The army's nutrition during the war was a topic on the agenda relating to the emergency management on behalf of all the belligerent countries. The Italian Government resulted to be more generous than others as for the rations given to soldiers. Nevertheless, the efforts never appeared to be enough and the stories edited by the young soldiers witness the continuous stress at the time of the food administration, as well as its scarcity and the occasional periods of real fasting. Sometime soldiers surrendered to the enemy just to receive a loaf of bread; for the same reason did the Austrian Army, once the Italian ranks were broken through at Caporetto, start a hard confiscation of the food deposits, whereas the soldiers began to plunder any sort of food, with subsequent damages to the population. Hunger was also a central topic for satire and for the Italian propaganda. Mockery about the German and the Austrian soldiers' hunger obviously became a common custom.
According to the report of the international Commission of inquiry “on violations of the human rights and of war laws as well as on war prisoners’ treatments”, both in Austria and in Germany, many Italian war prisoners died of hunger; a witness tells that, in the Mauthausen field, ‘groups of prisoners, bent on a pile of manure, attempted to find a turnip’s or a potato’s peel, some herring’s head, some haddock’s bone. Someone ate that filth without even washing it. They would assault food chariots on their passage and would submit themselves to whips and gun’s handles blows […]’. In letters sent to their relatives, soldiers would ask for bread, but their mails were often censured, parcels were altered and food stolen; in despair, prisoners would write: ‘make sure that I ‘ll be sent some bread, just sell my bed that I don’t care of’. ’I want no money, I just do not want anything else but bread, or something to eat’.
The prisoners’ mess included: ‘early in the morning, warm tasteless water, cold tea; at
11.00, some rare unpeeled and unwashed potato with some codfish. In the evening, some boiled unsalted cabbage. About 300 gr. of bread per day, made of indigestible and very heavy substances. With such little food, did the soldiers terribly suffer from hunger, even because, due to lack of control on kitchens, a large amount of the food destined to the mess was subtracted’. According to the document chart published in the monograph Data about war nutrition in Austria and considerations on the problem of reduced nutrition, an Italian war prisoner at Sigmundsherberg, in Austria, during the winter 1917-1918, consumed meals including only about 1085 calories per day.