The WPA & the Golden Age · See America / Cities & States
Eat these every day
Work Projects Administration, 1942
What it is
The Library of Congress dates this poster only to a range, between 1941 and 1943, so no single year should be attached to it.
Why it matters
It arranges the era's nutrition guidance as a simple visual inventory: dairy, eggs, fruit, vegetables, bread and cereal, meat - each rendered in the flat, saturated colour blocks that silkscreen does best. Made in the WPA's last years, as wartime rationing turned everyday eating into a national question.
What to notice
Milk, eggs, bread, meat and vegetables laid out flat and bright - the food pyramid before it was a pyramid.
Made by artists on the public payroll — art the country already owned.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Format
- One-sheet
- Poster published
- Work Projects Administration, 1942
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · LCCN 98518333
Rights: CLEAR. Public domain — U.S. government program work (WPA Federal Art Project), any year. Gated by the poster’s own publication year. Cleared by registry on 2026-07-18.
Format
The full-resolution, color-managed file — restored honestly, yours to print and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan supports sizes up to 18x24" cleanly.
Size
$29.00
