Early Irish Diet (2024)

FAQs

What was the ancestral diet of the Irish? ›

The Irish diet of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was reflective of their cattle economy: meat and milk products for the gentry and meat scraps, offal and milk products for the poorer Irish. They had long cultivated cereals and legumes.

Until the arrival of the potato in the 16th century, grains such as oats, wheat and barley, cooked either as porridge or bread, formed the staple of the Irish diet. The most common form of bread consisted of flatbread made from ground oats.

By the nineteenth century, the potato was the staple food for many Irish and they ate a lot of them: 14 pounds a day for the working man.

New research has warned that the Irish diet is rich in unsustainable foods, is causing nutritional and financial problems and is not good for the environment. The findings are explored in two new reports published by researchers from the School of Natural Sciences at Trinity College Dublin.

Many Irish families re- lied on potatoes as their main source of food. Irish farmers grew other crops too, but everything else was sent to England to pay the farmers' rent. The Irish farmers did not have anything to eat when the crops were bad.

Parts of the population also ate millet. Beef, pork, mutton, goat meat and dairy products played a minor role in everyone's diet, and chicken, eggs, salmon and dog meat were occasional additions.

More than the crop failed, however; so did the entire system by which England gov- erned Ireland. John Mitchel, a witness to the period that the Irish remember as “The Great Hunger,” wrote, “The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, the English created the famine.” The Irish were a conquered people.

Phytophthora infestans, the cause of potato late blight, is infamous for having triggered the Irish Great Famine in the 1840s.

Sen says the Irish Potato Famine could have been prevented through British intervention, but a British sense of superiority led them to neglect the Irish people. The famine decimated Ireland in the 1840s when food production fell dramatically because of a potato blight.

Some vegetables native to Ireland include potatoes, cabbage, turnips, carrots, onions, and leeks. These vegetables have been traditionally cultivated and consumed in Ireland for centuries.

What is the 5 2 diet Ireland? ›

This is where you eat normally at certain times and then fast during other times. There are different versions, but the 5:2 diet involves eating a normal, healthy diet for five days every week and 'fasting' on the remaining two days. On a 'fast' day, you would typically consume between 500 and 600 calories.

Meat, fish, vegetables, cereals and milk products were all an important part of their diet. Sweet food was consumed in the form of berries, fruit and honey and archaeological evidence has found that there was a large consumption of apples, bilberries, blackberries and sloes in Dublin.

Their diet would include, wild foods such as mushrooms, berries, nettles, wild garlic and apples they would also eat spinach, onions, leeks, carrots and parsnips, blackberries, gooseberries and blueberries. Hazelnuts and walnuts as well as grains for bread and porridge would also feature in their diet.

Bread and potatoes form an important part of the Irish diet. Bread usually accompanies the main meal, while potatoes have been an important part of Irish cuisine since the 18th century. It can be prepared in a number of ways and continues to feature prominently in many traditional Irish recipes.

During the late 1700s, when the wave of Irish immigrants arrived on America's shore, they brought their own food traditions, and corned beef and cabbage was not one of them. "Actually, what (the Irish) made was boiled ham and potatoes," said Paula Fitzpatrick, owner of Fitzpatrick's Irish Store, Stroudsburg.