University of British Columbia Press
Food Will Win the War
The Politics, Culture, and Science of Food on Canada’s Home Front
9780774827614
Distributed for University of British Columbia Press
Food Will Win the War
The Politics, Culture, and Science of Food on Canada’s Home Front
During the Second World War, as Canada struggled to provide its allies with food, public health officials warned that malnutrition could derail the war effort. Posters admonished Canadians to “Eat Right” because “Canada Needs You Strong” while cookbooks helped housewives become “housoldiers” through food rationing, menu substitutions, and household production. Ian Mosby explores the symbolic and material transformations that food and eating underwent as the Canadian state took unprecedented steps into the kitchens of the nation, changing the way women cooked, what their families ate, and how people thought about food. Canadians, in turn, rallied around food and nutrition to articulate new visions of citizenship for a new peacetime social order.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1 “Eat Right, Feel Right – Canada Needs You Strong”: Food Rules and the Transformation of Canada’s Wartime Nutritional State
2 The Kitchen and the State: Food Rationing, Price Control, and the Gender Politics of Consumption
3 Mobilizing Canada’s “Housoldiers” and “Kitchen Commandos” for War: Food, Volunteers, and the Making of Canada’s Home Front
4 Tealess Teas, Meatless Days, and Recipes for Victory: Transforming Food Culture and Culinary Practice in Wartime
5 The Politics of Malnutrition: Nutrition Experts and the Making of Canada’s Postwar Welfare State
Conclusion
Notes
Index