Some quotes (see article link below)
In the November/December ’08 issue of Archeology magazine, author Andrew Currey covered the recent findings by paleo-pathologist Karl Grossschmidt of Vienna, concerning the diet of ancient Roman gladiators. Grossschmidt and his colleague, Fabian Kanz, examined the bones of gladiators from a site in Western Turkey. Currey wrote:
But the biggest revelation to come out of the Ephesus cemetery is what kept the gladiators alive–a vegetarian diet rich in carbohydrates, with the occasional calcium supplement. Contemporary accounts of gladiator life sometimes refer to the warriors as hordearii–literally, “barley men.” Grossschmidt and collaborator Fabian Kanz subjected bits of the bone to isotopic analysis, a technique that measures trace chemical elements such as calcium, strontium, and zinc, to see if they could find out why. They turned up some surprising results. Compared to the average inhabitant of Ephesus, gladiators ate more plants and very little animal protein.
But the writers drew an odd conclusion:
Gladiators, it seems, were fat.
Their strange analysis is repudiated in part because:
Grossschmidt’s assertion that gladiators purposely “packed on the pounds” with a carb-heavy diet poses several problems. […]
The condemnation of excess bodyfat can also be seen in the late Roman writer Vegetius’s Epitoma Rei Militaris(Epitome of Military Science). Vegetius wrote specifically about ideal army recruits, but his requirements apply to fighting men in general:
So let the adolescent who is to be selected for martial activity have alert eyes, straight neck, broad chest, muscular shoulders, strong arms, long fingers, let him be small in the stomach, slender in the buttocks, and have calves and feet which are not swollen by surplus fat but firm with hard muscle. When you see these points in a recruit, you need not greatly regret the absence of tall stature. It is more useful that soldiers be strong than big.
Okay… so bring on those UNPROCESSED carbs in 2018!