It's easy to see why so many connections are being drawn to the current pandemic and that which occurred in 1918. The circumstances, medicine, and science are completely different (thankfully), but the need for preparation and desire to stay healthy are not. During the early 1900s, science and medicine were finally beginning to come to fruition and find a happy middle-ground from which to build a foundation. With it came the suggestion of nutrition and ways to remain healthy during a time when everyone is susceptible, and some of these common methods have stuck around, even to this day.
Food is one of those things that was highly impacted during the 1918 pandemic. It was only human nature to seek out foods and recipes that could deliver instantaneous nutrition and comfort whether a person was sick or not. There was also a strong desire to find better alternatives to unhealthy meals, as well as finding ways to keep one's energy and good, fighting spirit up - and that all came about in a way that's still quite familiar to us today.
Early Nutrition Was Actually On To Something
The end of the Victorian Era and the beginning of the 20th century signified something new was coming. While the Victorian ways of crude science and little knowledge when it came to how the human body worked were slowly coming to an end, there was new knowledge being discovered: People were aware of calories and vitamins and, with it, came the knowledge that being healthy is something that could be aided with the help of the right foods. While science was not at its peak, there was a learning process going on and this is what the food was based on during the 1918 pandemic. The general public grew increasingly interested in what could be ingested in order to help their immune systems, not unlike today, where many people are still interested in holistic health and how certain herbs and spices aid in various body functions.
A major belief, according to an interview by Food & Wine with Laura Vogt, Curator of Education at the National WWI Memorial and Museum, was that the more ingredients were in a dish, the hard it would be to digest. It's for this reason that many dishes were simplified and people were encouraged to eat more dairy and find ways to incorporated protein such as eggs because these wholesome foods would provide plenty of nutrients. However, there were other things, such as onions and vinegar, that were believed to have cure-all or healing properties which is simply not the case. We know now that vinegar does have some strong antibacterial, antifungal, and anti-inflammatory properties, but it's not going to cure an illness such as the flu right off the bat. This didn't stop recipes for onion soup from going around, though, encouraging people to make plenty of it, even though it's likely the soup itself helped to hydrate and sustain the human body rather than heal it. Similarly, vinegar became a fad that was encouraged due to the belief that it could heal the body but, obviously, this is not the case.
In order to keep energy levels up and invigorate a person's spirit, it was believed that sugar was the key. Today, we know that sugar can be both good and bad depending on the amount and the form in which it's eaten. While sugar is necessary for elevating blood sugar levels and will give a person a spike in energy, too much of it can also lead to a sugar crash, which is not productive or effective at all for someone who is sick. Therefore, the logic, which originally came from a means of prepping up soldiers during the war with sugary intakes, proved to be wholly ineffective.
There were other foods that were believed to help the body in ways that could not fully be explained or understood at the time, such as 'fluid beef' which was made by the brand OXO. It was essentially beef bouillon which would help to hydrate the body due to the water content and the addition of salt, but it would not provide all of the nutrients a person needed as it said it would. However, this did not stop people from purchasing it and making it at home in the hopes that it would help them fight off whatever infection might potentially befall them. Additionally, it would not help ward off the influenza virus as stated - but this is where medicine and science fell short during the early 1900s.