Organic Food in pre-Roman Britain

All the food that the pre-Roman British ate was 100% organic - lucky them!

This may seem flippant but it is certainly true. We know quite a lot about their diet, they grew broad beans, barley, and or wheat, for bread and beer, and they certainly made cheese (although they did not make hard exportable cheeses much to the annoyance of the Roman econnomist Srabo) and had wooden barrels.

But, above all else they made and ate ham, and this was not the rough stuff but probably as good as any we have today. Why? because the best hams today are thought to be those that have come from Wild Boar (wild pigs) and they certainly had no shortage of these, living as they did in the abundant forests.

They also had the usual range of domesticated animals, cows, pig, geese, chickens etc

They almost certainly ate oysters as in the Roman period the best oysters were imported from Britain and according to the eighteenth century historian Gibbon one of the reasons for the Roman invasion of Britain was the false promise of pearls.