Yeah, it sounds fairly depressing. I imagine living in the city made it harder to eat well if you were a normal person. At least in the countryside, you could raise more crops than a small allotment, maybe have a chicken, pig or cow on the downlow. I don't know if they allowed people to provide for themselves in that era, or if it was still highly regulated. Banning ownership of chickens, or something. But I bet the tasty meals of that era were more easily found in the countryside since they might have had more "unofficial" access to good ingredients. Farming families tend to manage better than city dwellers sometimes, since you're less beholden to what the shops are carrying (also it's much cheaper if you grow it yourself). You could barter more easily if you had a crop of something. I imagine TPTB would've killed farmers' markets with fire. But that's where the freshest food usually is, no matter the country.