Romans eating out.

[Drusus Nero]

I read in a book recently that many working-class Romans (and non-citizens too I guess) didn't have individual kitchens in their tenament blocks. Because of the ever present risk of fire their landlords decided to leave out building a kitchen area in the apartments. Instead the people tended to buy ready cooked food from street vendors and either eat it straightaway or take it home to eat.

 

This is just like today, back then there must have been quite a few takeaways in the markets and main shopping areas,

yet they didn't seem to have the same problem we have. It occurs to me that we need to discover the secret they had for not putting on weight. I often see the news reports on the nation's growing obesity epidemic, if the Romans ate as much fast food as we do now how did they stay so thin?.

[Northern Neil]

I often see the news reports on the nation's growing obesity epidemic, if the Romans ate as much fast food as we do now how did they stay so thin?.

The Romans did indeed eat fast food, but probably not nearly as much as our society does. At Pompeii and Herculaneum fast food bars can still be seen. I dont think they ate 'A lot' of fast food; like you say, many people didnt have kitchens, so their one meal of the day was probably obtained from a fast food shop.

 

I think they didnt get obese because most of them physically worked quite hard, and the motor vehicle wasnt there to take the kids round the block to school. The plebs in particular probably had to let their money stretch as far as possible given their poverty. In our society, people who regard themselves as quite poor still buy and eat far more food than they need. Whilst buying your already obese child a Big Mac so he will behave during the shopping trip is an option for us, it probably wasnt for a Roman family of plebs. So, therein lies the secret. We eat far more food than our bodies need to sustain themselves, and rely on motor vehicles for many journeys which our legs would accomplish just as well.

Edited April 21, 2007 by Northern Neil

[Gaius Octavius]

I think that bread and vegetables were more important to the vast majority of Romans than fat bearing meat. A diet of beans and rice will provide the protein necessary for life without the bad lipids.

Edited April 22, 2007 by Gaius Octavius

[Rameses the Great]

The Romans, as with most people of the Mediterranean, used bread as their staple food. It is filling so all you really need is something to eat along side of it to satisfy your body.

[Andrew Dalby]

With us (and particularly with those who live in the US and Britain!) food is extremely cheap, a very small proportion of what we spend day by day, and we don't spend much time on it either -- and our media (in Britain anyway) are still trying to get the cost and time down, I guess so that we have more money and time to spend on their kind of entertainment. And bad-but-attractive food (I'm speaking with a bit of bias here, as anyone will see) costs less than good food and takes less time to eat. So we have every reason (except health) to choose bad food and eat a lot of it.

 

Less-well-off city Romans ate 'fast food', OK, but not in our modern sense. They ate food from bars and cookshops, but there was no big range of fattening foods for them to choose from. What the bars and cookshops sold was bread, vegetable soups and stews, not much meat or fish unless you paid a lot for it, very little animal fat, not much sweet food: all sweeteners were expensive except maybe dried figs and raisins, and both of those happen to be seriously good for the digestion! Flavour additives included onions, garlic, maybe ginger and pepper if you could afford them, all beneficial; and salt, and in a hot climate working hard you need plenty of salt.

 

So eating a lot of the wrong sort of food, and resultant obesity, would have been a problem for the very rich and indulged.

[caldrail]

It was also common practice to make dough at home, then take it to a baker to have it cooked. Most poor people had no cooking facilities themselves which was probably just as well considering the fire risk!

[Pertinax]

The development of "baker" as a trade is a mid to late Republican era event. The topic of bread making has been covered in frightening detail on the Apicius Yahoo group (enter if you dare). I venture to suggest the rise of the trade as a co-factor of expansion of the state (acquisition of grain supplies external to Italy ) and rapid population rise .

[caldrail]

The corn dole is such a factor then, because the unemployed roman was given enough grain to prevent starvation and bread must have been a large part of their diet. I wonder how much takeaway food they ate? Was it too expensive for them?

[Pertinax]

The corn dole is such a factor then, because the unemployed roman was given enough grain to prevent starvation and bread must have been a large part of their diet. I wonder how much takeaway food they ate? Was it too expensive for them?

 

The best suggestion I have for grain in Rome and the Attic sphere also , (from considering the nature of the grain supply , and its self-fulfiling imperative to expansion) is that : if provision of grain was maintained with reasonable fluency then (if free or subsidised or even at a supported price) the urban populations were likely to be reasonably well satisfied as far as the vital staple went. However (and this is particularly apposite for Rome) when supply was disrupted by strife in particular then instability and possibly violence ensued.

Now those are wide generalisations, but I dont think they are innacurate. As regards the daily fare served I think ADs post above hints at what would be a decent staple mix. Scarcity dogged supply, so a dullish diet would seem reasonable for an economy based on peasant subsistence "conservatism" (that is the State (rightly) assumes that rational peasant cultivators will take great care to micro-manage against famine , as it is the defining nature of their existence) , but famine (and our favourite periods of turmoil illustrate this well ) broke the structure of "careful personal storage".

Now, how far advanced might an unemployed plebs diet be over that of his rustic cousin? Would the townies have merely had a wider choice of puls/breads ?

[docoflove1974]

Less-well-off city Romans ate 'fast food', OK, but not in our modern sense. They ate food from bars and cookshops, but there was no big range of fattening foods for them to choose from. What the bars and cookshops sold was bread, vegetable soups and stews, not much meat or fish unless you paid a lot for it, very little animal fat, not much sweet food: all sweeteners were expensive except maybe dried figs and raisins, and both of those happen to be seriously good for the digestion! Flavour additives included onions, garlic, maybe ginger and pepper if you could afford them, all beneficial; and salt, and in a hot climate working hard you need plenty of salt.

 

When I went to Spain a few years ago, I noticed 2 different trends--both in Madrid and in the smaller cities. Gen X'ers and Y'ers (particularly the latter) tended to think of 'fast food' as the (predominantly) American imports like McDonalds, KFC (which, btw, is no where near the American original..oh lordy..), Starbucks and the like--what most of us in the States and (probably) the UK would consider 'fast food'. Then there were the 'cafeterias' or 'diners' (for lack of a better word)--small holes in the wall which cooked up quick meals, but relatively healthy ones. Oh, sure, there's usually meat + starch, but always with veg of some kind, and relatively inexpensive. And, honestly, a whole helluva lot better than the other stuff. Along the same lines, one could always find stalls in the mercado central (as well as in El Corte Ingl

[Rameses the Great]

I'm wandering what type (or types) of bread would be in use in Rome. If I'm not mistaken Egypt seemed to be the nation's 'bread basket' so would the bread they ate be predicated on the area or personal preference? Some bread is more filling then others such as pita for example.

[Pertinax]

The likely grains? Spelt (red wheat), rye and barley .Please refer to my blog (Grains in the Ancient World ) regarding grains and the book review here:

 

http://www.unrv.com/book-review/famine-food-supply.php

 

Lupins as well (no kidding).

[Drusus Nero]

Wow , I didn't realise until now how important bread was to the standard Roman diet,

I suppose they didn't have much money to spare for meat.

[Gaius Octavius]

This is just like today, back then there must have been quite a few takeaways in the markets and main shopping areas,

yet they didn't seem to have the same problem we have. It occurs to me that we need to discover the secret they had for not putting on weight. I often see the news reports on the nation's growing obesity epidemic, if the Romans ate as much fast food as we do now how did they stay so thin?.

 

It would seem that they may have eaten more 'fast food' than moderns do. It is probably the kind of food one eats and the amount, along with the exercise one gets, that determines one's stature. Insofar as the army was concerned, they would not want fat men nor skinny men. They wanted strong, well proportioned men with large hands. Their breads were made from whole grains, which retain their vitamins, and not from over milled grains, i.e., 'white bread'. Their meats were probably not reconstituted, dyed, fat laden hamburgers or deli meats, such as baloney. Perhaps, there was no secret; just common sense.

[Pertinax]

Indeed as AD has pointed out elsewhere , the pig was a prized animal because of its usefulness as a provider of storable processed products . I dont however see the Romans stuffing hams with a selection of nitrate, colourants sand stabilisers , merely salt. The retention (indeed potentiation) of vitamins in naturally made bread and beer are major positives in the Roman diet.