From the Soup Lines to World War II

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Starting in the s, well before the invasion of Poland in September , Reich officials acclimated civilians to a wartime diet centered on bread and potatoes, encouraging people to forgo meat and butter in favor of fish and margarine. Families were supposed to prepare the casserole on the first Sunday of the month and donate their savings to the Winter Help Fund, a charity established to assist less-fortunate Germans during the colder months. But not even the best propaganda machine can completely convince a nation to sacrifice flavor in the name of national spirit.

Most days we had Eintopf , a casserole of potatoes and various vegetables boiled in bouillon and thickened with flour.

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Oddly enough, there were also tobacco rations 20g daily and rations for matches three boxes a month. Non-smoking women received butter, biscuits and chocolate. The menu for pilots was more varied and higher in calories. In addition to basic daily rations they received fresh or condensed milk, cottage cheese, sour cream, eggs, butter and cheese, as well as fruit extract and dried fruit. Submariners also had special additions to their diet: These foods were supposed to prevent scurvy and compensated for the shortage of oxygen on board.

Small vessels could bake bread on shore, and large ships had special stoves.

Home front during World War II

Towards the end of the war the food situation worsened, so rations were cut. Cooks did what they could to vary the rations, which became increasingly meagre towards the end of the war. For instance, they made carrot tea by grating carrots, and then boiled it with Laetiporus sulphureus tree fungus.

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The carrot gave the infusion a sweetish taste and the fungus a pleasant dark hue. There was also a special recipe for "Rzhevsky" bread, made by boiling potatoes, removing the skins and putting the potatoes in a meat grinder. The resulting mash was spread onto a board sprinkled with bran, and then cooled. Only vegetarian food is served and people eat together as equals.

The institution of the Sikh langar, a community run free kitchen, was started by the first Sikh Guru, Guru Nanak.

Soup kitchen

It was designed to uphold the principle of equality between all people regardless of religion, caste, colour, creed, age, gender, or social status. In addition to the ideals of equality, the tradition of langar expresses the ethics of sharing, community, inclusiveness, and oneness of humankind. Every Sikh shrine has a religiously sanctioned moral and humanitarian obligation to serve and provide hospitality, provisions, nourishments and meals to any man, regardless of race, creed, religious profession, identification, or affiliation.

In some countries such as Great Britain , increased demand from hungry people has largely been met by food banks , operating on the "front line" model, where they give food out directly to the hungry.

Wartime cuisine: What did Soviet soldiers eat during World War II? - Russia Beyond

In the USA, such establishments are called "food pantries"; Americans generally reserve the term "food bank" for entities which perform a warehouse-like function, distributing food to front line agencies, but not directly to the hungry themselves. Instead of providing hot meals, front line food banks and pantries hand out packages of groceries so that recipients can cook themselves several meals at home.

This is often more convenient for the end user.

They can receive food for up to a dozen or so meals at once, whereas with a soup kitchen, they typically only receive a single meal with each visit. Food banks typically have procedures needed to prevent unscrupulous people taking advantage of them, unlike soup kitchens which will usually give a meal to whomever turns up with no questions asked. The soup kitchen's greater accessibility can make it more suitable for assisting people with long-term dependence on food aid.

Soup kitchens can also provide warmth, companionship, and the shared communal experience of dining with others, which can be especially valued by people such as disabled, pensioners, widowers, homeless and ex-homeless. In some countries such as Greece, soup kitchens have become the most widely used form of food aid, with The Guardian reporting in , that an estimated , Greeks visit a soup kitchen each day.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For the former restaurant, see Soup Kitchen International.

Hunger relief portal Soups portal Food portal. Langar Sufism , an Islamic tradition where free food is provided.

Masbia , a humanitarian organization in Brooklyn. Unlike in Britain a few decades earlier, the US did not pass nationwide laws restricting private individuals from giving food to the hungry. The Need for Roots. Soup Through the Ages.

Retrieved 9 February Poverty in the United States. How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America. Greenwich Village, the American Bohemia, — Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement.

William A Dando, ed.

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