For generations, the average Italian dinner table featured very little meat. This was a matter of simple necessity. Hemmed in by geographic boundaries and lacking vast agricultural resources, millions of peasants relied on bread, vegetables, and whatever grew nearby. When Benito Mussolini marched on Rome in 1922, he did not inherit a land of plenty. Instead, he inherited a nation where meatlessness was already an involuntary way of life. Over the next two decades, the fascist regime would transform this economic limitation into a grand national virtue.
Continue reading The Physiology of Autarky: How WWI and Fascist Italy turned involuntary meatlessness into a patriotic duty