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Comment by HeyLaughingBoy | Hacker News Reader

Too poor to afford sugar.

Actually bread was the most common issue for poor dental hygiene at this time.

Flour was ground by stone, tiny pieces of stone made its way into the bread, and the stone stripped the enamel from teeth.

So youre saying micro stones in the food supply were causing a public health crisis?

Underrated comment

And yes, this was a real thing.

ugh!

And still not as dangerous as adding sugar to everything

I wouldn't trade my diet for the diet of a roman. The estimated 500ml wine/daily is very high.

Less than a bottle/day. Not something I do but not something I wouldn't do either.

> The estimated 500ml wine/daily is very high.

My dad and grandad would laugh at this. 500ml/day is rookie numbers in the former Roman parts of Eastern Europe.

Your dad might not be the best example of a healthy lifestyle.

Because they (and many other people) drank more than that, doesn't mean it's a good diet. The Romans drank they wine cut with water though I think.

Roman wine was heavily diluted though, at least.

The 500ml is the undiluted amount [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Rome_and_wine

Yes maybe it is more like a pint of weak beer per day by modern alcohol standards. Not great for you but maybe a good source of clean water.

German breweries gave their workers an allowance of 4 to 8 liters of beer per day not too long ago. ('Haustrunk')

Often when the conversation of drinking comes up it becomes a contest to see who can drink the most. The WHO actually keeps track of this data on a population level[0]. Right now the country with the highest alcohol consumption per capita is Romania, with an average consumption of >2.9 units of alcohol a day for the entire population 15 years old or older. In case there is some national pride in your comment about Germany, rest assured they are 5th place. I'll leave the readers to decide if that is an enviable position.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_c...

Sugar (cane or refined) wasn't really a thing in the Roman period, even for those who could theoretically have afforded it.

Pliny the Elder described sugar, but he said that it was used only for medicinal purposes, presumably because having to be imported from India through Arabia it was available only in small quantities and at high prices.

However, besides the more expensive honey, boiled concentrated grape juice was widely used as a sweetener, for most purposes where today sugar would be used.

Oh wow, why did I think sugarcane is a New World crop? Apparently from Papua.

They had a very toxic replacement though, basically grape juice sirup rendered down in lead kettles.

While some had indeed the very bad idea of using lead vessels for boiling the juice, both because lead vessels were cheaper and because that might have enhanced the sweetness, due to the taste of lead acetate, it is unlikely that this was a widespread practice.

Grape juice concentrated and sterilized by boiling has been used for millennia as the main sweetener instead of the more expensive honey, and in most cases the vessels used for boiling must have been made of healthier materials, e.g. bronze in the more ancient times, then cheaper brass during the Roman times.

In the warmer countries of the Middle East, boiled concentrated date juice was used instead of grape juice.

Indeed, lead acetate is an artificial sweetener.

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