Research seminar: Indigestible: Wartime food substitutes and nutrition in First World War Germany

During the German food crisis in the First World War, Ersatz food products like war bread and turnips came to symbolize the nutritional deprivation of the home front. Reviled at the time for being of inferior quality and taste to the foods they replaced, ersatz food products have long escaped critical examination in the historiography, being mostly relegated to colorful anecdotes sprinkled into our histories of the food crisis. Through applying an interdisciplinary approach utilizing current understandings of nutritional science, this paper reexamines the nutritional value of ersatz staples and argues that certain foods like bread, turnips, and war jam were more nutritious than previously believed. This new understanding suggests that historians of the food crisis must reexamine the role played by these substitutes in contributing to the resilience of the German home front.

Jonathan Slater is a Visiting Fellow at the Department of International History at LSE. He received his PhD from LSE in May 2025 for his dissertation entitled 'Indigestible, Disgusting, and Vile: The Development, Regulation, and Reception of Ersatz Food Products in Germany during the First World War'. His research interests include the First World War German home front, food security, and consumption patterns.