Deficiencies In The Irish Diet

Most historical and contemporary Irish diets fully meet human nutritional requirements. As Leslie Clarkson and Margaret Crawford note, "The Irish were not a people born to famine. Indeed, ours is almost a non-famine history." Yet political and economic constraints on access to healthy foods, or any foods at all, have sometimes resulted in widespread malnutrition and even starvation.

Before the Potato

From about 3000 BCE through the late 1600s CE, typical Irish diets were relatively constant and quite nutrient-rich, whether centered on meat or on a combination of dairy and plant foods. Based primarily on oats and barley, they included legumes, hazelnuts, honey, vegetables like leeks and cabbages, fruits like apples and berries, sheep and cows' milk, and eggs. Though always more common among the wealthy, animal flesh consumption varied with time and place. Poorer people generally ate smaller animals like fish and chickens when they had meat.

The "Potato People" Era

In 17th century Ireland, the arrival of the potato -- an easily cultivated source of high-quality protein and vitamin C -- helped farmers deal with a food security crisis. The English occupation forcibly established large plantations, squeezing Irish farmers onto ever-smaller rented plots and out of their traditionally diverse diets. Rural Irish sharecroppers, soon named the "potato people," not only survived but performed heavy manual labor, enjoyed leisure time and increased their population eightfold in 250 years on a monotonous yet nutritionally complete diet of potatoes, buttermilk and oatmeal.

An Gorta Mór

An Gorta Mór, or the Great Hunger, also called the Potato Famine, happened chiefly between 1845 and 1849, when the blight, the fungus Phytophthora infestans, destroyed Ireland's potato crop. Over 1 million "potato people" starved to death. Another million were forced into exile. Many Irish people regard An Gorta Mór as a direct result of the English occupation's landholding policies and refusal to provide sufficient hunger relief while it continued to export large quantities of foods like grain and butter from Ireland.

After the Great Famine

Following the Great Hunger, the potato remained a staple, although its cultivation and consumption declined. Most laborers subsisted also on oatmeal, wheaten bread, milk, sugar, tea, beer, bacon, and small quantities of butter and corned beef. Although more varied, these diets lacked access to fresh fruits and vegetables and thus were less nutritious than pre-famine ones.

Contemporary Nutrition and Malnutrition

Since the 1990s, with the application of continental preparation and cooking methods to traditional, locally grown, seasonal foods, including fresh produce, Irish cuisine has proved itself flavorful and enjoyable as well as abundant in nutrients. Vegetarian diets have revived, but for environmental and animal welfare-related rather than strictly economic reasons. The memory of An Gorta Mór persists, for example, in Irish devotion to global anti-hunger activism. Like other "modernizing" nations, Ireland does face malnutrition, overweight and obesity from consumption of highly processed foods with "empty calories," especially among more impoverished groups like seniors; people with disabilities; homeless people; and Travellers, a nomadic minority.