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.
Mussolini’s economic vision centered on autarky, a policy of absolute national self-sufficiency. As Italy expanded its imperial ambitions, culminating in the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, the regime urged citizens to reject foreign imports. Fascist propaganda flooded the public square. State-sponsored films, colorful posters, and women’s magazines championed domestically grown crops. Suddenly, grapes, citrus fruits, and leafy vegetables were no longer just food. They were weapons of economic defense. Cookbook writers and state scientists began extolling the natural superiority of the simple peasant diet, reframing poverty as a source of patriotic strength.
This political turn drew upon deeper intellectual currents. In the early twentieth century, radical nationalists and early fascists had already begun experimenting with dietary purity. Figures within the nationalist movement, notably those involved in the brief, radical Regency of Fiume, viewed meat as a foreign corruption. For them, rejecting meat was a way to cleanse the body and soul from the decadent intoxications of daily life. This nationalistic vegetarianism overlapped with the popular strapaese movement, which romanticized the rustic, spiritual simplicity of rural village life. While these political actors shared a table with genuine, peacetime vegetarians, their goals differed. Traditional vegetarians maintained ties to international organizations and avoided alcohol, whereas the fascists rejected all foreign influence and vigorously promoted domestic wine grapes.
To solidify this dietary shift, the regime looked to the medical community. Prior to the First World War, Italian doctors debated how much protein citizens required, knowing full well that most Italians could never afford Western standards of meat consumption. Under fascism, however, medical consensus shifted. Experts lowered their daily protein recommendations to between 40 and 100 grams, advising the public to reduce or completely eliminate meat. Doctors wrote advice manuals targeting women, who were charged with raising healthy children for the state. Some physicians recommended eating meat only once a day, while others suggested consuming only herbivorous animals. Periodicals urged housewives to substitute eggs, milk, and honey for scarce beef and pork. Although backyard farming of rabbits and pigeons was occasionally encouraged to combat monotonous diets, the prevailing medical advice leaned heavily toward a meatless equilibrium.
Housewives bore the brunt of this transition, relying on increasingly creative cookbooks to manage their household budgets. The most celebrated culinary guide of the era was Enrico Alliata di Salaparuta’s heavyweight manual, Cucina vegetariana, first published in 1930. Salaparuta, a dedicated naturalist, insisted that a simple plate of pasta with butter and cheese provided all the necessary nutrients for the human body. For those longing for the texture of meat, his book offered elaborate substitutions. He detailed recipes for a pseudo hare made of boiled black beans, egg yolks, and caramelized sugar to provide a dark, meaty gloss. He whipped up fake clams using shredded pumpkin, and simulated frog meat with wild mushrooms. These culinary illusions became essential tools of survival as international sanctions pinched the Italian economy in the late 1930s.
Other authors approached meatlessness from different angles. Niccolò Grillo published an influential guide in 1929 that combined animal welfare advocacy with the growing domestic science movement. Grillo pointed out that vegetarian dishes required fewer complicated tools, took less time to prepare, and were far easier to master. In an era when the state was actively promoting household efficiency, this practical argument resonated deeply with busy women. Yet, unlike in neighboring Germany where animal rights was a core tenet of Nazi biopolitics, the humanitarian message of animal welfare remained a secondary concern for most Italians.
As the regime drifted closer to the Second World War, the rhetoric of sacrifice grew increasingly desperate. Italy’s fateful military alliance with Nazi Germany in 1939 proved economically ruinous. To support the German war effort, Italy began exporting vast quantities of its own food. While German civilians remained relatively well-fed, the Italian population began to starve. The state’s tight grip on consumption disintegrated into black markets, rampant inflation, and severe malnutrition. By the time Allied forces landed on the peninsula in 1943, they met a population that was physically exhausted. Hungry citizens begged soldiers for chocolate and simple rations, instantly shattering the fascist illusion of a self-sufficient, robust nation powered by patriotic austerity.
The fall of fascism quickly dismantled the state-sanctioned culture of meatlessness. When economic prosperity returned to postwar Italy, citizens eagerly purchased the meat they had been denied for decades, transforming vegetarianism from a forced economic necessity into an individual choice. The fascist experiment remains a striking historical example of how a government can co-opt everyday eating habits for political prestige. By weaving together traditional peasant practices, nationalist ideology, and medical advice, the state successfully, if temporarily, turned involuntary scarcity into a duty of the highest order.
Bibliographic Information
- Title: Veg(etari)an Arguments in Culture, History, and Practice
- Subtitle: The V Word
- Editors: Cristina Hanganu-Bresch and Kristin Kondrlik
- Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (An imprint of Springer Nature Switzerland AG)
- Publication Year: 2021
- Edition: First Edition
- ISBN: 978-3-030-53279-6 (Hardcover); 978-3-030-53280-2 (eBook)
- Historical Period Covered: Antiquity (Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, early Islamic origins) to the contemporary era (early 20th-century Italy, mid-20th-century literature, late 1990s food libel lawsuits, and 21st-century social, digital, and political animal advocacy movements).
- Main Subject Areas: Rhetoric and Composition, Critical Animal Studies, Food Studies, Cultural History, Ecocriticism, Feminist/Queer Theory, Religious Studies, and Public Health Communication.
[Ch. 1, p. 15]