First Impressions: Ministry of Food at IWM London

By Derry Nairn

The Second World War, which Britain and her empire fought from 1939 until 1945, offered up to history the enduring founding myths of the post-imperial period. The Blitz; the Battle of Britain; Dunkirk; VE Day: the conflict’s major commemorative events were all the result of military and material challenges, overcome by leader, soldier and ordinary housewife alike.

'Ministry of Food', the exhibition opening on 12th February at London’s Imperial War Museum, deals with one of the most unsung but vitally relevant of these heroic victories: the revolution in culinary and dietary habits forced upon Britain by shortages in the island’s staple foodstuffs.

From food rationing, to the donation of tin pots for military hardware, an entertaining exhibition tells how the Second World War was experienced in the most immediate sense by ordinary people. At the war’s outbreak, the shipping of colonial imports such as Canadian wheat and Caribbean coffee, sugar and bananas came to a swift end. As this reality set in, the government attempted to quell public fears and raise morale through co-ordinated propaganda campaigns - the ‘Dig for Victory’ poster being one of the most well-known.

Outcomes were many and various. Mountains of food waste were saved. A wholesale conversion from cattle to arable farming came about. Alternative and ingenious methods of feeding hungry families were developed, often spontaneously, and on a local level. The domestic production of potatoes, oats, orchard fruits and root vegetables was encouraged. Recipes accordingly took account of wartime shortages, with ingredients such as mock cream (sweetened, whipped margarine), mock goose (a mixture of potato, apple, cheese and sage), and potato biscuits (made with oats and mashed potato).

Other surrogate staples were not so successful. Snoek, a cheap, pungent and hugely unpopular South African canned fish, made its inauspicious culinary debut. American imports such as Spam fritters, Wrigley’s chewing gum and Kellogg’s breakfast cereals had been available prior to 1939. However, the only successful 20th-century invasion of Britain - that of GIs - permanently popularised these dubious additions to the food arena.

'Ministry of Food' is not limited, however, to the compact first floor exhibition space. The Imperial War Museum’s café has been transformed, by Company of Cooks, into ‘Kitchen Front’ for the duration of the show. The menu reflects the realities of wartime diets. This is no bad thing, as the menu would feel more at home in a gourmet South Bank restaurant, than lifted from the pages of a rationing book. Alongside the obligatory mock cream and potato biscuits, sit delicious baked potatoes with Stilton and walnuts, marinated herring with red cabbage and miniature vegetable pies.

It is illuminating to query the motivations behind the Imperial War Museum’s choice of exhibit. A clue arrives with the opinions of TV gardener and environmentalist Monty Don, invited to speak at the exhibition launch of how the Second World War helped to redraw society’s attitudes to food sources. By 1943, six million British families grew their own vegetables. Urban pig-rearing societies had a 100,000-strong membership. Allotment space doubled over the course of four years. For Don, these are not flat historical facts. For him, and the green movement as a whole, the story of food production and consumption in wartime Britain has helped to inspire their vision for a brave new world of sustainable eating habits.

The historical parallels are difficult to ignore. Just as in 1939, Britain today relies as never before on cheap, imported food. In the same way as the merchant navy had to do battle with U-Boats, suppliers to UK supermarkets now have to fight rising fuel prices and volatile environmental factors. Reflecting these realities, any appraisal of recent government policy and media coverage will show a developing trend towards discussion of food policy and politics. A pronounced nod to the green bandwagon underpins the Imperial War Museum’s new exhibition.

70 years ago, however, the changes in how the nation ate, shopped, farmed and gardened were relatively immediate. By contrast, gestures towards a greener way of life in contemporary Britain are gradual and, a cynic might say, rather superficial. The island is not currently blockaded by submarines. The capital’s soil is not being ploughed nightly by doodlebugs. The trend for more sustainable, ‘ethical’ foods remains just that: a trend. It both limits itself strictly to wealthier supermarket customers, and extends to such anomalies as air-freighted, but organic, tropical fruit. Factor in the embedded status of such post-war trends as fast food chains, TV dinners and intensively-farmed agriculture, and the green lobby sounds more like a minority voice in the debate over food.

Monty Don, like it or not, is the poster child for a decidedly middle-class approach to food: one based on commoditised pleasure and the arbitrary concept of 'ethics', rather than enforced austerity. It may be stating the obvious, but the wartime populations of London, Manchester and Glasgow did not write to their MPs, demanding that their beloved banana shipments be torpedoed. A sad reality which the green movement must face is that tectonic social change does not tend to come about except through necessity. The message to learn from the Ministry of Food exhibition, and from history, is that until this country is forced to move away from its addiction to food convenience – be that, as in the past, through military aggression or environmental catastrophe - there is very little that can be done to change it.

The exhibition, however, is excellent, and comes highly recommended.

Ministry of Food
Imperial War Museum London

12th February 2010 - 3rd January 2011

Lambeth Road
London SE1 6HZ
United Kingdom

Telephone: +44 (0)20 7416 5320
Web: food.iwm.org.uk

Nick Cullather explains how the USA made food an instrument of foreign policy, in American Pie: the Imperialism of the Calorie

Thanks to Doreen J Barber for the images of the exhibition.

Gladiators Were Vegetarians

by Kathryn Hadley

Gladiators were mostly vegetarians and their diets consisted, above all, of barley and vegetables. They were neither too poor to buy meat nor staunch defenders of animal rights; instead, their carbohydrate-rich diets made them put on weight, which both protected them during fights and made them appear more spectacular, which pleased the crowds.

A 200-square-foot plot of land in the city of Ephesus (now in western Turkey), alongside the road that originally led from the city centre to the Temple of Artemis, is the world’s only known gladiator graveyard. The plot contains the bodies of just over 60 gladiators. Karl Grossschmidt, a paleo-pathologist from the Medical University of Vienna, recently led a research project about gladiator life, the diets of gladiators and the causes of their deaths. Scientists carried out isotopic analyses of bone fragments from the graveyard, measuring trace chemical elements such as calcium, strontium and zinc. The results of the study were reported in an article by Andrew Curry published in the November/December issue of Archaeology magazine (a publication of the Archaeological Institute of America).

In contemporary accounts of gladiator life gladiators were often referred to as hordearii, which literally means ‘barley men’. The results of the bone analyses revealed that gladiators ate considerably more plants and very little animal protein compared to the average inhabitant of Ephesus. Their diets were extremely high in carbohydrates such as barley and legumes, which made gladiators put on weight. The extra layers of subcutaneous fat helped to protect them from surface wounds during fights. However, their diets lacked in calcium and gladiators allegedly drank brews of charred wood or bone ash, which contained particularly high levels of calcium, to keep their bones strong.

What was the purpose and significance of gladiatorial shows in Ancient Rome? For further information, read our article Murderous Games: Gladiatorial Contests in Ancient Rome
For further reading, visit our Ancient Rome focus page.

A Short History of Milk Drinking

by Kathryn Hadley

It was previously believed that milk drinking began in dairy farming communities in northern Europe. Through a process of natural selection to compensate for vitamin D deficiencies due to a lack of daylight, communities in northern Europe were believed to have undergone a genetic mutation which enabled them produce the enzyme lactase necessary to digest the milk sugar lactose. The production of lactase is a characteristic known as lactase persistence. Although the majority of Europeans produce lactase throughout their life, most adults worldwide do not produce the enzyme lactase. However, the latest research by scientists from University College London has revealed that this genetic mutation first occurred, instead, in dairy farming communities in central Europe 7,500 years ago, in the region between the central Balkans and central Europe.

According to previous studies, dairying developed in south-eastern Europe soon after the arrival of farming. Milk proteins have been discovered, for example, in present-day Romania and Hungary in ceramic vessels which date back between 7,900 and 7,450 years. Traces of fats have also suggested that dairying began in England some 6,100 years ago. It is believed that Germanic and Celtic people practiced cattle dairying and drank significant amounts of fresh milk, however, it is most likely that milk was first used to make cheese, butter and yoghurt rather than drunk fresh.

Professor Mark Thomas, UCL Genetics, Evolution and Environment, explained:

‘Most Europeans continue to produce lactase throughout their life, a
characteristic known as lactase persistence. In Europe, a single genetic change
(13,910*T) is strongly associated with lactase persistence and appears to have
given people with it a big survival advantage. Since adult consumption of fresh
milk was only possible after the domestication of animals, it is likely that
lactase persistence co-evolved with the cultural practice of dairying, although
it was not known when it first arose in Europe or what factors drove its rapid
spread. Our study simulated the spread of lactase persistence and farming in
Europe, and found that lactase persistence appears to have begun around 7,500
years ago between the central Balkans and central Europe, probably among people
of the Linearbandkeramik culture. But contrary to popular belief, we also found
that a need for dietary vitamin D was not necessary to explain why lactase
persistence is common in northern Europe today.’

The results of the study were published last week in the journal PLoS Computational Biology in ‘The Origins of Lactose Persistence in Europe’ by Yuval Itan, Adam Powell, Mark Beaumont, Joachim Burger and Mark Thomas. The article is available on the website of PLoS Computational Biology. http://www.ploscompbiol.org/

Picture:

Map showing origin of milk drinking in Europe (UCL)