<i>Food Will Win the War: The Politics, Culture, and Science of Food on Canada’s Home Front</i>, by Ian Mosby

Food Will Win the War: The Politics, Culture, and Science of Food on Canada's Home Front, by Ian Mosby. Vancouver, University of British Columbia Press, 2014. xii, 268 pp. $99.00 US (cloth), $35.95 US (paper). Ian Mosby's detailed and important study adds to an expanding number of recently published works demonstrating the centrality of World War II to the formation of modern Canada. Mosby's book maps the increasing influence of nutritionists during the war, based upon what he portrays as an exaggerated belief in their ability to provide undisputable scientific assessments of what was missing from the diets of Canadians. The war brought quickly growing concerns over a crisis with malnutrition, as it was concluded that as many as sixty percent of Canadians lacked adequate nutrients in their daily diet. This was linked to high military rejection rates and lost production on the homefront. Providing adequate nutrition therefore became a patriotic necessity. Reflecting their stewardship over shopping and cooking, responsibility for ensuring healthy families fell to women. Propaganda emphasized that it was essential that women be educated on nutrition for the sake of the war effort and Canada's ability to thrive after the conflict. Mosby also demonstrates the centrality of food to the war effort through the government's implementation of mandatory price controls and coupon rationing. Contrary to the emphasis in recent historical accounts, he presents Canadians as fully backing such controls. This response was grounded not only in patriotism, but also scientific data on nutritional deficiencies among Canadians that these measures would fill by guaranteeing adequate food at a decent price. Mosby portrays women as critical to ensuring that such controls worked, namely through the checks they performed as part of the Consumers Branch of the Wartime Prices and Trade Board, and by volunteering with one of the hundreds of branches of Women's Regional Advisory Committees. Many such women became consumer activists, including after the war, initiating boycotts through the 100,000-strong Housewives Consumer Association against enterprises viewed as engaging in profiteering. Mosby shows Canadians as contributing to the war effort through the medium of food in several other ways. Although more symbolic than essential to food production and conservation, many households started Victory Gardens. While the physical nature of this work resulted in propaganda that highlighted male leadership, women, as managers of the kitchen, were portrayed as leaders when it came to salvaging fat and bones. The same was evident with respect to providing domestic comforts, namely food, to those in uniform at home and overseas, including POWs, through volunteerism that encompassed the mass production of care packages, running community canteens, and having servicemen join family diners. …

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