It’s fascinating to think about nutrition and what food was available both during the world wars and in the time after them, and about what our grandparents and great grandparents did to be able to feed their families nutritious food during those difficult times. Today we’re going to talk about food and nutrition in World War II.
There’s an interesting article about this on the National Council on Public History site (ncph.org). One of the posters that it shows says “There’s danger when people tire too easily, when minds are slow to think, when bodies can’t fight disease.” This was from the Make America Strong series in 1941. Here’s another poster: “You can stuff yourself with food and still be committing dietary suicide. Surveys show that millions of Americans are not getting all the vitamins they need.” That was from an ad for canned Florida citrus products in 1942.
This is about the science of nutrition. It’s something that we’re very familiar with today, but around World War II, it was only beginning. Before the 1930s, scientists only knew that we need protein, we need energy or carbohydrates, and we need minerals to have a nutritious diet. They also knew that other things contributed, but they didn’t know what those things were. Then, during the Great Depression, many in the United States suffered from malnutrition and hunger. A big deficiency was B vitamins, which resulted in people being tired and even depressed. Scientists began to investigate more specifically what minerals and vitamins people needed to stay healthy. They recommended protective foods to prevent malnutrition.
The foods they recommended included milk products, vegetables, eggs, fish, and organ meats, interestingly enough. Organ meats are highly nutritious, but we’re not very good at eating them these days, and they’ve become a lot less familiar to us. Of course, dairy products, especially when they’re raw dairy, are wonderful. The right kind of vegetables cooked well, fruit, eggs, fish – those are all great. It’s very interesting to me that those things were recommended back then as the best things to eat. I think that’s still true today, but the advice we get is often quite different.
During World War II, the government was very worried about nutrition in the military and among civilians. In fact, a quarter of people called up in the draft through the Selective Service Act were malnourished, and apparently unfit to serve, so in 1941, 900 delegates of the National Nutrition Conference for Defense gathered in Washington, D. C. There were doctors, home economics people, dieticians, farmers, and food industry professionals, and they wanted to discuss how to improve the nation’s health. Their slogan was “Eat Nutritional Food.”
Then in 1943, after two years of refining their lists, they published the Recommended Daily Dietary Allowances. There were recommendations for intake of calories, intake of protein, calcium, iron, vitamin A, vitamin B1, riboflavin, niacin, vitamins C and D, and even vitamin K, as well iodine, and copper. To the average person, this wouldn’t really be helpful or make much sense, so along with those recommendations, they published what they called the Basic 7. “Eat a lunch that packs a punch. Eat the Basic 7 every day.” – they had posters about it.
These were the categories: Group 1 was green and yellow vegetables; some raw, some cooked, frozen, or canned. Group 2 was oranges, tomatoes, grapefruit, raw cabbage or salad greens. Things like sauerkraut would also fall into this category. Group 3 was potatoes and other vegetables and fruit, again raw, dried, cooked, frozen, or canned. Group 4 was milk and milk products, in the form of fluid, evaporated like dried milk, cheese, and etc. Group 5 was meat, poultry, fish, eggs, dried beans, peas, nuts, and peanut butter. Then Group 6 was bread, flour, and whole grains, and group seven was butter, though in their case, they had fortified margarine, which I wouldn’t go near.
So, this was the recommendation for the average person for each day for what they should eat. I like that they’re referenced by colors. Sometimes it’s helpful to think of getting something from each color of the rainbow with your meals.
On the posters they had little cartoons – for “Fight that tired feeling!” there was somebody yawning, or for “10 strike for energy,” there was somebody bowling. There were the words “Builds muscle,” and some bodybuilders, “Good eyesight pays,” and somebody looking at a pretty lady smiling over the fence. Other posters would say “Protect yourself from illness,” and “For strong bones and teeth.”
So, again, there was the butter and the healthy fats, the green and yellow vegetables, the oranges, tomatoes, and grapefruits, which is the orangey red category, the potatoes and other vegetables and fruits, which is the blue category. There was the milk and milk products; the white category. The meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and et cetera was the pink category, and then the breads and grains was the brown category. It’s really helpful to see how important those things always were.
Before a lot of the nonsense in terms of nutrition came in, this is what was recommended. Dairy wasn’t the enemy – dairy was rich and full of nutrients. Vitamin C was in your fruits. There was no fuss about “Fruits have too much sugar,” because it was natural fruit. Soils were better than they are today, and there would have more minerals and more magnesium in them, and less heavy metals and toxic products in the soil.
They speak about vegetables being important, and about meat being important. Nobody demonized meat. There wasn’t veganism or anything like that – it was all good stuff. There were no factory farms, so the animals, and therefore the meat, would have been healthy. This was a healthy diet. This was nutritious. This was the best way to be strong, have strong teeth and bones, to be able to fight in the army, to not get sick, to be able to have good eyesight, and etc.
In 1942, a company published a game called Vitamin Go, and they were dedicated in the war effort to help the public to be aware of good nutrition. Instead of making refrigerators, they made wings for warplanes, but then they started this game to help people. There was a score sheet listing various types of foods. Each food had a point value for six different vitamins and minerals, and each of those were represented by a different color. As players ate during the day, they tracked the points value for nutrients on a card of the same color. This was before anything electronic, so it would all have been done on paper. Winning the game each day meant getting at least 20 points on each of the six cards. The prize for winning would be better health, and the penalty for losing would be having a greater chance of sickness. You can actually play the game yourself – I’ll put a link to it in the show notes.
It’s so cool, because it helps you to be aware of what nutrients you need. We’re not worrying about calories, we’re worrying about getting the right nutrients and the right minerals in our diet. We should make sure we’re getting some every day, and getting enough of them. We’re thinking about what fruits and vegetables, what meats, and what dairy to eat in order to gain those points. I think that’s a very valuable thing to do.We can also do this with our kids to help them to be aware of what they need. We can do it with ourselves when we’re making meal plans, just to make sure we got enough of those things.
Enough vitamin C was important to be able to cope with all the stress of the war. Without extra vitamin C, there’s so many problems in the body. Fresh fruit has all those good minerals, and there’s good water within it, and so many good things. Around World War II was the first time that people really started to understand the scientific basis for what nutrients and vitamins we need in our diet, like A, B, C, D, and E, and how to intentionally get those from the food we eat. That was one of the biggest impacts that the Second World War had on food and nutrition. The professionals were seeing how people were malnourished, and teaching them how to have a nutritious diet and to be healthy in that way.
Then there were the shortages in food supply, and the rationing, which would have had a huge impact. There was less of every food group available, so people had to learn resourcefulness during this time. Rationing was implemented in many countries, including the UK and the US, to ensure that everyone had access to limited food supplies. People learned to be resourceful and make meals with fewer ingredients and to reduce their waste. They learned to use substitutes and focus on nutrition even with limited resources.
Because of wartime shortages and long periods when there was no fresh food available, people learned food preservation. They did canning, drying, and pickling or fermenting of their foods. Of course, this helped with nutrients like vitamin C as well. Fermented cabbage is sauerkraut. It’s high in vitamin C, and is shelf stable for many years.
Then, of course, there needed to be a priority in ensuring that the soldiers were strong and healthy so that they could perform their duties, so rations and other portable meals were developed that were energy dense to give the soldiers the energy they needed. They were compact so that they could be transported easily, and they had to be balanced in terms of nutrition. There were advances in the understanding of how to provide optimal nutrition under these constrained conditions.
Countries also launched campaigns to encourage their citizens to grow their own food. These were called Victory Gardens in the US and the UK. People were encouraged to plant fruit trees, to grow vegetables, and to really try and find ways of supplementing their own diets, and having fresh produce in their diets. This was a great help, because a lot of these things weren’t easily available, as all the companies that would have been doing the farming or transport of food were focused on the war effort. So, there was a lot of resourcefulness. By 1944, it was estimated that Victory Gardens produced about 40 percent of the US vegetables.
Growing our own food is definitely a helpful way to make sure that there are fewer pesticides on our produce, and that it has the highest nutrition possible. Making the most of limited resources is a valuable lesson to learn, with creative meal planning, learning how to stretch limited ingredients, use substitutes, and find ways to make sure your meals are nutritious and filling. Using alternatives like beans, lentils, or other things to bulk up meals, while still getting some meat, is a creative way to do that.
They focused on nutrition despite the shortages, and on eating what fresh fruits, vegetables, and dairy they could find, and that would result in a balanced, nutritious diet.
It’s also important to be able to share with others in our community, with our neighbours, and to help our children learn how to eat in a healthy manner, and how to prepare food in a way that is possible even in hard times.
This is such a fascinating subject to me that I’m going to do a second episode on the practical side of things, with some practical examples of what people actually cooked, what the shortages were, what they substituted with, and how they ended up making do with what they had. I’ll talk about Nutella, a couple of other pies and interesting things that came from that era.
I hope this is inspiring to you. The resources that we have today are amazing, and yet sometimes we find it harder than ever to get good nutrition, so it’s good to look back at what people did in those times when there was less available.
