During the Second World War, new research into nutrition science and the importance of vitamins meant that scientists and government officials alike were looking to increase public awareness about these new discoveries. In particular, emphasis was placed on the importance of keeping the populace healthy, strong, and able to keep up the punishing pace of total war. 

The Basic 7 was a precursor to the food pyramid and "MyPlate" interpretations of an easy way for Americans to know what healthful foods to eat. In effect from 1943 to 1956, the Basic 7 were replaced with a consolidated Basic 4, and later the food pyramid. 

Group One: Green and Yellow Vegetables
Designed to encourage Vitamin A intake, this group emphasized dark leafy greens and other green and yellow vegetables. These vegetables were recommended to be eaten raw, canned, cooked, or frozen. Although I'm guessing you were supposed to heat the frozen ones first. Night blindness and poor eyesight was a real fear for both soldiers and industrial workers alike and Vitamin A was touted as a preventative against poor eye health. 

Group Two: Oranges, Tomatoes, Grapefruit
This group also included raw cabbage and salad greens, both good sources of Vitamin C, along with oranges, tomatoes, and grapefruit. Vitamin C deficiency was by the 1940s long known as the cause of scurvy. Canned tomatoes and oranges in particular were popular sources, but as this group points out, other foods like raw cabbage and salad greens, especially spinach, also have very high levels of Vitamin C. 

Group Three: Potatoes and Other Vegetables and Fruits
This group was meant largely to round out the vegetables with fiber and carbohydrates. If you haven't noticed by now, the first three groups are all made of fruits and vegetables, as they were plentiful and not rationed during the war. Potatoes in particular were touted during both World Wars as an alternative to bread.  

Group Four: Milk and Milk Products
Long considered the "perfect food," - a balance of fats, protein, and sugars, by the 1940s milk and other dairy products were also recognized as excellent sources of calcium. With the exception of cheese, most dairy products were not rationed during the war and cottage cheese in particular was promoted as a high-protein meat substitute. 

Group Five: Meat, Poultry, Fish, or Eggs
This group also included dried beans, peas, nuts, and peanut butter, and emphasized protein. Meat was quite heavily rationed during the war, so fish, beans, and nuts were often suggested as meat substitutes. Soybeans (called "soya" in the period) were a "new" miracle protein source that never really caught on. At least, not until West Coast hippies were introduced to tofu by Japanese Americans in the 1960s.

Group Six: Bread, Flour, and Cereals
In the 1940s bread and other cereal products were still the backbone of many American meals. Cold or hot cereal, toast, or pancakes for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, bread with every dinner - these were the typical meals of most Americans. But while the simple carbohydrates of refined white bread were vaunted before the First World War, by the Second World War nutritionists realized that white flour had been stripped of most of its nutrition with the elimination of the wheat germ. So whole grains, flour, and cereal products were touted for their nutritive value. But, because white flour was so very popular, "enriched" or "restored" cereal products were also allowed. This gave rise to foods like Wonder Bread - so-called because it was "enriched" with a half a dozen vitamins and minerals - something allowed thanks to technological advances in artificial vitamin production. 

Group Seven: Butter and Fortified Margarine
Yes, you read that correctly. Butter was it's own food group during WWII. Seems crazy these days, but this group was also focused on getting Americans adequate supplies of Vitamin A. Today, the Vitamin A found in animal-based foods is called Vitamin A1, or retinol. Vitamin A deficiency includes dry eyes and eventual blindness. So it was an important vitamin to keep people in top working condition. Ironically, a tablespoon of butter only gives you about 11% of your daily recommended intake of Vitamin A, whereas other common WWII ration-relievers like beef liver and the oft-dreaded cod liver oil, provide more than enough Vitamin A per serving. But perhaps because rationing limited fats, officials felt that by putting butter on the Basic 7, they would be relieving some of the monotony of rationed diets. In addition, the more detailed poster below, indicates that eating butter or margarine helps you feel more satisfied or fuller after a meal. Conventional wisdom that has stood the test of time, as fat helps you feel more satiated than just about any other food.

By equating butter with fortified margarine, officials also helped remove some of the stigma from margarine, which still held some stigma as poverty food with a whiff of slaughterhouse about it, as originally margarine was made from scrap meat fats, as opposed to the supposedly more wholesome vegetable oils that were common by the 1940s. Of course, we know now that the hydrogenating process to solidify vegetable oils creates trans fats, one of the most harmful fats you can eat. But, like the effects of the atomic bomb, no one really knew that in the 1940s. 

Altogether, the Basic 7 emphasized nutrients, rather than calories, as later version would come to embrace. The Basic 7 focused on bodily performance, rather than weight loss. "Eat a Lunch That Packs a Punch!" was a common motto from the war and was designed to keep up health, strength, and stamina during mobilization. 

All images in this blog post are from the National Archives and Records Administration.

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"Sugar means Ships. Consumption of Sugar Sweetened Drinks Must be Reduced. For your beverages 400 million lbs. of sugar were imported in Ships last year. Every Ship is needed to carry soldiers and supplies now."

This unobtrusive but nonetheless striking propaganda poster from the First World War was produced by artist Ernest Fuhr in 1917 for the United States Food Administration. 

In it, a soldier stands on the shores of Europe, rifle in hand, beckoning and shouting "Hurry!" to steamships carrying supplies from the United States as he heads toward the dark clouds of War. At left, in the foreground, a fashionable young woman drinks from a giant soda fountain cup. By sucking on the straw, she diverts more than half of the steamships, these labeled "sugar," back to the United States and into her cup. 

Although sugar was not rationed for civilians until the fall of 1918, a number of factors are at play here. First, is that unlike during World War II, the United States had poor mobilization of industry. In the short year and a half that the United States was in the war, not a single merchant ship was completed in time for war service, though 122 were started and completed after the war. In addition, even when the United States was a neutral country, German U Boats were always a risk (see: the sinking of the Lusitania). When it came time to ship millions of troops and supplies overseas, every ship possible was pressed into service. 

At this time, although the United States did produce its own sugar, largely through sugar cane plantations in Louisiana, it also purchased a great deal of sugar from the Caribbean, particularly Cuba. With railroads also tied up as goods and people moved east, ships were among the most efficient ways to ship shelf-stable staples like sugar. 

Leading up the U.S. entrance into the First World War, the United States had the highest per-capita sugar consumption in the world, consuming 85 pounds of sugar per person annually, compared to just 40 pounds in England. This extremely high sugar consumption was tied in part to the Temperance movement. Under the conventional wisdom of white, middle- and upper-class Protestants, alcohol was a social evil, and the basement saloons and bars that dotted urban neighborhoods throughout the country, with their free lunches to entice customers inside to drink more beer and other liquor, were dens of iniquity, tempting working class men to drink up their wages, to the detriment of their families. Nevermind that for many immigrant communities, social drinking was a convivial community event that often involved women and children (the Yankee reformers would be horrified). 

Soda fountains and tea rooms were a growing alternative. Soda fountains in particular were attractive to young people. And the reputation of fizzy "mineral" waters and "tonics" like Coca-Cola (which contained cola leaves - the main ingredient in cocaine) gave a veneer of health to what was otherwise sugar water. Ice cream was another extremely popular dessert turned snack in the Progressive Era and commercial production skyrocketed in the years leading up to the war. Tea rooms served fancy iced tea cakes and cookies, sweetened tea, and "dainties" like creamy fruit salads made with Jell-O - and plenty of sugar. The conventional nutrition wisdom of the time was that sugar was a carbohydrate, and carbohydrates gave you energy, therefore, sugar was good for you. 

Although sugar was not rationed for civilians during the war, it was for commercial enterprises. The production of ice cream and soda were both restricted during the war starting in the fall of 1917, and restaurants, hotels, and railroad dining cars were banned from leaving sugar bowls on the tables, as had previously been the norm. Civilians were encouraged to give up their sugar addictions, or at least transfer them to other sweeteners like honey, corn syrup, molasses, and maple syrup. Recipes for cakes, cookies, and preserving with these sugar alternatives were released to the public as part of the war effort. Although it's not clear if these efforts did have an effect on American sugar consumption during the war, the popularity of soda fountains, ice cream, gelatin fruit salads, and candies continued to be an American obsession. 

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"Henry Browne, Farmer" - film produced in 1942 by the United States Department of Agriculture, digitized by the Prelinger Archive of archive.org.

Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1943, "Henry Browne, Farmer" was a propaganda film produced by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1942. It is also one of the few major propaganda pieces (there were many thousand smaller efforts) directed specifically at African Americans. 

In it are many hallmarks of post-Reconstruction life for African Americans in a white supremacist country. References to using only mules instead of a tractor. Eating cornbread and fatback last year, but having a cow and chickens, meaning milk and eggs for breakfast this year. Specific programs are not mentioned, but it is clear that by cooperating with the federal government to grow peanuts, that the Browne family is also participating in other endeavors, like raising chickens and keeping a victory garden. Children, in particular, were encouraged in rural areas to raise chickens (like "sister" in the film), dairy cows ("brother's job), and help with Victory gardening and around the farm. Similar programs around pig clubs and tomato canning clubs were in use during World War I as well. 

The film, which sadly does not record any of their voices (just the voiceover), ends with the family going to visit their oldest son, a member of the Tuskegee Airmen. This is both a call to service for all Americans and "proof" that the family is just as patriotic as any white American. 

This film was groundbreaking in that it put African American farmers on equal footing with other Americans joining the war effort. It emphasized Henry Browne's good agricultural techniques, like saving burlap bags instead of throwing them away, and greasing and covering farm equipment, which meant that it was likely to "last the duration" in a time when steel was in short supply and new farm equipment was likely to be expensive or impossible to get. It also did not have too many hallmarks of racism, which is surprising for the time. Unlike during the First World War, the United States propaganda machine during WWII was broadening the definition of who "counted" as an American, to give a little more credence to the idea that Americans were fighting to preserve democracy and freedom abroad. Unfortunately, the message was ultimately still hypocritical as many Black people in the south were being terrorized by Jim Crow laws, police, incarceration, and the Ku Klux Klan. However, a Civil Rights movement, which had been borne out of the returning Black soldiers of World War I and which broadened during World War II, was underway, as African Americans sought to free themselves from terror, discrimination, and disenfranchisement. 

World War II would mark the end of an era for many Black farmers in the rural south. Industrial work in northern and coastal cities, long a draw for those escaping sharecropping and other slave-like conditions in the South, became a bigger draw during the total war mobilization of the nation's industries. Thanks to protests from African American unions like the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and the NAACP, Franklin D. Roosevelt was forced to create the Fair Employment Practices Committee in 1941, which banned discriminatory hiring in federal agencies and for companies employed in defense work, which for the first time allowed many African Americans to receive fair wages and work conditions for the first time. In addition to this draw off of the farms, there is evidence that the USDA engaged in discriminatory practices which helped drive African American farmers off of their land and caused nearly 90% of black farmers to lose their land in the years following World War II. Pete Daniel's book Dispossession: Discrimination against African American Farmers in the Age of Civil Rights explores this topic in more detail, and in fact, until very recently, the USDA continued their discriminatory practices. 

In all, "Henry Browne, Farmer" is one of the better propaganda films to come out of the Second World War. With quiet assurance and emphasis on the important work of ordinary Americans to do their part, it lacks the overly patronizing tone and bombast of other "documentaries" from the period. It's one of my favorites, and I hope you enjoy it as well. 

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Hello everyone and welcome to the very first post of World War Wednesdays. I'm aiming to get up to once a week on these, but I might not always make it, just to warn you. 

I decided I wanted to post on this blog more regularly, and a weekly posting is fairly doable and I LOVE the propaganda posters of both World War I and II, so here we are. I'll also include photographs, cookbooks or recipes, and maybe even WWII radio spots or films (whenever I can find them). I'll post the photos or other primary sources (with links, whenever possible, and caption citations always) and give you a little context to the whys and wherefores of the background of the image.

Today, we're starting with one of my favorite and most interesting propaganda posters from the First World War:

It reads, "Will you help the Women of France? SAVE WHEAT. They are struggling against starvation and trying to feed not only themselves and children: but their husbands and sons who are fighting in the trenches." Designed by Edward Penfield and published by the United States Food Administration, this propaganda poster was released sometime in 1918, after the United States was well into the War (we joined on April 6, 1917). In it, three French peasant women, in skirts and kerchiefs, have hooked themselves to a plow in lieu of horses. It is a striking image and one that was effective in tugging at American heartstrings, where white Anglo-Saxon women rarely engaged in this kind of brute manual labor. 

But why wheat? The wheat harvests in the United States in 1915 and 1916 were poor ones, after several years of bumper crops. Geographically, the United States was the closest source of wheat to continental Europe. Canada was of course committed to Britain and other wheat-producing countries like the Ukraine were either engaged in the war themselves or like India were unable to ship to Europe due to the prevalence of German U-Boats. 

However, since the United States joined the war in April, it was too late to influence farmers to plant more in the spring of 1917. In addition, the United States did not have and would not nationalize agriculture, and could therefore only make recommendations to independent farmers as to what to grow. For most Midwestern farmers, the skyrocketing demand for wheat was driving up prices for their limited supply, and life was good for the first time in many years. They were reluctant to tank those high prices by overproducing. 

So, it fell to the United States Government, through the United States Food Administration, headed by Herbert Hoover, to persuade ordinary Americans to eat less wheat, along with meat, butter, and sugar, so as to free up these high-calorie, shelf-stable products for consumption by American soldiers and the Allied Forces. Meatless Mondays were a product of the First World War, as were "Wheatless Wednesdays."

Although the first poster is more famous, this earlier one features a photograph of the women from which the propaganda poster was made. Here, the poster reads in large letters, "Heroic Women of France toiling to produce food. Are you doing your part?" 

The interior holds quotes from several notable individuals. 

"Does it lie within the heart of the American people to hold every convenience of our life and thus add an additional burden to the women of France?" - Alonzo Taylor

"If we produce all we can, if we eat no more than our health demands, and if we waste nothing we will greatly lighten the load these noble women are carrying." - Herbert Hoover

"It means (food conservation) utmost economy, even to the point where the pinch comes. It means the kind of concentration and self-sacrifice which is involved in the field of battle itself, where the object always looms greater than the individual." - Woodrow Wilson.

Produced by the United States Food Administration sometime in 1917, this poster takes a slightly different tack. Still guilt-tripping ordinary Americans, it uses quotes from Food Administration expert Alonzo Taylor, the Food Administrator himself, Herbert Hoover, and President Woodrow Wilson to appeal to Americans' better natures of self-sacrifice. In Progressive Era America, people generally trusted the authority of experts, making this tactic more effective than it perhaps would be today.

This striking photograph from sometime in 1916 is the iconic image from which these propaganda posters were derived. The caption reads, "Peasants in the re-taken Somme District work hard without horses or cattle. The Germans in retreat have taken all live stock." Without cattle or horses, these French women, having survived the battles of the infamous Somme, are trying to return to some semblance of normal life, hitching themselves to the plow to ensure a harvest for winter.

Or so it seems. It is unclear whether or not this photo is staged for effect. It is entirely possible that it is legitimate, but it is just as possible that it has been staged as propaganda. The women do appear to be pulling, however - the lines are fairly taut, and they appear to be wearing everyday clothing, not costumes. 

Regardless of whether or not the photo is true to life or staged, this image had a striking impact on Americans (and Canadians) in helping the United States Food Administration convince them to reduce consumption of wheat for the duration of the war.