Two Other Things I Learned From ‘The Taste of War’

One: The shark-lamprey relationship between the US government and Big Food goes all the way back to World War II

The War Advertising Council was attended by representatives from advertising agencies, corporate advisers, the media and officials from various interested government departments such as the Office of War Information. Together they agreed on the outlines of public information campaigns. In this way the government co-opted the food industry to do the work of spreading healthy-eating propaganda while still allowing them to make money, or at least keep their brands in the public eye, guaranteeing them future–if not always present–sales.

The problem was that the food industry tended to use the language of the new science of nutrition to sell its products, regardless of their real health benefits. Thus, the American public were urged to eat grapefruit because it was rich in ‘Victory Vitamin C’, but they were also told that Nestle’s cocoa was a ‘concentrated energizing food’, and children’s love of sweets was encouraged by campaigns which promoted the benefits of sugar by pointing out that it was an essential part of a combat soldier’s diet.

Doesn’t Winston Churchill have some quote about how in a just economy, the government must be a referee, not a player? Well he should.

Two: Your grandma is a fucking liar.

In May 1943 an opinion poll found that rationing and wartime food shortages had barely made any impact on American meals. Two-thirds of the women surveyed asserted that their diet had changed very little since the introduction of rationing, and three-quarters of the women acknowledged that the size of their meals had stayed the same. The minimal impact that ration had on American eating habits is revealed by the passing comment of a woman from New York, who noted that coffee rationing, which cut consumption from three cups to one a day, was ‘the wartime measure to have affected one the most.’

Collingham reports that food rationing actually improved the diets of a significant number of Americans, since farmers increased production and the surplus inspired free school meals and other in-kind social programs. The Greatest Generation truly made sacrifices during World War II, but less or worse food doesn’t appear to be one of them.

Slave to Ration

I just finished Lizzie Collingham’s The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food. It perfectly combines my two current obsessions: 1) Food and 2) Everything I Know About WWII is Wrong.

The book follows the food policies of all the major combatants in WWII: Axis, Allies and colonies alike. Each chapter demonstrates, in its own microcosmic way, how recent a phenomenon our current abundance of food is. Nixon famously told his secretary of agriculture that he didn’t want food to be an election issue ever again, and after reading The Taste of War, you kind of sympathize with him.

Food shortages were a common occurrence before WWII, and even more so during and immediately after. People in countries rich (Britain) and poor (China) faced empty shelves, malnutrition and, in extreme cases (Russia) resorted to boiling leather shoes because they yielded a few calories of gelatin.

This anecdote from Japan is illustrative of how food shortages trickle down through all corners of the economy:

Arakawa Hiroyo and her husband owned a bakery shop in Tokyo. They made katsutera, a sort of sponge cake made with flour, eggs and sugar. The decline of their business reflected the dwindling food supply in Japan. At first, as a food business, they were supplied with flour and sugar, and customers would bring them vegetables in exchange for katsutera.

Eventually the supply of their ingredients declined and they were only able to bake every two or three days. Then the police would drop by. 

‘Oh, today you’re baking?’ they would comment innocently. ‘This house sure smells good.’And then Arakawa would have to give them some cakes.The grocers in her street suffered from the same problem. Police and soldiers would simply pocket the food and refuse to pay.

Eggs were the first of their ingredients to disappear altogether. For a while they had a supply of powdered egg from Shanghai but eventually this became unavailable, as did sugar. Arakawa changed the business to making sandwiches, but even those they had to fill with whale ham because there was no pork to be had.

Then bread and whale ham became unavailable. Undaunted, they changed to making ‘cut bread’ for the army, which meant that supplies of the necessary ingredients were guaranteed. […]

Then the military laid claim to their bread-making machine for the iron and they had to close their business.

The sheer foreignness of this experience demonstrates both the novelty of food shortages as a non-issue, and how unprepared we are for our current infinity of food products.