The Greatest Crime in Christendom

A woman scrapes food from a plate into a garbage can beside a block of text equating waste with a crime and setting battlefield deaths against deaths by starvation. The tell is the figures and the moral frame: large casualty numbers are placed directly beside the plate to make a household act feel like a cause of death, with no source given for the numbers.

Propaganda techniques used in this poster

Fear appealCard stacking

Date

1918

Period

First World War

Made by

U.S. Food Administration (Illinois Educational Division, Chicago)

Region

North America

Country

United States

Medium

Poster

Issuer type

State

Regime

Wilson Administration

Leader

Woodrow Wilson

Audience

Domestic public

Purpose

Mobilize or secure compliance

Themes

Home front, War and the military

Event

World War I

Regime

Wilson administration

Leader

Woodrow Wilson

Source

Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are

Source

U.S. National Archives (NARA), RG 4 (U.S. Food Administration), World War I Posters (NAID 512439), retrieved October 3, 2026

Rights

NARA Unrestricted; hosted by owner decision
U.S. Food Administration (Illinois Educational Division, Chicago). National Archives and Records Administration, 4-P-91.

The Greatest Crime
in Christendom

To buy - to cook - to eat more
than you need; to waste a single morsel
of food that can be used - is a crime.

Ten million have died bravely on the field
of battle. They at least had a chance. They
gave their all willingly and unselfishly.

Over twenty million have died of starvation -
without even a chance to fight. To these death
has come only as a relief from torture worse than
death - starvation.

It is our job - yours and ours - to save food so
that the millions of starving people in
Europe may have SOMETHING to eat.

Don't
Waste
Food

Eat Less
Waste Nothing

Live Simply - avoid all food waste.

United States Food Administration
ILLINOIS EDUCATIONAL DIVISION
CHICAGO