Today we kick off a series called Meat and Math based on an article published in an October 31, 1942 edition of the Baltimore based Afro-American newspaper. Meat and Math is related to our ongoing series on African American Food Writers; the source material was published during world war II and the start of food rationing in the United States.
Bone In
Who decides how much meat lands on your plate? In late October 1942, the Baltimore Afro-American warned housewives that meat rationing would arrive within weeks and urged them to start stretching supplies right away. Home economists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) proposed a voluntary sharing allowance, with bone counted in the weight. For many dominant caste households, a government ration felt new. For lower caste African American tenant families in the rural South, someone else had always set it. A 1941 study found Deep South landlords giving a family of six or seven twenty-two pounds of salt pork a month, less than a pound per person each week. The war briefly handed the whole nation that arithmetic. Caste operates by deciding who receives what, and how much; gastro-politics asks who holds that power over the plate. In 1942 Washington held it, and housewives answered with skill.
[Side Bar]
The allowance counted pork, beef, veal, and lamb.
Meat Sharing Allowance
Allowance [per week], Bone In
Each person over 12: 2½ pounds
Each child 6 to 12: 1½ pounds
Each child under 6: ¾ pound
“Housewives Study Plans for ‘Stretching’ Meats,” Afro-American, October 31, 1942, 17.
Does scarcity feel different when it lands on everyone? The USDA’s first answer began with bread crumbs.