Wed, Aug-22-12, 15:35
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Senior Member
Posts: 2,544
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Plan: VLC
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Progress: 40%
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I am more and more shocked by this article. I started poking around, and I picked one of his statements at random - one which seemed particularly odd to me - and googled it:
"Caesar’s legions complained when they had too much meat in their diet and preferred to do their fighting on grains."
I got quite a few hits using that exact quote. One hit is to McDougal's book. The footnote takes me to Durant's The Story of Civilization volume 3 - no page numbers given - which makes me suspicious, because all the other cites include page numbers.
The reference after that one is this: http://www.archaeology.org/0811/abs.../gladiator.html
McDougal uses this to bolster this paragraph in his book:
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The remains of more that 60 gladiators who lived and died more that 1,800 years ago in Epheseus, in western Turkey, were recently found in a 200-square-foot plot along the road that lead from the city center to the Temple of Artemis. Analysis of their bones for calcium, strontium, and zinc showed that the world's fiercest fighters followed an essentially vegan diet. In contemporary accounts, the gladiators are sometimes referred to as hordearii, or barley men, since barley provided the bulk of the nutrients that gave their remarkably strong muscles and bones the strength and endurance to compete in the ultimate sport of life and death.
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But if you go to the article he cites you learn this (my bolding):
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Compared to the average inhabitant of Ephesus, gladiators ate more plants and very little animal protein. The vegetarian diet had nothing to do with poverty or animal rights. Gladiators, it seems, were fat. Consuming a lot of simple carbohydrates, such as barley, and legumes, like beans, was designed for survival in the arena. Packing in the carbs also packed on the pounds. "Gladiators needed subcutaneous fat," Grossschmidt explains. "A fat cushion protects you from cut wounds and shields nerves and blood vessels in a fight." Not only would a lean gladiator have been dead meat, he would have made for a bad show. Surface wounds "look more spectacular," says Grossschmidt. "If I get wounded but just in the fatty layer, I can fight on," he adds. "It doesn't hurt much, and it looks great for the spectators."
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What the hell! His own freaking citation comes right out and says carbs made gladiators fat and that was part of the fun. |
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