However unrealistic it was in theory, alimentary sovereignty had significant impact on everyday life in Italy before and after fascism. Alimentary sovereignty reversed wartime and postwar trends toward greater diversification in popular diet, causing nutritional levels to revert to pre‐World War I standards, standards considered inadequate and even miserable by the Italian scientific and medical communities at the time. The fascist régime reduced food imports, encouraged consumers to reduce their food intake, and mobilized scientific support for fewer calories and nutrients in diet.

A similar pattern occurred in the Third Reich.

Although expediency, contingency and inconsistency played a rôle in the unfolding of food policy, alimentary sovereignty remained consistent in its goals to subordinate the desires and nutritional needs of the Italian population to autarky. The events of the World War II greatly intensified popular hardship.

The [Third Reich’s] exploitation of Italian resources and the population, coupled with the intensification of alimentary sovereignty in wartime, led to widespread misery among many Italians. And, finally, the fascist government clearly influenced the ways in which Italians thought about food. The very nature of Italian cuisine today has its roots in fascism’s reversal of dietary trends within Italy and efforts to halt the influence of mass consumption from without.

Leading the fight ‘for freedom and for bread’ indeed. Needless to say, the upper classes did not suffer from the caloric reduction affecting the rest of the population:

Letters to Mussolini expressed disbelief and outrage that the government and merchants would even consider provisioning Germans.

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

Late in the war, outright starving was common amongst civilians. Axis occupation resulted in at least eight famines: Leningrad (1941–4), Greece (1941–4), Kharkiv (1941–2), Kiev (1941–3), Java (1944–5), the Netherlands (1944–5), Vietnam (1944–5), and some of Poland (1940–5).

All of this information, while tragic, should be unsurprising. The reason that I share it is that antisocialists like to say that Fascism was better than Bolshevism in part because nutrition under Fascism was ‘adequate’. Unless one was upper‐class or infantry, it was not.