Page 56 - Spring2009

The Good Scots Diet

By Katherine Czapp

he healthy Scots diet of two hundred years or so
ago consisted of a fairly limited bill of fare com-

Tposed of local foods: oats as chief cereal grain; root
vegetables such as turnips and potatoes; leeks, cabbage

and kale supplemented by wild vegetables such as nettles,
sorrel and garlic; butter, cheese and other dairy products;

fish, shellfish and seaweed; some meat and game; and
numerous varieties of wild berries in summer.

The emphasis in this diet on fish livers and fish liver oils, shellfish, organ
meats, blood, and healthy fats like lard—and the resulting robust health of
the traditional Scots—helps dispel the modern myth that vitamin A is toxic
and the modern notion that we cannot obtain sufficient vitamin D from
food.
The mistress of the Scots kitchen turned these honest, simple ingredi-
ents into a nourishing assortment of dishes which are quite distinct from
those represented by the bulk of other British Isle cuisines. This distinction
in some part recalls the days of the Auld Alliance—Scotland’s political
consolidation with France against the English from the thirteenth century
until the end of the sixteenth—which left a bright and lasting influence on
Scottish cuisine both in its style and its lexicon.
54 Wise Traditions SPRING 2009