FACTSHEETS

THE MINISTRY OF FOOD

In order to ensure there was enough food for all the population during the war, the Government’s Ministry of Food provided information and instructions encouraging people to: save scraps, eat all the food on your plate and grow your own food.

The Ministry of Food encouraged the public to grow all their own vegetables and to keep chickens for eggs and meat, so they did not go without. Housewives were told to use up every scrap of food they had.

The Ministry of Food also produced a series of posters featuring ‘Doctor Carrot’ and ‘Potato Pete’ to encourage people to eat what was available and to eat healthily. Carrots and potatoes are easily grown in your garden and most people did this to avoid going without.

Potato Pete even had his own song!

Potatoes new. Potatoes old
Potato (in a salad) cold
Potatoes baked or mashed or fried
Potatoes whole, potato pied
Enjoy them all including chips
Remembering spuds don’t come in ships

Fruit was rare, as only fruit that was grown in Britain was available and it became very rare in shops. Apples, strawberries and other non rationed but rare food caused long queues outside shops.

Due to rationing and shortages the government realised that families might be struggling with ideas of what to use to make meals and it used adverts in magazines, “food flashes” in cinemas and a popular radio programme called The Kitchen Front, which was on every morning after the eight o’clock news. There were food demonstrations in large towns and “fake food” was invented. Mock crab was made using margarine, egg and cheese and mock banana was made using parsnips, milk and banana flavouring. For mock apricot tart, housewives used grated carrot, plum jam and almond flavouring.

Ration books were issued to each person. They contained tokens, which could be saved up or used when required. The shopkeeper would remove the tokens before he issued the goods.

There were different kinds of ration books. The most common was the buff-coloured one like the one shown (right). These were issued to adults and school-age children. Green books were issued to expectant mothers as they had extra tokens.

The tokens were for food, and later for clothing.

The tokens had no monetary value; they were just a way of ensuring that everybody got a fair share of what was available.

It was on 8 January, 1940 (four months after the war started), that food rationing started. As the war went on, bread became in short supply. Queues would form outside shops very early in the morning because even if people had coupons, there was no guarantee that shops would have sufficient bread for everyone. Rumours would circulate that a certain shop was expecting a supply of butter or meat and immediately women would form a queue outside that shop.

Many shops opened for only two or three days a week because of food shortages. Rations were added to by using un-rationed extras like: bread (which wasn’t rationed until after the war), cereal, potatoes, offal and fruit and vegetables. Household (dried) milk was rationed to 1 packet every 4 weeks.

There was also a monthly points system. Each adult would get 16 points you were allowed to buy one can of fish or meat or 2lb (900g) of dried fruit or 8lb (3.6kg) of split peas. Babies, young children, and pregnant women could also get concentrated orange juice, milk and cod liver oil from Welfare Clinics.

It was hard trying to make food edible with a limited number of ingerdients. Apart from the foods on ration it was really hard to buy certain foods. There was always a long queue with no guarantee of getting what was on offer.

Oranges, bananas and coffee were always in short supply. This was because they came from abroad and depended on Allied ships getting past German U-Boats.

Shortages encouraged people to be inventive with their food. Beef, pork and lamb were all on ration but very difficult to get hold of, but other sources of meat were not. Rabbit and chicken for instance were not rationed. Neither
were horses, their meat could be made into a very tasty meal.
Nowadays ready meals, frozen vegetables, oven chips, convenience foods, exotic salads, soft drinks, orange juice and chocolate are eaten by most people. All of these would have been unavailable or very scarce during the war.

However, despite the British people having to go without some foods, rationing did mean that the country was much better fed than it had been in the 1930s (when there was great poverty).

Because of rationing, everyone received the same food whether they were rich or poor.

WEEKLY ALLOWANCE
The picture below shows a typical week’s rations for one person.

Q. Could you have survived on this?

Compare this to what you might eat in a week nowadays.

Q. Would you eat more now? How are the types of food different to what you would eat nowadays?

WHAT ABOUT PETS?

Prior to World War Two, there were no pet foods: family pets shared their owner’s foods, often eating the scraps off the plates. This continued throughout the war.

If you kept chickens, pigeons, pigs or rabbits these may eventually provide food for the family when times were hard.

People often kept chickens during the war in the back yard, garden or on the allotment to provide fresh eggs.