3,240,948 tons of food was sent from Britain to the soldiers fighting in France and Belgium during the First World War. The food came not only from the government but also from families in Britain and France. The British Army employed 300,000 field workers to cook and supply the food to the men in the trenches. At the beginning of the war British soldiers were given 10 ounces of meat and 8 ounces of vegetables a day as their rations. As the size of the army grew due to the conscript’s coming from Britain and the German blockades were becoming exceedingly effective, the army could not maintain the previous rations and by 1916 this had been cut to 6 ounces of meat a day. Later troops that were not on the front-line only received meat on nine days out of every month. The daily bread ration was also cut in April 1917. The British Army attempted to give the soldiers the 3,574 calories a day that dieticians said they needed. However, others argued that soldiers, during wartime needed much more than this. So by 1917 soldiers were living off the bare minimum, some soldiers were lucky enough to have personal packages of food sent to them but they only received them when they were resting from the front line.
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