Save Food, Fight Famine is a 1946 Government Printing Office banner with no picture: four white capital words on a long, narrow brown strip. The sheet does not print the issuing agency. NAID 515340, in the National Archives' World War II poster series.
What there is
Very little. The archive describes a long, narrow brown banner with white capital letters and no illustration at all. The only other line is the printer's number.
SAVE FOOD FIGHT FAMINE
[imprint: U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1946 O 701601]
Who issued it
The record's maker line is "U.S. Government (agency not printed)." The GPO number dates the printing to 1946. Nothing on the strip says which office asked for it, where it was meant to hang, or which famine it means.
Reading four words
The archive files the banner under glittering generalities and calls the technique faint. That is fair. "Fight famine" is a phrase no one argues with, and the sheet pairs it with a household act, saving food, without a number, a place, or a reason why one family's savings would reach anyone hungry. The persuasion is in the pairing: small thrift at home is promoted to a fight.
Still, the request is voluntary and modest. It asks people to waste less and does not threaten or shame them. It states a cause and leaves the reader to decide.
A longer appeal on food is A Message About Food from the President of the United States, a 1945 sheet over Harry Truman's printed signature that ends "There can be no lasting peace in a hungry world." From an earlier war, the Food Administration's Food Is Ammunition, Don't Waste It (1917) tied the kitchen to the front. The archive also holds a 1946 sheet in the same vein, Seed Needed: Help Fight Famine.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Save food, fight famine, 1946. U.S. Government (agency not printed).
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, NAID 515340, local id 44-PA-1672, catalog record, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
