Why veganism / vegetarian

https://truththeory.com/roman-gladiators-were-mostly-vegetarianstudy-suggests/

 Plato also said a meat diet was dangerous to peace as animals require much more food than would be needed if humans ate just eating plants. It’s like increasing the population by so many animal mouths who have much larger appetites than humans. The land yields less food if used for animals than eating a plant diet. The animals also require more water. Pythagoreans, Platonists and others adhered to a hierarchy of food? With meat at the lowest beastly level and fruits at the top godly pinnacle. 

The wasteful process of meat production, which requires far larger acreages of land than vegetable agriculture, has been a source of economic conflict in human society for thousands of years. A study published in Plant Foods for Human Nutrition reveals that an acre of grains produces five times more protein than an acre of pasture set aside for meat production. An acre of beans or peas produces ten times more, and an acre of spinach twenty-eight times more protein. Economic facts like these were known to the ancient Greeks. In Plato's Republic the great Greek philosopher Socrates recommended a vegetarian diet because it would allow a country to make the most intelligent use of its agricultural resources. He warned that if people began eating animals, there would be need for more pasturing land. "And the country which was enough to support the original inhabitants will be too small now, and not enough?" he asked of Glaucon, who replied that this was indeed true. "And so we shall go to war, Glaucon, shall we not?" To which Glaucon replied, "Most certainly".

It is interesting to note that meat-eating played a role in many of the wars during the age of European colonial expansion. The spice trade with India and other countries of the East was an object of great contention. Europeans subsisted on a diet of meat preserved with salt. In order to disguise and vary the monotonous and unpleasant taste of their food, they eagerly purchased vast quantities of spices. So huge were the fortunes to be made in the spice trade that governments and merchants did not hesitate to use arms to secure sources.

In the present era there is still the possibility of mass conflict based on food. Back in August 1974, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) published a report warning that in the near future there may not be enough food for the world's population "unless the affluent nations make a quick and drastic cut in their consumption of grain-fed animals".

Roman soldiers’ diet was mostly grain: wheat, barley, and oats, mainly, but also spelt and rye. Just as Roman soldiers were supposed to dislike meat, so too they were supposed to detest beer; considering it far inferior to their native Roman wine. Davies brings this assumption into question when he says a discharged Germanic soldier set himself up to supply the Roman military with beer near the end of the first century.

In reality, what we know about gladiators’ diet and physiques suggests a very different physical appearance than the one depicted in classical art and contemporary popular culture. According to archaeological research, their abdominals and pectorals were likely covered in a quivering layer of subcutaneous fat. Why? The evidence suggests gladiators carbo-loaded. They ate a diet high in carbohydrates, such as barley and beans, and low in animal proteins. Their meals looked nothing like the paleo or meat-and-fish centric diets.

Current knowledge of gladiators’ physiques comes from a group of medical anthropologists at the Medical University of Vienna and a nearly 2,000-year-old gladiator grave located in what is now Ephesus, Turkey. (When its inhabitants were interred, the area was part of the Roman Empire.) The mass grave houses the bones of 67 gladiators and one female slave, thought to be the spouse of one of the men buried there.

Researchers were able to identify the buried bodies as gladiators through reference to a set of reliefs carved into the marble slabs that marked the grave. These reliefs depict gladiatorial battle scenes and were dedicated to fallen gladiators.

Although none of the 68 skeletons was complete, enough arm and leg bones, as well as skulls and teeth, were preserved for researchers to be able to study and understand the nutritional and medical realities of the men to whom they once belonged. Using a technique called “isotopic analysis,” the team was able to test the skeletal remains for elements including calcium and zinc. This enabled them to partially reconstruct their diets. Based on the elemental mixtures they recovered using the analysis, the team concluded that the bodies in the grave ate few animal proteins and plenty of carb-rich legumes, as well as a healthy dose of calcium. This relatively meat-free diet is described in texts from the time, too: Pliny’s Natural History refers to gladiators by the nickname hordearii, which translates to “barley eaters.”

Interestingly, according to the researchers, gladiators’ primarily vegetarian diet was not a consequence of their poverty or slave status. While it is popularly believed that the ranks of men and women who fought as gladiators were comprised entirely of slaves, that’s only partly true. Though the majority of gladiators were prisoners of war and convicts, some rejoined voluntarily to earn wages after their initial term of conscription had ended. 

Nonetheless, given this lowly status, one might assume that a carb-heavy, mostly meat-free diet was a cost-cutting measure. After all, why feed prisoners extravagant fare?

Well, you might do it to improve their battlefield performance. The Vienna team posits that the fighters ate weight-gaining foods because extra fat created a layer of bodily protection. Nerve endings would have been less exposed, and bleeding cuts would have been less perilous. As an added benefit, the extra, protective layer of fat would have created a more satisfying spectacle: The gladiators could sustain wounds and gush blood, but, because the wounds were shallow, they could keep on fighting.

Gladiators were expensive investments so they generally didn’t fight to the death contrary to popular belief. 

Lycurgus, the law giver of Sparta, Outlawed Meat and Alcohol consumption to prevent “all manner of sensuality and dissoluteness”

Ancient Sparta was a Matriarchate, meaning, women had great respect and thus Spartans were trained to be chaste. Lycurgus, the law giver of Sparta, Outlawed Meat and Alcohol consumption to prevent “all manner of sensuality and dissoluteness.”

Plutarch (an ethical vegetarian c. 1st century) Greek historian, biographer, essayist and middle Platonist, Wrote about the chastity of the ancient Spartans: “This kind of commerce not only exercised their temperance and chastity, but kept their bodies fruitful, and the first ardor of their love free and unabated; for they were not satiated like those that are always with their wives.”