Most of the ancients that people pay attention to these days are … well-fed
You mean well-fed in the sense of “not starving,” but that doesn’t imply “well-fed” in the sense of eating a healthy diet. There’s reason to think that upper-class Romans would have been even more damaged by lead poisoning than the poor, and there’s good evidence that even emperors were deficient in iodine.
I have a historian standing next to me right now who says the lead poisoning story is BS and people who propagate it should be shot/severely eye-rolled at. He says that:
-Romans did drink lead-sweetened wine but -only lower class romans did so because they could not afford better -lead-sweetened wine continued to be drunk up until the 18th century -While some people undoubtedly died, saying it caused the fall of the Roman Empire is a ridiculous just-so story -particularly because the sweetener was used centuries before and after the fall with no increasing usage leading up to the fall -and the eastern Roman empire continued to exist for another thousand years anyway.
Olive oil is only 10% PUFA and I doubt they were getting 10% of calories from olive oil. Benefits of PUFA are at much lower doses, or in the case of Omega-3 making up for huge O3/O6 imbalances.
You mean well-fed in the sense of “not starving,” but that doesn’t imply “well-fed” in the sense of eating a healthy diet. There’s reason to think that upper-class Romans would have been even more damaged by lead poisoning than the poor, and there’s good evidence that even emperors were deficient in iodine.
I have a historian standing next to me right now who says the lead poisoning story is BS and people who propagate it should be shot/severely eye-rolled at. He says that:
-Romans did drink lead-sweetened wine but
-only lower class romans did so because they could not afford better
-lead-sweetened wine continued to be drunk up until the 18th century
-While some people undoubtedly died, saying it caused the fall of the Roman Empire is a ridiculous just-so story
-particularly because the sweetener was used centuries before and after the fall with no increasing usage leading up to the fall
-and the eastern Roman empire continued to exist for another thousand years anyway.
But they weren’t consuming huge amounts of unstable polyunsaturated fats from vegetable oils, either.
They were, and who said they’re bad anyway?
Olive oil is only 10% PUFA and I doubt they were getting 10% of calories from olive oil. Benefits of PUFA are at much lower doses, or in the case of Omega-3 making up for huge O3/O6 imbalances.