FOOD - THE ULTIMATE WEAPON

We all know how much good nutrition can contribute to better health, but I was fascinated by a new book that shows how important it was to the outcome of the Second World War. It seems that all sides behaved even more fiercely over food supplies than we might wish to believe. I had heard about the Atlantic blockade and the siege of Leningrad. I was also aware of efforts to provide American troops with Coca-Cola, but had not realised the US Army ran as many as 44 dedicated bottling plants. I had no idea that so many Greeks died from hunger or that Japan was so close to mass starvation at the time of the atomic bombings. The full story takes 656 pages and can be found in The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food by Lizzie Collingham.