An army, it has been said, marches on its stomach. That is to say, for an army to be effective, it must be well provisioned.
In April of 1917, the United States declared war on the German Empire and entered World War I. Suddenly money, raw materials, and food were needed to support the war effort.
It wasn’t long before U.S. soldiers were arriving at the Western Front in Europe at a rate of 10,000 a day.
Many women joined the military and served, not just as stenographers, radio operators, and truck drivers, but as nurses at home and abroad. Many plied their medical skills in dangerous situations in field hospitals and on troopships.
Eventually, there would be four million Americans in uniform. And all these men and women needed to be fed. People realized that food was vital to the war effort, which brought about a fundamental change in the way people ate in the U.S.
When this country was first settled, fishing fed many European settlers along the eastern coast. As the population spread westward across North America, farming took the place of fishing, and red meat replaced fish as a staple.
By the mid-1800s, meat was a sign of prosperity. Seafood (or even that caught in lakes and rivers) was looked upon as a sign of poverty. If you had dinner guests, you didn’t serve them fish or crab or even lobster, for this would be a sad indicator of your family’s lack of good taste and good standing.
In the early 1900s, Americans were eating, per capita, about 100 pounds of red meat per year, but only about 8 pounds of fish.
During WWI, there wasn’t enough meat to feed the people at home and those involved in the war.
The United States Food Administration encouraged people to conserve food. Posters appeared all across the country saying such things as “Food is Ammunition!” and “Food will win the war, don’t waste it.” and “Save wheat, meat, fats, and sugars – and serve the cause of freedom!”
The United States Bureau of Fisheries got into the act, encouraging people to eat more fish, which would free up meat to sustain the military. Posters featured a woman named Evelene Spencer, a chef who, even before the war, promoted the eating of fish.
Spencer didn’t just lend her image to posters, she traveled the country giving cooking demonstrations in large department stores. The government provided refrigerated train cars of fish for the demonstrations and for people to buy.
Her demonstrations and lectures were well-attended, and she became a celebrity chef long before there was such a thing.
In 1921, Spencer and a man named John N. Cobb published “Fish Cookery,” a book that contained 600 recipes. It was an instant best-seller.
Today, Americans still eat way more red meat than they do fish. However, because of WWI and Evelene Spencer’s tireless evangelizing, fish is acceptable to serve in households at all levels.
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