Clean Plate Club

"[1] President Woodrow Wilson released Executive order 2679-A [1] creating the U.S. Food Administration and appointed Herbert Hoover as the head, enforcing this act.

Hoover knew that many Americans were willing to volunteer and had a strong sense of patriotism during the war, so he used that to his advantage when he advertised the idea of the “Clean Plate” campaign.

Hoover promoted this idea to children who attended school with a pledge that read, “At table I’ll not leave a scrap of food upon my plate.

Many necessities such as flour and sugar were in short supply, so Hoover used a sense of American nationalism to encourage families to take appropriate rations and save food.

It has been shown that parents who push their children to eat their entire meal may interfere with the self-control of their child, thus leading them to overeat, as well as creating a misunderstanding of an appropriate serving size.