ABSTRACT
This article presents a pioneering study of military nutrition in Spain in the period 1940–1972, based on published material and archival records, and on the report published by the Interdepartmental Committee on Nutrition for National Defense (USA) in 1958. It can be argued that military and overall nutrition followed similar trends, displaying some of the typical features of the nutritional transition in Spain. Although, in general, military personnel consumed more calories than the civilian population, except for the 1940s in which calorie intake was below recommended thresholds, their diet lacked in variety and was deficient in terms of protein and fat contents. The situation improved markedly in the 1950s and 1960s, in terms of both nutritional and physical health status, as revealed by the study carried out in 1958. The American report also flagged other deficiencies: lack of professional cooks among kitchen staff; obsolete and inadequate cooking, storage and messroom facilities in many barracks; lack of common nutritional criteria for the whole of the armed forces; decentralised approach to food purchases, owing to the administrative autonomy of military units; and budget shortcomings. The 1958 report had a modernising effect on the nutrition of the troops, but improvements were slow and partial, and some of these problems were still unresolved as late as the 1980s, the result of chronic institutional flaws in the Spanish armed forces.
