Cambridge University researchers analysed more than 2,000 skeletons and found elites ate no more meat than other social groups.
One study also suggested peasants occasionally hosted lavish meat feasts for their rulers.
Researchers said the findings overturned major assumptions about early medieval English history.
Cambridge University bioarchaeologist Sam Leggett drew her conclusions after analysing chemical signatures of diets preserved in the bones of 2,023 people buried in England from the 5th to 11th Centuries.
Comment: Note that 536AD has been called 'the worst year to be alive' because of the catastrophies that were visited across vast swathes of Europe, and so it is in the context that the Anglo-Saxons - whose official history is up for debate - emerged: 536 AD: Plague, famine, drought, cold, and a mysterious fog that lasted 18 months
Comment: The Anglo-Saxon period has been overhauled in recent times and there is one school of thought positing that, following the catastrophe that reset much of Briton, the country was then governed by a number of foreign administrations; this is hinted at by the genetic evidence which shows no significant replacement by other gene pools, as well as the dearth of evidence for the Anglo-Saxon's themselves: Being Anglo-Saxon was a matter of language and culture, not genetics
Could it be that the population ate similar diets because here was simply more food to go around? Or because they were more egalitarian? Could it be because the real rulers lived abroad and under them everybody else was subservient?
Laura Knight-Jadczyk in Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls writes: See also: