Is the full Irish cooked? Hotels ponder the future of our beloved breakfast

In the age of sustainable food, Tom Breathnach looks at the future of our beloved breakfast

Has our national culinary treasure that is the full Irish breakfast been left sitting on the sustainability back burner?

It was the full Irish experience. Growing up in East Cork, one of my simplest pleasures as a youngster was feeding the neighbours’ sow and her squeal of banbhs, who lived the rustic good life in a sty across the bóithrín. Thirty years on, I’ve hardly seen a pig since. Truth is, while Ireland’s beef and lamb industry enjoys an open-air lifestyle by default, it’s remarkably less so with pork. And, despite folksy advertising campaigns of beardy hipsters traversing lush hillsides to hail the versatility of ham, it’s rare you’ll ever see an oinker foraging in their wake. So, as our eating preferences shift towards the slow food movement in Ireland, the question arises: Has our national culinary treasure that is the full Irish breakfast been left sitting on the sustainability back burner?

To get a better understanding of our beloved bricfeasta, this week I chatted to food historian Regina Sexton, who is also the programme manager for the postgraduate diploma in Irish Food Culture at UCC.