#warrations

Take the Eat out of Wheat

Eating gluten-free is not a recent trend.The Food Administration during World War I promoted going wheatless.The ravages of the war led to a food crisis in Europe, and they desperately needed wheat.The United States also had over four million servicemen to feed.The Administration urged Americans to eat potatoes whenever possible (the weight of potatoes made them impractical to ship across the Atlantic Ocean). Corn, called the grain of America, could be used to make corn bread, griddle cakes, muffins, and other baked goods. “War bread” could contain any number of alternative flours, including rice, barley, rye, oats, potato, or buckwheat. Another aim of the Administration involved stopping food waste, especially of bread. If every one of the twenty million American households wasted one slice of bread that would equal 875,000 pounds of flour wasted! To curb this waste, many WWI-era recipes contain bread crumbs as an ingredient to use up stale or leftover bread.

Come see our current exhibition, Together We Win: The Philadelphia Homefront During the First World War, up now through April 21st.