Wartime Food better for our health?

SpikyHedgehog

JBD wrote: »

I think this is a big factor. The wartime diet was certainly 'carb heavy' and this may not be suitable for people that don't do a lot of exercise. That means things like walking instead of driving, doing physical work , using fewer 'labour saving devices', using stairs instead of escalators and lifts. It was really a whole different way of life. Nowadays we really have to add exercise into our lives in the form of working out, going to the gym etc.

And even housework was more labour intensive, sweeping the floors instead of whipping a hoover round, washing & washing up by hand, no food processors... No expectation of cars to school.

tiff

But they didnt do as much in the day as we do now, my Mum says. For example I might take my children to school, go to work, go shopping, pick up kids, take them to the dentist.

Justamum

spike7451 wrote: »

Think about it,our parents/grandparents grew their own veg,raised their own chickens all without the aid of chemicals ect.Fruit & veg was seasonal & therefore not mass produced.I saw Floyd on the Med go into a Spanish market & buy odd shaped Tomatoes ect.Veg that would not make it to our supermarkets.Uniformity at the cost of taste.
We the British public are our own worst enemy's with food.

I think it's the supermarkets which are our worst enemies with food. The public didn't demand uniform, tasteless fruit and veg, the supermarkets dictated it. Most of the tomatoes we buy are either Spanish or Polish and they are tasteless bullets. Presumably they send all the rubbish over to our shops and keep the best for themselves.

Justamum

I tried to follow the WWII diet a few months ago. I was shocked at how much fat and sugar they ate in those days. One week's ration for one adult was more than we would eat as a family of 5! 10oz fat and 8oz sugar for each adult each week. I'm not sure what the ration for children was, but just for the two adults in our family that would be 1lb 4oz fat and 1lb sugar between us.

sonastin

Justamum wrote: »

I think it's the supermarkets which are our worst enemies with food. The public didn't demand uniform, tasteless fruit and veg, the supermarkets dictated it. Most of the tomatoes we buy are either Spanish or Polish and they are tasteless bullets. Presumably they send all the rubbish over to our shops and keep the best for themselves.

I think we kinda did ask for it - we just didn't realise we were doing it. When the supermarkets stocked the full range of twisty malformed veg in amongst the uniform veg, guess which the public selected first and guess which the supermarket had to throw away. So they made the farmers figure a way to grow veg as uniform as possible (at the expense of taste) to reduce the chances of the unthinking public leaving the wonky ones on the shelf.

Unfortunately now we are stuck with it because there is no easy way to go back. Changing a supermarkets buying policy back to things they think won't sell is harder than turning a supertanker round on a sixpence.

spike7451

tiff wrote: »

But they didnt do as much in the day as we do now, my Mum says. For example I might take my children to school, go to work, go shopping, pick up kids, take them to the dentist.

Both my parents didn't have anyone to take them to school,they had to walk,in Dads case,4 miles there & 4 miles back.
Even when I was a lad in the 70's,my mom used to walk to school with me,then go to work in the local shop,then meet me at school & go home.But in those days we walked.I'll bet you drive your kids to school,how much longer would it take you if you walked?...The's a woman who lives down the street opposite mine,she drives her kids to school & then goes home.total distance has to me less than 1/4 of a mile.

Justamum wrote: »

I think it's the supermarkets which are our worst enemies with food. The public didn't demand uniform, tasteless fruit and veg, the supermarkets dictated it. Most of the tomatoes we buy are either Spanish or Polish and they are tasteless bullets. Presumably they send all the rubbish over to our shops and keep the best for themselves.

Yup,the is a large farm estate near me,few years ago they got an order to supply a few hundred punnets of strawberries for a supermarket.Couple days before the order was due,the supermarket cancelled & the estate lost a lot of money.They would ship the fruit & veg from NI,across to England for packaging ect then back to NI.

bobthedambuilder

tiff wrote: »

But they didnt do as much in the day as we do now, my Mum says. For example I might take my children to school, go to work, go shopping, pick up kids, take them to the dentist.

And did you do all this on foot, or in the car? You can be sure that in the war, all this would have been on foot, or exceptionally on the bus.

JBD

tiff wrote: »

But they didnt do as much in the day as we do now, my Mum says. For example I might take my children to school, go to work, go shopping, pick up kids, take them to the dentist.

My Mum did all this too, without a car and no help from our Dad.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Don't forget that, as soon as rationing ended, there was a massed rush for everything they had been deprived of for all those years.

Cakes, eggs, colourants, exotic foods, high fat, high sugar, high salt, highly refined, white sliced - think of everything we criticise now about food - that was what they wanted after so many years of doing without. We complain about roast beef flavoured crisps - kids used to eat OXO cubes to get a meaty, salty treat then or would drink Bovril in hot water everyday, which would have a modern dietician having a fit because of the salt involved (they actively brief against yeast extract, even for veggies, nowdays).

Then you have the fact that people would trade their rations to get more of something else - and the black market was everywhere. People didn't like it. They wanted the other foods so much that they would risk imprisonment, execution even, in the pursuit of alcohol, meat, sweets and the like. You don't get into as much trouble now for possessing heroin as someone would in possession of food they hadn't been permitted to eat.


So be aware - it might be harder to keep to than you think, they didn't want to live like that in the slightest.

margaretclare

JBD wrote: »

I think this is a big factor. The wartime diet was certainly 'carb heavy' and this may not be suitable for people that don't do a lot of exercise. That means things like walking instead of driving, doing physical work , using fewer 'labour saving devices', using stairs instead of escalators and lifts. It was really a whole different way of life. Nowadays we really have to add exercise into our lives in the form of working out, going to the gym etc.

In the early 1960s I was the slimmest I've ever been. I had 2 small daughters and I was on my feet the whole time. Something simple like making a phone call involved loading them both into the push-chair and walking half a mile to the phone box in the village.

Everything, but everything, meant being on your feet running around doing things. It was either walking or riding a bike. Shopping wasn't so much a problem then, you could still get shopping delivered - the grocery man used to come round for an order and then deliver it. The vogue for supermarket shopping didn't really start until the mid-60s.

When I was growing up with rationing, there were no sweets apart from 3 or 4 ounces a week. To get those we walked into the next village every Saturday. Everything else was either home-grown or home-made - home-baked bread, pies, cakes. I've never been hugely fond of potatoes, but when we still had some in the garden it was a treat some evenings to go and dig up a potato plant and boil them with mint and serve with real butter from the farm.

Nowadays there is food available everywhere you look. We're bombarded with leaflets about take-aways of all kinds, so you don't even have to go out for food - pick up the phone and someone will deliver it. Kids expect a treat before and after school, after swimming, you name it. I've never fallen into the snacking habit and I can leave sweets alone, probably because of early conditioning.