History of Food During the War Discussed at St Mary’s Conference

The role of food and nutrition during the First and Second World Wars have been discussed during a student conference held at St Mary’s University, Twickenham. The event, which was organised by St Mary’s nutrition team as part of the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, welcomed experts from across the UK, along with students from Kingston and Roehampton Universities to discuss the ways in which nutrition aided soldiers fighting in the two World Wars. Food Historian and broadcaster Dr Annie Gray opened the conference with a seminar exploring World War One as a driver for change. During the Great War, food policy was generally reactive; and the inability of the army to recruit soldiers to fight due to malnutrition as a result if insufficient food supplies, along with the importance of nutritious foods to prevent deficiency diseases among civilians, drove government policy towards food. These changes furthered the knowledge of nutrition science including the emotional links to food and in the use of food ingredients and cooking habits, which changed the culinary landscape of the new, post-war Britain. Dr Lizzie Collingham, Associate Fellow at Warwick University, spoke about food as a weapon during the Second World War. In the European theatre of war it was the Soviets - the people who suffered from the greatest hunger - who did the most to defeat Germany. In contrast, American abundance defeated the poorly supplied Japanese in the Pacific theatre. The Germans used starvation as a weapon with which they planned to exterminate most of Eastern European. The British benefited greatly from the support of their empire and the supply of condensed energy foods such as meat and cheese from Canada and New Zealand. Ayela Spiro, Senior Nutrition Scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation, followed with a discussion about the Ministry of Food’s role in World War Two, that looked to lessen the strong reliance on imported foods and provide a nutritionally adequate diet for the population. The Ministry instigated an enormous and largely successful public health campaign, including a universal rationing system and initiatives such as Dig for Victory, The National Loaf and making food waste illegal, to help ensure that all individuals, whatever their age or status, received an adequate supply of food. As a result, by 1945, around 75% of food was produced in Britain and, despite shortages, the British population ended the war typically fitter and healthier than before it. In the UK today, where we have peace on the homefront, it may be difficult to advocate rationing and the monotonous diet of wartime. We face a very different world with a very different public health concern, that of obesity. However some lessons can be learnt, for example, the effective communication of healthy eating campaigns and reducing food waste. The conference ended with a cooking demonstration from Dr Gray, where students were able to learn about the challenges of cooking in a 1940s kitchen, including the lack of fat used for cooking and how housewives had to be inventive and adapt to limited amounts and scarcity of ingredients such as sugar, milk and butter. Nutrition Lecturer Dr Áine O’Connor said, “This was a fascinating conference which provided the opportunity for nutrition students to learn about an era where food, unlike today, was not readily available and the advancement of nutrition science and subsequent policies during the Second World War. Many of the public health nutrition policies that evolved during this time are still here today in one form or another.”