Did Hobbits work harder?
 

Alright, Tolkien said Hobbits eat six good meals a day if they can. They are also somewhat chubby. Now, if someone ate six good sized meals a day and worked as hard as regular people do, especially if they are half the size, I think they would be more than somewhat chubby. They would be fat! (believe me, I tried it) So, even though they liked parties, did Hobbits work harder when they did work to burn of the food and get a higher metabolism?

Hobbit metabolisms were probably different than regular humans.

And I don't think Tolkien really counted calories when he was sub-creating his world. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

Plus, they're meals weren't all full meals like we have, I'd imagine.

YES!!!hehehe
From
Rosa

The meals were probably hobbit-sized like everything else so that it would be like us having snacks throughout the day.

i guess tolkein didnt really think bout it much......they must have a different system or summit.....

Anyway, they run orff half of it when pinchin mushrooms!

They probably worked hard on their gardens - gardening takes a lot of energy. Plus there was filling up the baths after all the gardening with hot water from the keetle (imagine how many kettles are needed to fill a bath) then all that scrubbing to get the dirt off. The of course is cooking - a very energy consuming matter if you ask me! [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

If they tried eating that much in modern times, they probably would get horribly fat. However, they didn't have the modern conveniences in the Shire that we do today, so I imagine a lot of the calories they ate would get burned off during everyday chores, plus they may have had different metabolisms.

[ June 19, 2002: Message edited by: ElanorGamgee ]

You know, I didn't think about naturally different metabolisms.

From what I chanced to read somewhere, the smaller the creatures (sorry for the word, can't think of any other) the faster metabolism they have. And besides, wholesome natural food, lots of time in the open air and doing everything with their own hands.

The thing about the food, I remember hearing about a guy in the 1600s (real guy) who lived top something like 120 or something eating farm food.

It's interesting how hobbits are portrayed as creatures who love to eat a lot, but they are never considered gluttons. I agree that their meals are probably not as big as our meals. At least not all of them. Maybe breakfast, lunch, and dinner are regular sized meals, but the others are probably just snacks. Their metabolism, just like their aging process, probably differs from humans as well. And yes, working in the fields and doing everything manually, as well as walking so much in the Shire, most likely burns a lot of calories!