Ever since the United States had entered the First World War in April of that year, control over the nation’s wheat supply was high on the federal government’s priority list. Declaring that “food will win the war,” in August of 1917 Congress passed the Lever Act, known more commonly as the Food and Fuel Control act, which granted the government unprecedented control over the U.S. food supply and established the U.S. Food Administration. Headed by financier-turned-food-aid-specialist (and future President) Herbert Hoover, this new agency’s charge was to organize food supplies at home while ensuring there would be enough to feed both American troops and the Allies abroad. And central to this mission was bread.
A longtime staple of working-class diets in much of the world, a loaf of bread was—and still is—a potent symbol in Western Europe. Beyond simply the nourishment bread could provide, bread was assumed so essential as to be the basis of Western power itself. “White flour, red meat, and blue blood make the tricolor flag of conquest,” remarked Wood Hutchison in a 1906 edition of McClure’s Magazine, a statement that echoed a belief of the era that the “white races” of Europe could not survive long without ample supplies of wheat bread, a staple on the Continent since the time of Roman “bread and circuses.”
Which meant it was a real problem that there was no longer enough wheat bread to go around. The division of the world into Allied and Central Powers had fractured existing trade links, while fields of grain throughout Europe and into the Middle East had been replaced with battle fields pocked by mortar fire. As the fighting in Europe raged on, many civilians were starving. And, although an ocean away from these front lines, American grain producers were already reeling from an incredibly low production year in 1917—down to 650 million bushels as compared to a billion just two years before. The ravenous demand from abroad caused wheat prices to skyrocket and a domestic shortage to ensue.
Knowing full well that high bread prices would not be a good thing—New York’s Flour Riots in 1837 and Richmond’s 1863 Bread Riots being two domestic examples of what could possibly go wrong—President Woodrow Wilson’s Administration rapidly set about stabilizing wheat prices and simultaneously encouraging Americans to “Eat Less Wheat.” Emphasizing that maintaining the Allies’ supplies of “war bread” was “a military necessity,” the U.S. Food Administration and its growing ranks of home economists recommended Americans limit their consumption to just “one and one-half pounds of wheat products” each week—the equivalent of roughly one and a half loaves of bread and just 50% of the average American’s normal consumption. National “Wheatless Wednesdays” were declared, a proclamation adhered to with varying degrees of patriotism by restaurants and at-home cooks alike. Other meals throughout the week, 11 in total, were labeled by the Food Administration as wheat-free, and bites of bread in between were meant to rely on a significant proportion of white-flour alternatives such as oatmeal, cornmeal, rice flour, potatoes, barley flour and buckwheat flour.