Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Most Romans ate "animal feed"

Hailed as a new discovery in German online edition of Der Spiegel, we learn something not so new about the diet of the great empire.

This was a weird short article about Roman eating habits. It was not all grapes, peaches, wheat and succulent lamb. According to the author, most Romans ate lots of "animal feed", especially millet.
Millet as animal feed appears to us possibly slightly off, but that is not the point.

It should be pretty obvious to researchers that the modern distinction between what people ate and what they fed to many animals is misleading, and it should not be a surprise to anybody that a few staple crops have sustained the poor everywhere.

We could use the exact same argument to describe the modern American diet: many Americans eat animal feed. And we are not talking about corn or soy but about potatoes!

That Russet potato you see in TV commercials, guess what - Germans call that one pig food.

Unless someone makes a meat pie where all the meat comes from mice or rats, don't say they a munching on animal food.

No comments:

Post a Comment