Proper old style! Living on WW2 rations

bouicca21

The initial problem is that there is no such thing as a definitive list of rations. There was also a points system which is even harder to track down. And of course even if something was theoretically available on the ratio/points system, shortages meant that it wasn't necessarily available in the shops.

But I am nothing if not determined and the idea isn't to impose hardship on myself but to live frugally and healthily.

I managed to find a list of rations and points as of 1 December 1942. So:
.
4 oz Bacons and ham
8oz sugar
6 oz butter and margarine of which not more than 2 oz to be butter
2 oz cooking fat
2 oz tea
12 old pence of meat (I reckon this is about £2.50 at today's values)
8oz cheese (vegetarians, certain categories of workers in E agricultural workers and miners, sufferers from diabetes mellitus or pituitary diabetes got 16 oz)
4 oz Jam, marmalade, syrup, mincemeat or treacle
3 oz sweets and chocolate

Points per 1 lb of
1 plain biscuits; 2 sweet biscuits; 4 chocolate biscuits
16 dried fruit
4 prunes
8 syrup
32 grade 1 or 2 Canned salmon; 16 for grade 3
12 canned herrings in tomato sauce; ditto for pilchards in tomTo sauce
8 canned pilchards in brine
4 sago, rice etc
4 cereal
8 Tinned sweetened milk
6 medium tin tomatoes
8 large tin tomatoes
4 tin Beans in tomato sauce
1 tin beans in brine
Bread not rationed. Nor is offal or fresh fish, fresh fruit.

Additionally I think everyone got the equivalent of 4 pints of milk (1 pint fresh, 3 dried) and 4 eggs (also 1 fresh and 3 dried) a week.

Somewhere in the net it says it was 16 points a week.

People complained about being forced to use wheatmeal flour and eat wheatmeal bread, but the interesting thing about this list is that, given no shortages, it is actually quite easy. Obviously you have to have some vegetarian/vegan meals regularly. No problem about getting your 5 a day! Dried pulses were either ration free or 8 points for 1 lb (not sure which). In the spirit rather than the letter of the system, I'm happily substituting puy lentils for the orange ones that were the only lentils my mother knew of.

I've done a month. Saved lots of money! Aim to do it for February too and there are some dishes, like vegetable and lentil shepherds pie that will stay in my repertoire, long after the self imposed WW2 challenge is over.

[Deleted User]

The points were 16 per adult per MONTH and the milk was 3 pints of fresh (sometimes dropping to two) and one pack of dried milk per adult per month which was the equivalent of 7 pints fresh, eggs 1 fresh a week per adult (sometimes one fresh every two weeks depending on availability) and 1 packet of dried eggs per adult per month which was the equivalent of a dozen fresh ones. Butter, cheese and cooking fat varied between 2oz a week and 4oz a week for the fats and 2oz and 8oz a week cheese for each adult again depending on availability. I've a whole shelf of the book case full of WW11 recipe books, I love them and the recipes despite reading very 'dull' never cease to delight us with just how tasty they are. Great fun idea and in this day and age so frugal, perfect for the OS threads, WELL DONE!

bouicca21

Ta. Of course you're right 16 points a month not a week.


What really astonishes me is the amount of sugar. I doubt I'd ever use that much. And of course it was very carb heavy.

My mum continued to use a wartime cookery book throughout her life. It even included a section on how to make whale meat palatable.


The article with the points list was published in 1943 and must have been a bit of a propaganda exercise. Very congratulatory on the level of efficiency that had led to a consistency of rationing amounts - meat ration down 10 old pence since inception of rationing in 1940, but cheese up from 1 oz to 8, and most other things unchanged.

Offal had been included in the meat ration for the first six months of 1941 but went off ration in the summer. As noted on another thread it is almost impossible to buy offal in London nowadays. My local Sainsburys has lamb's liver but nowt else.

[Deleted User]

I think 'everyone' took sugar in tea at that time, we certainly continued to do so through the late 1940s and the 1950s when I was little and really when you look at folks doing physical jobs and houses not insulated like ours today, single glazed windows, open fires and outdoor loos I think the sugar was actually needed to stop folks from fading away. We having access to such a world wide market for all our food needs must make such a difference to needing that amount of sugar each mustn't it?

Hard_Up_Hester

I regularly made Woolton pie when my kids were young.

Molillie

With the sugar, I think people saved it for jam-making as well, so you wouldn't use all your lot up the week you had it. My mother remembers picking blackberries all day for days on end as a child. My grandad made elderberry wine, too, and that must have used up a fair amount. I can remember him still doing this when I was little, big white enamel bucket with a dark purple goo in there.
Thinking of how high unemployment was in the twenties and thirties, a lot of people were probably better fed with the full employment and rations of wartime.

bouicca21

The stats certainly say that people were at their healthiest under rationing. Lots of fruit and veg and more or less enforced portion control.

The sugar thing is particularly interesting as I saw somewhere on the net that modern sugar consumption is twice as high as during the war. No wonder people's teeth are falling out.

THIRZAH

In spite of the quite large-to our eyes-sugar ration my grandmother made her family give up sugar in their tea so that there would be more for jam making and bottling fruit.

My grandparents were farmers and were allowed to have two pigs a year killed. They made bacon and ham and gave pork to neighbours who would then give them pork when they had their pig killed. My mother could remember having to carry a bucket full of pigs innards down the lane to her grandmother's house.

Because Grandad worked on the land he got some kind of extra ration a week. Mum said that it varied-sometimes pies, sometimes extra cheese.

They also got a day off school to pick rose hips.

thorsoak

bouicca21 wrote: »

The initial problem is that there is no such thing as a definitive list of rations. There was also a points system which is even harder to track down. And of course even if something was theoretically available on the ratio/points system, shortages meant that it wasn't necessarily available in the shops.

But I am nothing if not determined and the idea isn't to impose hardship on myself but to live frugally and healthily.

I managed to find a list of rations and points as of 1 December 1942. So:
.
4 oz Bacons and ham
8oz sugar
6 oz butter and margarine of which not more than 2 oz to be butter
2 oz cooking fat
2 oz tea
12 old pence of meat (I reckon this is about £2.50 at today's values)
8oz cheese (vegetarians, certain categories of workers in E agricultural workers and miners, sufferers from diabetes mellitus or pituitary diabetes got 16 oz)
4 oz Jam, marmalade, syrup, mincemeat or treacle
3 oz sweets and chocolate

Points per 1 lb of
1 plain biscuits; 2 sweet biscuits; 4 chocolate biscuits
16 dried fruit
4 prunes
8 syrup
32 grade 1 or 2 Canned salmon; 16 for grade 3
12 canned herrings in tomato sauce; ditto for pilchards in tomTo sauce
8 canned pilchards in brine
4 sago, rice etc
4 cereal
8 Tinned sweetened milk
6 medium tin tomatoes
8 large tin tomatoes
4 tin Beans in tomato sauce
1 tin beans in brine
Bread not rationed. Nor is offal or fresh fish, fresh fruit.

Additionally I think everyone got the equivalent of 4 pints of milk (1 pint fresh, 3 dried) and 4 eggs (also 1 fresh and 3 dried) a week.

Somewhere in the net it says it was 16 points a week.

People complained about being forced to use wheatmeal flour and eat wheatmeal bread, but the interesting thing about this list is that, given no shortages, it is actually quite easy. Obviously you have to have some vegetarian/vegan meals regularly. No problem about getting your 5 a day! Dried pulses were either ration free or 8 points for 1 lb (not sure which). In the spirit rather than the letter of the system, I'm happily substituting puy lentils for the orange ones that were the only lentils my mother knew of.

I've done a month. Saved lots of money! Aim to do it for February too and there are some dishes, like vegetable and lentil shepherds pie that will stay in my repertoire, long after the self imposed WW2 challenge is over.

Rationing was pretty onerous, when you consider that very few people had refrigerators in which to keep food - women had to shop every day - and that meant spending hours in queues - from butcher to greengrocer, to grocer, baker, fishmonger - and not knowing most of the time what food would be available! Tinned food was in extremely short supply - don't forget that the Germans were blockading the shipping lines preventing overseas supplies getting into the country. Soap was also rationed.

I have a copy of "The home Front", which is a compilation of some of the magazine articles from Good Housekeeping from 1939-45 - 1945, which include advertisements, exhortations from the Ministry of Food and suggestions on how to refashion your clothes. Think it was produced in 1995 to commemorate 50 years since the end of WW2.

I was born in 1943, and I still remember the ending of sweets rationing - I'm pretty certain it was in 1954, as I had started grammar school. Until then we rarely had sweets.

monnagran

thorsoak, sweet rationing actually finished twice. The first time it finished people went so mad that shelves were cleared of sweets and there was none to be had anywhere, so they went back on ration for a bit and gradually everyone got used to being able to buy what and when they wanted to. I think it was about '51 when sweets were finally de-rationed.
Before then I remember that there was nothing to buy with our penny pocket money. We used to buy 1 Oxo cube to eat on our way home from school and it was a red letter day if the grocer had a delivery of Ovaline tablets or Fishermans Friend cough sweets. Some of the boys at school used to buy sticks of wax to use as a chewing gum substitute. Horrible. I tried it once and once was quite enough.

As to the amount of sugar allowed it must be remembered that there was no bought cake, biscuits, tinned fruit, jellies, jam, few soft drinks etcetera, freely available so all that sort of thing had to be made at home. Puddings were more often eaten then and all had to be made from scratch. Fruit from the garden had to be bottled and preserved to see us through the winter. So there was little sugar available for tea and cocoa drinks. Horrible saccharine tablets that fizzed when they dissolved were used.

The worst thing for me as a child was the lack of butter. My mother used to make a horrible concoction called Extender to spread on our bread. It was butter and marge melted and mixed with flour and milk and set in a basin. The memory of it makes me shudder to this day and the one thing that I will never economise on now is good butter.

I don't regret having lived like this as a child. It was a good grounding for living sensibly for the rest of my life and has made me appreciate every good food item as it has appeared.

PasturesNew

My mum was "lucky", living in a village where everybody was related and one ancestor had been the biggest landholder in the allotment society he set up, the whole family had been brought up on growing stuff and eating it. They were also alongside a river, weren't against a spot of night poaching - and kept pigs in one allotment (which is why mum'd not serve us pork as she hated pork by the end of the war as she'd had too much).

There were also dodgy relatives who traded under the counter, including one who ran the local shop and was convicted of short-measures ... and another who was flogging petrol on the black market

I bet my mum had a little something on the go herself ... probably coal related as she did used to go out to get coal with a pram.

The rations list, if you remove the pork ... is pretty much how my shopping basket looks a lot of the time as I'm unadventurous and quite happy with old style basic foods.