Food Will Win the War ─ The Politics, Culture, and Science of Food on Canada Home Front

During WWII, as Canada struggled to provide its allies with food,
public health officials warned that malnutrition could derail the war
effort. In response, the state asked citizens to put their diets on a
war footing through food rationing, menu substitutions, and household
production. Posters asked women and children to "Eat Right, Feel
Right" because "Canada Needs You Strong" while
cookbooks helped ordinary housewives become
"housoldiers."

Food Will Win the War explores both the symbolic and
material transformations that food and eating underwent on the home
front and the profound social, political, and cultural changes that
took place in Canada during the 1940s. Through the development of
nutritional policies and official food rules and guides, the state took
unprecedented steps into the kitchens of the nation, transforming the
way women shopped and cooked, what their families ate, and how people
thought about food. Canadians, in turn, rallied around food and
nutrition to articulate different visions of citizenship.

By focusing not only on the production, consumption, distribution,
and regulation of food but also on its symbolic and cultural meaning,
this incisive account of the formative years of nutrition in Canada
links the gendered politics of home life to the wartime policies of the
state.

Ian Mosby is a historian of food, health, and
nutrition in Canada and received his PhD from York University.

Ian Mosby is a historian of food, health, and nutrition in Canada and received his PhD from York University.