ANCIENT Roman men loved to tuck into a seafood feast - but women stuck to cheaper meat and vegetables, new research by the University of York has revealed.

The study shows men and women in the Roman town of Herculaneum had vastly different diets. A research team, led by York experts, developed a new way to analyse amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, from 17 adult skeletons found after the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD that buried Herculaneum under volcanic ash.

By measuring the isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in the bone amino acids, the researchers were able to reconstruct the diets of the Roman people in much more detail than had been previously possible.

They found that Roman men obtained around 50 per cent more of their dietary protein from seafood - which was more expensive than meat - compared with women.

Men also obtained a slightly higher proportion of protein from cereals compared with their female contemporaries, whereas the women obtained a greater proportion of protein from animal products and locally grown fruits and veg.

Study senior author Professor Oliver Craig, of York’s Department of Archaeology, said: “The remains of those who perished at Herculaneum offer a unique opportunity to examine the lifestyles across an ancient community who lived and died together.

“Historical sources often allude to differential access to foodstuffs across Roman society, but rarely provide direct or quantitative information.

“We found significant differences in the proportions of marine and terrestrial foods consumed between males and females, implying that access to food was differentiated according to gender.”

In total, 340 individuals have been excavated from the beach and from nine stone vaults that run parallel to the seashore in Herculaneum, near Pompeii, where people sought shelter from the lava flow.

Lead author Silvia Soncin, a PhD student in York’s Department of Archaeology, said: “Our research builds on what we know that males had greater access to marine fish at Herculaneum and more broadly in Roman Italy.

“Males were more likely to be directly engaged in fishing and maritime activities, they generally occupied more privileged positions in society, and were freed from slavery at an earlier age providing greater access to expensive commodities, such as fresh fish.”

The research team were also able to more accurately quantify ancient diets so they could be compared with recent nutritional records.

They believe that fish and seafood made a greater overall contribution to the diets at Herculaneum compared to the average modern Mediterranean diet, while a similar proportion of cereals were consumed between ancient and modern.

The findings were published in the journal Science Advances.