Abstract
AbstractThis article re‐examines energy and nutrition available to British working‐class households in the late 1930s using individual household expenditure and consumption data. We use these data to address a number of questions. First, what was the extent of malnutrition in late 1930s Britain? Second, how did the incidence change over time? Third, what were the nutritional consequences of the school meals and school milk schemes? We conclude that, for working households, energy and nutritional availability improved significantly compared with current estimates of availability before the First World War. These improvements were not equally shared, however. In the late 1930s, homes with an unemployed head of household had diets that provided around 20 per cent less energy than their working counterparts and female‐headed households had diets that provided around 10 per cent fewer kcal per capita than the average male‐headed household. The availability of most macro‐ and micronutrients showed similar relative reductions. State interventions designed to improve diet and nutrition, such as school meals and school milk, made children's diets significantly healthier, even if they did not eliminate macro‐ and micronutrient deficiencies completely. Not surprisingly, they made the greatest difference to children in households where the head of household was unemployed.
Highlights
This article re-examines energy and nutrition available to British workingclass households in the late 1930s using individual household expenditure and consumption data
We examine the role of the state in improving energy and nutrition levels available to children through free school meals, school milk schemes, and assistance to working-class mothers in clinics, and conclude that collectively these state interventions made a considerable difference, especially with respect to calcium and protein intakes among children, but were not sufficient individually to ensure adequate standards of nutrition generally
The findings presented here allow us to be confident that Widdowson’s results can be generalized to low income per capita households across Britain in the late 1930s, where children were in receipt of both school meals and school milk
Summary
Note that these calculations move away from the simple per capita estimates of food consumption and nutrient availability previously discussed. That RNI levels are set to ensure that 97.5 per cent of the population meet the requirements, and this undoubtedly exaggerates the extent of nutritional deficiency in the 1937/8 sample.[63] Gazeley and Newell’s analysis of the 1904 Board of Trade survey diets used 0.5 RNI as the benchmark for adequacy for macro- and micronutrients,[64] and this is a roughly comparable alternative to lower reference nutrient intakes (LRNIs), which represent ‘the lowest intakes which will meet the needs of some individuals in the group. ‘farm servant’, ‘horseman’, ‘cattleman’, or ‘dairyman’. Rowett Institute, Family diet and health, pp. 24–5. Ibid., p. 18
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