Download Wheat was the main food for most Romans

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The Romans also employed techniques that were equivalent to today’s factory farming methods.
Slaves would constantly feed milk to snails, nuts to dormice and bread to pigeons. Animals’ legs
would be broken and birds’ wings clipped to restrict their mobility, thus increasing their body
weight in the shortest possible time.
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The Romans loved to put spicy sauces on their foods. One of the reasons for this was that the
Romans absorbed a great deal of lead from their metal pipes, cooking pots and drinking cups.
This created an unpleasant metallic taste in the mouth and the spicy sauces helped to overcome
the problem. Some of the ingredients in these sauces such as pepper, ginger, cumin and
cinnamon had to come from outside the empire and were therefore extremely expensive.
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In the late stages of the Roman Empire, the rich became obsessed with food. Dinner parties
where friends could eat and gossip together were very popular. Sometimes they lasted from three
in the afternoon until late at night. People would bring their own slaves with them to the dinner
party. It was their job to cut up their owner’s food and to clean up after them if they were sick.
One Roman writer claimed that half-way through the meal people would put a feather down their
throats to make themselves sick so they had room for more food.
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The Romans preferred fish to meat. To ensure a constant supply, villas would have ponds where
fish were bred and kept alive until ready for eating. Mullet, sole, turbot and sturgeon were all
popular. Fish would be served with a sweet and sour sauce. As well as spices the sauces would
include fruit such as plums and apricots.
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Wheat was the main food for most Romans. It was often boiled into a form of porridge. Other
foods such as vegetables, herbs, olives, fish or meat would be added to give it more flavour.
Wheat was also used to make bread, biscuits and pancakes. The Romans also liked bread
flavoured with cheese, aniseed or honey.
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Some Romans were vegetarians. It was argued that eating meat was bad for you. For example,
some believed that eating pork caused leprosy. Others believed in reincarnation and were afraid
they might eat the soul of a relative. A further group claimed that eating meat was immoral.
Sextius, a Roman Philosopher, argued that as there was enough food available, people should
not kill animals.
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Whereas the diet of most citizens was fairly monotonous, the rich could afford to eat foods
imported from all over the empire. Having expensive banquets was a way of letting people know
how wealthy you were. Julius Caesar became worried that this showing off might cause the poor
to rebel, and in 46BC he passed a law limiting how much people could spend on meals. This law
proved unenforceable and was generally ignored. Wealthy Romans would eat three meals a day.
Breakfast would be bread dipped in wine or goat’s milk, lunch a small meal of eggs or cold meat.
The main meal would take place in the evening and would last for several hours.