After the U.S. officially entered the Great War in 1917, a campaign fostered by the federal government urged Americans to support the war by reducing their consumption of certain foods—like meat, white flour, and sugar.
The goal was to save these ingredients for soldiers on the front lines as well as our European allies, who were at risk of famine.
Enter a new food entity known as “war bread.” Introduced to Gotham by a group called the New York Food Aid Committee, war bread was bread made with little or no white flour. In its place was rye, corn, or some other kind of less loved and less valuable grain.
The Food Aid Committee spread the gospel of war bread via automobile wagons they set up around the city, traveling to different neighborhoods and boroughs handing out recipes and demonstrating how to make this patriotic bread.
War bread even made it to restaurant menus, as this 1917 “wheatless” menu from Macy’s Lunch Counter in Herald Square reveals.
After the war ended in 1918, the campaign for war bread died out, though the rationing of wheat, sugar, meat, and other foods and products came back again during World War II.
Source: The push to get New Yorkers to conserve wheat by touting “war bread” and wheatless lunch menus
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