When rationing was introduced during the second world war, a typical weekly ration per person was 4oz of bacon and ham, other meat one shilling-worth, 4oz of butter, 4oz of loose tea, 8 oz of sugar, 1 oz of cheese and 8 oz preserves per month. Rationing finally came to an end in 1954.
“Rationing in Lincolnshire and Rutland, with all other parts of the country, started on Monday, this giving every, woman and child an opportunity to contribute to victory.
It has frequently been asserted that the result of the last war depended more upon food than upon fighting. So it may be again, and it is a vital part of our defence that everyone should make a contribution as nearly equal as wide differences of circumstances permit. The great enemy is waste. It occurs in too many directions. Far too much valuable food is placed in the dust bins every day.
Waste of opportunity is as indefensible as waste of supplies. Substitute foods are not necessarily second-rate, for habit plays a large part in the routine of feeding. The necessities of war encourage a more imaginative and wider search for satisfactory alternative foods and the result may be neither lacking in nutritive value nor attractiveness. The housewife’s contribution ought to be no more than complementary to the husband’s for the ‘dig for victory’ campaign is intimately associated with the success of the rationing scheme.
Waste of good land is an [sic] unpatriotic as is the waste of good food. There is a moral obligation on all gardeners in time of war to see that concern for the edible had precedent over care for the merely ornamental. Cultivation of allotments and the transformation of garden into food-producing units had hardly begun. An opportunity to help the war lies in the hand of everyone who possesses a garden.
Mr. W. S. Morrison’s * assurance that we have all the food we need is qualified by the unpredictable uncertainties of the war. Importation of foodstuffs must go on or starvatiion would not be far away. There is no fear that enemy action will produce that situation, but every effort will be put forward to get as near to it as possible. The most practical method of showing appreciation of the magnificent work of the men of the Merchant Navy is to support the food-rationing scheme so that they may be spared from unnecessarily having to face the hazards of the war at sea.”
The Stamford Mercury, 12th January, 1940.