Fast Food in Ancient Italy

Today we toured the city of Pompeii, a city covered in ash after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Ash reached heights of 30 km; therefore it was able to cool before covering the city. Thus, Pompeii was well-preserved, making it’s many structures still visible to today. We saw cobblestone streets, bakeries, homes, restaurants, vineyards, and amphitheaters, all which give evidence of a once prospering and lively city.

In large cities like ancient Rome and Pompeii, the largest good of consumption and production was food. The population density in early imperial Italy was extremely high and there was demand for enormous amounts of food. The question then became how to produce enough food? Economic decisions had to be made to optimize the agricultural production function. Such decisions included how much land, capital, and human labor needed to be invested in order to maximize production. The more farmers who entered the agricultural market, there was an increase in overall production but the overall production per head decreased. Further, the higher the population the lower the wages because there was less land allocated per farmer.

The two main cereals in ancient Italy were wheat and barley. In some aspects barley production was superior to wheat because it was suitable for Mediterranean conditions, required less rainfall than wheat, and was less demanding to the soil fertility. However, wheat was also better than barley because it had less inedible material per plot and was easier to transport. Thus, these two cereals dominated production in order to feed such large populations. Bread became the easiest and most popular form of food created from wheat and barley.

As we walked through Pompeii, evenly spread throughout the streets were caupone, ancient fast food bars that served quick, hot meals generally made from the common cereals. Customers were served behind an L-shaped bar and stood to eat their meals, much like the bars (snack-shops) that are easily found in modern Italy. Leading fast-paced lives, Americans in today’s society are finding less and less time to eat meals and considerably fewer families are sitting down together for dinner on a regular basis. Perhaps we can divert the blame to ancient Pompeii: where the notion of fast-food first began and led to the deterioration of the value of a family meal.