In case you think high fat diets, etc., are brand new, here’s Tomás O’Crohan, the Blasket Island writer, talking about how seal meat, a traditional food for the area, went out of fashion in the late 1800s.
It’s from ‘The Islander’ (published as ‘An tOileánach‘ in 1929).
‘No one knows what is good for them to eat; the people who used to eat those things (seal meat & fat) were twice as healthy as those around now. The poor people out in the country used to say that they believed they’d have a heavenly life if they had the food that the people of Dingle had. But the truth of it is that the people who had ‘good’ food are in the grave long since, and the people of the famine are still alive and kicking.’
PS. Mind you, I’m glad we’re not eating seals anymore. 