Gladiators´ Diet Was Mostly Veggies, says Study
Vienna: The diet of Roman gladiators was based on cereals and included very little meat, according to an investigation carried out by scientists of the Medical universities of Vienna (Austria) and Bern (Switzerland), published on Thursday (30).
According to the experts, the tests applied to the bones found in the tombs of 22 gladiators one thousand 800 years old in the Roman city of Ephesus which now belongs to Turkey, showed the ancient fighters had an almost vegetarian diet.
Gladiators drank a beverage made of plant ashes to recover from a fight or training session, as it was revealed by conclusions reached after analyzing the level of strontium in the bone tissue of the ancient Romans.
Fabian Kanz, professor of forensic medicine at the University of Vienna, explained the ingestion of plant ashes to strengthen the body after physical exercise and to improve healing of broken bones
The study says the professional fighters mainly ate wheat, barley and other cereals, having found very little traces of meat and dairy products in their diet.
However, the bones of two gladiators showed a diet high in animal protein and low in cereal consumption, which could mean they were original of other regions of the Roman empire and lived in other conditions before beginning to participate in those mortal shows.(KH)
