If you think of our military’s influence on food, you may picture MREs — meals, ready-to-eat — which are the main operational food rations for the U.S. Armed Forces. You may even have some MREs in your earthquake supply bin.

But according to Hannah LeBlanc, a history of science graduate student at Stanford, the U.S. military has had a more fundamental and far-reaching impact on American nutrition than MREs. In fact, she argues, American nutrition was profoundly altered during the mid-1900s when the U.S. government poured funding into nutrition research. The legacies from this research include the food pyramid, recommended dietary allowances and much more.

LeBlanc’s dissertation reveals that the government hired nutritionists and issued propaganda films about nutrition because they needed healthy solders to fight in World War II at a time when many men were physically weakened from malnutrition during the Great Depression. And the government studied physiology in hopes of improving their soldiers’ physical endurance and food processing to preserve food longer.

Nutrition was also viewed as a national security issue during the Cold War — combating hunger as a means to protect our democracy. LeBlanc explained in a recent Stanford news release, “If you’re hungry, communism’s promises of food and well-being are going to be appealing.”

LeBlanc came to these conclusions by delving into a dozen archives throughout the U.S. for primary sources, such as military memos, government budgets and propagandistic nutrition films.

LeBlanc’s advisor, Londa Schiebinger, PhD, argues in the news release that this work can act as a reminder to pay attention to who is funding and directing our research: “Since the 1950s, there’s been this idea that science is merely objective. And, yes, we discover truth in science, but research priorities are very much determined by society.”

Image of early 1940s poster by Office for Emergency Management, Office of War Information, Domestic Operations Branch, Bureau of Special Services