Feast and Famine: A History of Food and Nutrition in Ireland 1500-1920

This book traces the history of food and famine in Ireland from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century. It looks at what people ate and drank, and how this changed over time. The authors explore the economic and social forces which lay behind these changes as well as the more personal motives of taste, preference, and acceptability. They analyze the reasons why the potato became a major component of the diet for so many people during the eighteenth century as well as the diets of the middling and upper classes. This is not, however, simply a social history of food but it is a nutritional one as well, and the authors go on to explore the connection between eating, health, and disease. They look at the relationship between the supply of food and the growth of the population and then finally, and unavoidably in any history of the Irish and food, the issue of famine, examining first its likelihood and then its dreadful reality when it actually occurred.

Feast and Famine traces the history of food and famine in Ireland from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century. It looks at what people ate and drank, and how this changed over time. The authors explore the economic and social forces which lay behind these changes as well as the more personal motives of taste, preference, and acceptability. They analyze the reasons why the potato became a major component of the diet for so many people during the eighteenth century as well as the diets of the middling and upper classes. The authors also look at the relationship between the supply of food and the growth of the population and then finally, and unavoidably in any history of the Irish and food, the issue of famine, examining first its likelihood and then its dreadful reality when it actually occurred.

Preface Contents List of Graphs List of Tables Abbreviations 1. Food, Economy, and Society 2. The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: A Pattern Established 3. From the Restoration to the Great Famine: The Food of the Middling and Upper Classes 4. Potatoes, Population, and Diet, circa 1650 to circa 1845 5. Dietary Changes, 1845–1920 6. Food, Famine, and Ireland 7. The Anatomy of Famine 8. Food and Nutrition 9. Nutrition, Health, and Demography 10. Food, Municipalities, and the State 11. Conclusion Appendix: Accounts Books Bibliography Index This innovative title traces the history of food in Ireland from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century. The authors explore the evolution of Irish diets over the centuries, in the process putting the role of the potato and the history of the famines into their proper perspectives.