“America as the land of plenty was always part of the American dream and this idea intensified during and after the war,” says Lizzie Collingham, author of Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food. The U.S. had managed to get through WWI without rationing. But this time around, Americans were not so lucky. And unlike the British, who contended with longer and harsher wartime shortages with characteristic reserve, Americans were simply not having it.

The war had pulled the country out of the Great Depression, and despite shortages, the American diet had likewise rebounded with a return to meat and fat. Civilians were not keen on depriving themselves again. Good wages from war-related industrial work increased the civilian demand for items that had been scarce during the Great Depression, like beef. At the same time, though most Americans supported rationing on principle, long-held suspicions of government policies led many to believe that rationing was more of a ploy to bolster patriotic fervor than a necessary policy to contend with food shortages. Some people’s anxiety over food shortages and inadequate nutrition led to hoarding; especially of coffee, sugar, and red meat, which further contributed to shortages.

Despite some shortages, wartime food production was in fact very robust. Rationing was imposed to ensure that civilians, soldiers, and our allies got fed while also limiting inflation. American soldier’s stomachs were notoriously full of the best cuts of meat deemed essential for their energy, masculinity, and virility, Collingham says. Even though civilians back home were left with the poorer cuts while rationing limited access to meat in general, the government knew that having sufficient supplies of meat was critical to the psychological and physical well-being of civilians. Even after the war, the government promised American housewives that more meat was on its way and implored them in the meantime to continue to “scrape, scoop, and skim every drop of used fat for salvage.”

Rationing ended right after Japan surrendered and the war finally ended in September 1945. Americans celebrated by eating. “It was like they were having a pig out,” Collingham says. The American way of life was back. The war had revived the U.S. economy, spurred Americans’ taste for more and better food and cemented the notion that food was a barometer of American’s wealth.

“Eating good food and lots of it was the way that America indicated its power, and this stayed in the psyche,” Collingham says. This assertion of power had other effects too. During the Great Depression, infectious diseases and malnutrition related-illnesses were the primary causes of American deaths. After the war, with the economy in full swing, five of the 10 leading causes of deaths stemmed from chronic diseases associated with an unbalanced or excessive diet. Roosevelt’s “Freedom from Want” had been protected, and then some.

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