When I was a kid in the post-WWII world, I had to clean my plate, because “people are starving in Europe.” Until the day I said “Name one”, and my father smacked me so hard he knocked me over.
I could never figure out how cleaning my plate reduced starvation in Europe.
Where were people starving when you were a kid, and where are they starving for today’s kids?
My family version was “think of the starving millions in China”. This was the 70’s, so … a little behind the curve there.
Wikipedia tells me it should have been Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Cambodia.
My kids only know that other kids are starving in Japan 
Africa
Yep, China for us,too.
Ethiopia. We used to get big guilt trips in school if we didn’t finish our lunches because of the famine.
Another Ethiopia. Though lately I’ve been hearing Somalia more.
Moved from Thread Games to IMHO.
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Armenia.
Biafra. It was the late 1960s, and the news was full of civil war in Nigeria, and children starving in Biafra as a result.
In the 80s it was Africa, although my parents - intelligent people who understood the concept of logical fallacies - never actually used it on me un-ironically.
Since my family has a legacy of local charity work, there was never any need to look far.
The standard speech was
“eat your dinner, all of it! You should know how lucky you are to have parents who can provide the things you need, not every child around here is as lucky as you are to have liver to complain about eating. They would love to have that right now. So stop your whining and blubbering and eat, you’re not leaving the table till you do.”
1970s. My god, I still remember it today, and I still hate liver today as well.
Same here — Biafra. This was in 1969, when I lived in Upstate New York. I hadn’t even heard of Biafra.
Ethiopia …all you had to do was watch the news in the 80s …
Ethiopia when I was a kid. Band Aid and all of that.
Nowadays I believe it’s Yemen.
Ethiopia.
India, I think. I told my mother to send them all the peas.
China — presumably Nationalist China, not the Godless Commies — in the 1950s.
As an added bonus, being RCC, we were admonished to “offer it up for the poor souls in Purgatory” when faced with something unpleasant. Never could figure out how raking a pile of soggy leaves would get someone out of hock, but it wasn’t a question one asked.
Am I right in thinking that this thing – with its usually ineffective means of admonishing kids to “eat up” – took off in a big way in the USA, in World War I, a propos Belgium? --said country’s German occupiers stripped it rather bare, and the US government supplied large-scale food aid to Belgium, including before the US’s entering the war; and it’s been a prominent “meme”, re various parts of the world, ever since. (I’m not that old :), and I’m not American – just “stuff that I’ve heard”.)
From my 1950s British childhood, I don’t remember my parents ever pulling this one on me, concerning any country (and I was a dreadfully picky eater) – that kind of thing, wasn’t their way.
Weren’t you kind of short on food yourselves, back in 1950s Britain?
It wasn’t brilliant, early ’ 50s; but plenty of others had it worse. Small kids no doubt got the best of what there was.