Paul Saladino· MD
yes if you look at the majority of their diet it was grains and it was wee and barley and things like this but like that wasn't meant to create these monstrosity zuv people who you were looking at they have amazing physiques it was no they weren't slaves and they were feeding them what they needed to do to literally let them survive and the other point that I pointed out is if you look at the type of fighting that they did in this or in this era it's it wasn't a bad thing for these individuals to have body fat on you look at someone who's shredded that has veins everywhere is that someone that you want to be in an arena that has knives and and all these things around you that like a paper cut would allow them to bleed out no you want there to be some body fat on there to protect internal organs to protect you from getting sliced open like and it kind of makes sense when you really look at it but on the surface then when they say all these Roman gladiators are the best athletes in the world and it just it just wasn't true it's kind of all based on Russell Crowe and the movie you know it's it's so false you know you you pointed out some really great quotes from research in the article that you wrote David dr. Grossman a paleoanthropologist 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 was designed for survival in the arena packing in the carbs also packed on the pounds gladiators needed subcutaneous fat fat Cushing protects you from wounds and shields nerves and blood vessels in a fight so he says not only what a lean Lydia gladiator have been dead meat he would have made for a bad show surface wounds look more spectacular so and it's so fascinating that as you point out these gladiators were slaves they were also fed the cheapest food and you contrasted this with the Olympians and the Olympians were fighting for you know the ultimate prize they were the people that were celebrated and when they won the Olympics they got the prized animal and the best meat as a reward for that so it's just to say that they were doing this in any way shape or form for improved athletic performance is really misleading it is and it's such a it's such a stretch for them to go towards like hey look at what Roman gladiators ate to use it as an argument and to really start off the movie with that argument was it was just a weak one to use and we really just broke it down and like that probably wasn't the the ideal diet for someone who's trying to optimize their body composition physique and really fight at a high level if anything it I think it illustrates very well that those grains especially are kind of the lower rung of food right cheapest foods that'll make you fat very quickly we know this with sumo wrestlers I mean how do you get to be fat and have a lot of weight to move someone out of a sumo ring you eat a lot of rice and it's the same thing here they're not gonna feed slaves I mean sadly you know if they're prisoners or slaves in weather it's our culture today or historical cultures if people don't get fed steak they don't get fed expensive food they get fed the cheapest food and that happened to be grains at the time so just yeah all right that's an easy one to get rid of yeah get that out get that up next so the next argument you talk about is this idea that vegans are stronger than meat-eaters well that's crazy but all right let's break it down so the funny thing is this is it's great never doing this podcast now because the icon that they use in this argument Nate Diaz actually just lost another fight but they basically use the argument because they have interviews from Conor McGregor one of the arguably one of the greatest UFC fighters of all time that basically he was eating a bunch of meat