History website, special interests page:


Chunky Monks
Martin Luther was relatively svelte before he left monastic life and married. Benedict ordered his monks to avoid gluttony and indigestion, "for there is nothing so opposed to Christian life as over-indulgence." Several rules governing Celtic monasteries commanded, "Take not of food till thou art hungry."
Still, today's stereotype of a medieval monk is the corpulent Friar Tuck. Now Philippa Patrick, who has been studying the hefty subject for her Ph.D. at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, says the stereotype is broad but not grossly inflated.
"They were taking in about 6,000 calories a day, and 4,500 even when they were fasting," she told The Guardian during the International Medieval Congress in Leeds. "Their meals were full of saturated fats. They were five times more likely to suffer from obesity than their secular contemporaries, including wealthy merchants or courtiers." That's because, she says, they were eating suet, lard, and butter "in startling quantities."
Patrick bases her conclusions upon 300 sets of skeletons at three London-area monasteries (Tower Hill, Bermondsey, and Merton). The monks, she says, evidenced much more obesity-related arthritis than was the norm. Several suffered from a degenerative form of arthritis called dish (diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis), also known as Forestier's disease. "The marks of dish keep appearing on their skeletons," Patrick told The Guardian. "It forms a coating on the spine, like candlewax dripping down the side."