Forget the Mediterranean diet, I’m eating only food from Shetland for a month

Armitage, who is also a councillor with the Scottish Greens, said he grew up in London where he heard stories of his granny’s childhood in Shetland.

He was fascinated by how people could survive on the archipelago, more than 100 miles north of the Scottish mainland.

Now the population relies on the regular deliveries of food transported by Northlink ferry from Aberdeen

But Armitage is concerned that increasingly stormy seas could leave the islands cut off for extended periods – and the supermarket shelves empty.

“If we had a week the ferry doesn’t come to Shetland and Tesco runs out of food, what would happen if that happened for longer and we really had to survive by ourselves here,” he said.

“It got me thinking could people actually survive on Shetland produce? I thought I would live out that thought experiment.”