Over the past century, conflicts and food and have been closely tied. The recent news-within-the-news over Iraq has been the renaming of popular foods both in the United States and Canada. Dissatisfaction with one country or another has spawned the recent renaming of the venerable French fry to a Freedom fry and French toast to Freedom toast. 

There is no humour in troops going to war but there is irony. Back in the First World War it was American troops that marvelled at the simple taste of a fried potato. Known on that continent simply as a Afried potato@ the Americans were the ones that named this simple dish AFrench Fries@ and brought it back to their home country. By the way, it is Belgium and not France, which claims fame to this dish. Getting more life out of day old or older bread was also a continental favourite. Soaking it in milk and egg and frying it gave new life and apparently a new name, French toast.

Fast-forward to another world war and a backlash to anything German, and we find the ever-popular hamburger being renamed. During and immediately following the war, some started to call the hamburger a ALiberty burger@ and even sauerkraut was renamed ALiberty cabbage@. The hamburger was just too popular and we know, of course, that the new name didn’t stick. Patriotism was at a high in the United States, rationing was in effect, and everyone was encouraged to plant a AVictory@ garden. To be self-sustaining was patriotic.

Remember the frankfurter? Our venerable Ahot dog@ was renamed sometime early in the 1900's but this renaming was not due to patriotism but rather due to an issue with spelling.  Because of its shape, the frankfurter was also called a ADachshund sausage@.  It became very popular in the early 1900's and because frankfurter and dachshund were a mouthful, people would shorten it to Ared hots@ or Awieners@. In 1906 a Hearst newspaper cartoonist decided to sketch a cartoon of a Dachshund smeared with mustard lying in a bun.  When it came time to label his cartoon he found he could not spell Dachshund so instead he called it a AHot Dog@.

Some believe that Salisbury steak was an early effort as well to rename the hamburger.  But we can credit this to Dr. Salisbury, a 19^th century health faddist who felt that feeding ground beef steaks to his patients three times a day would cure all that ailed them!

More mixing food with politics could be found during the Vietnam War years. Peace protesters and the hippies of that era were called Granola crunchers! Granola became synonymous with liberal political beliefs.

Names sometimes go the other way too.   What we call a Beef dip sandwich here is called a French dip in the U.S.  Our back bacon is called Canadian bacon down there and I suppose if we don=t go along with the program, it may be renamed too.

The renaming of foods will certainly be short lived during this conflict as well. Think about what we would call French=s mustard. You could not switch to Dijon or Grey Poupon. And what about panache? We’d only be left with style. A Bistro would still be a bar, a café a coffee shop and canapés and hors d=oeuvres would just be crackers and snacks.  But while names such as Victory, Liberty and Freedom certainly do sound inspirational, they seem to fall short on the palate.