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Comment by bane | Hacker News Reader

"The result shows that gladiators mostly ate a vegetarian diet. There is virtually no difference in terms of nutrition from the local "normal population." Meals consisted primarily of grain and meat-free meals. The word "barley eater" relates in this case to the fact that gladiators were probably given grain of an inferior quality."

1) You don't waste expensive food on people who are about to die stabbing each other to death for your entertainment.

2) You don't even bother to waste good grain on them.

3) Most people ate a mostly vegetarian diet, meat is expensive and hard to transport.

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> You don't waste expensive food on people who are about to die stabbing each other to death for your entertainment.

you have no idea. Gladiators were something like sport celebrities.

Elite gladiators vs. the newly arrived cannon-fodder... I would imagine they had very different qualities of life. After all the elite attended social functions with high society and were pimped out...

While this is true, it was a blood-sport. When a soccer player loses a match, he/she can go on to win later. If you lose a duel to the death, you're dead.

Throughly trained gladiators were expected to last several years because the training was expensive. Blood from being wounded was usually enough, as soon as a gladiator was wounded he would have to plead for mercy because his chances against a skilled opponent were now nil.

There was also a referee. On occasion a gladiator would be killed or not receive mercy from the crowd. Most gladiators showed healed wounds on their bones.

Untrained people were thrown in the arena with the expectation of death. It was a favored form of execution.

Duels to the death were rather rare[1] during the Imperial Era.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladiator#Combat

Not true, very small percentage of the fights ended with death.

And most of those were convicts getting executed. Get the people warmed up by killing some nameless criminals, and then send in the stars.

Most of them were slaves. A minority became celebrities, that is, slave celebrities.

Food is an incredibly ideologized topic, and closely linked to identity. This can affect how we deal with information contradicting our beliefs and habits in this regard.

(Science Daily should take that into account and provide context, e.g. avoiding to imply one way is better than the other and provide context by giving a summary of current knowledge on diet...)

Meat is super easy to transport in its wrapper, eg the live animal. Heck it even transports itself.

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