In my professional life, I've wandered into a research project on modeling famines and starvation physiology. Which means I'm reading scientific literature on starvation physiology. I'm in a place of safety and resilience, but I can tell that even short term immersion in this material does have an effect on me, especially with where the world is right now.
It turns out that the bulk of the scientific literature on starvation physiology comes from the 1940s. You can fucking guess why.
It turns out that people in the United States and other members of the Alliies were extremely interested in how to care for chronically starved populations starting around 1944.