Curious about W W 2 Food Rationing

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I'm curious about what food rationing was exactly? Was it just food or did it include toiletries also and what were the amounts people were expected to live on?Was food that scarce in north America? I'm not asking so I can do it I just want to know.Thanks Fireliteca

-- E.Snyder (fireliteca@yahoo.ca), November 23, 2001

Answers

I was born at the end of ww II so all I know is what I have been told. I have some old ration books. There where limits on meat, sugar, flour, gas. You couldn't buy butter but you could get oleo which came with a little color capsule that was mixed into it to give it a yellow look. I hear it didn't test very good. I am not too sure how it all worked but there was coupon book for each member of the family. There was also a lot of black market going on. The people that had farms did better by growing there own stuff. My parents lived in the city so it wasn't easy for them. They would visit relatives in the country and they would always give them from their harvest. The term Victory Garden I believe came from the war time as people where encouraged to have small vegetable gardens. I think the buggest effect we would have would be on gasoline today. We are so dependent on cars and on oil from the Middle East. I remember my mother said she would save up her coupons for special occasions to have enough sugar to make a cake. Renie

-- Irene Burt (renienorm@aol.com), November 23, 2001.

I wasn't born until the 1950's, so I don't remember WWII -- I wasn't here! But I did some searching on Google, as it was of interest to me. This was the best site that I found on rationing in USA: http://www.ukans.edu/carrie/kancoll/voices/1997/0597ratn.htm

This one tells about the situation in the UK (or was it just Great Britain then?): http://www.nettlesworth.durham.sch.uk/time/wfash.html

I even found one for Australia: http://www.australianhistoryonline.com/article1005.html

I got a cookbook on eBay, a Good Housekeeping cookbook from 1942 (Third Edition). I thought it was the same as the one my mother has, and mostly, it is. However, this one has a small Wartime Supplement section, which hers does not. They don't get into the specifics of rationing, but they do have meals that feature little or no meat (heavy on the beans & lentils) and "sugarless" desserts. The desserts seem to rely on corn syrup (light or dark) for their sweetening, so I am guessing that corn was available.

I don't know that food was actually scarce, but great amounts of it were diverted to the war effort, including for our allies. I think butter was scarce and, thus, rationed because it is a fat and could be used for lubrication purposes, not just food. Imported foods were scarce. As you can see reading the first URL, coffee was rationed. Spices are mostly imported and were scarce -- my cookbook has possible substitutions, but those are along the lines of substituting black pepper if you can't find white pepper.

With metals, rubber, and gasoline and other petroleum products in demand for the war, I imagine there may have been scarcities in things such as razor blades (men had permanent shaver handles, only the blades were replaced, unlike our plastic disposables today.). I don't know what kind of gasoline rationing was experienced by farmers. I'm sure a lot of them were still farming with horses back then, but there were also plenty of tractors.

I know we have posters here who are old enough to remember WWII. Perhaps they have memories to contribute?

-- Joy F [in So. Wisconsin] (CatFlunky@excite.com), November 23, 2001.


I was born in 1940 to a farm family in North Dakota. From stories, sugar and coffee were our main items as almost everything else was home grown. Car tires were severally rationed and farmers received special allocations for farm equipment. Just as a note, horses were fairly well phased out of farming by 1940. The farm horse population reached its peak in the teens and saw a major decline by 1930. By 1940 there were something like a half million still in use from a high of several million (don't remember my research for sure, but something like 15-20 million). This freed up vast quantities of fertile land used to grow horse feed and greatly contributed to the grain required to feed the world in the 40's and 50's.

-- Joe (CactusJoe001@AOL.com), November 23, 2001.

I was born in 1928, I lived through the depression, and for us it was bad, when the war broke out, we were given red tokens and green tokens, and rationing books, The meat tokens were red, about the size of a dime, For a family of four that would get you some pork chops, a few pds of hambugar, and you got a lot more weiners for the tokens, as they put cereal in them, they came in strings. all hooked together. so we had lots of weiners.That had to last a whole month. WE raised chickens so had them to eat. A stamp for shoes, One pair a year for each member of the family.Went bare foot as much as possible. I was a girl, and dad bought me boy shoes so they would last. You got one can of pineapple a month, All the can food was rationed.But there again we canned all summer, so was all right. Gas was rationed, But since my dad worked in shipyard building ships and had to drive 5 miles, he got more gas.Just enough to get to work. Us kids walked to school. also 5 miles, We did it at a run. made it in no time at all. Medicines were all old time cures, herbs and such, Remember when I had a sore throat, and they put a mustard and onions in towel around my neck all night. and fed me raw onions, I was well in a hurry. Bobby pins were so scarce that you would look for a lost one like they were gold. course Our hair was long and you set it with bobby pins. There was no such things as new tires for cars, you just kept patching the old ones. Its been a long time since then, and if that was to happen again, I don"t think the people would be so nice any more. We just made the best of it. course we just came out of a depression, and a job in the ship yards was a real blessing for us. Love Irene

-- Irene texas (tkosborn@cs.com), November 23, 2001.

I was not yet around during WW2,but I heard that the reason for gas rationing was not so much the lack of gas as was lack of tires.

-- john d. hayes (jdhayes@adelphia.net), November 23, 2001.


First we ate the mules. Then when they were gone we started to catch rats and then......oh, I'm sorry, that was another war!

-- Red Neck (Secesh@CSA.com), November 23, 2001.

I WAS IN THE ARMY AIR CORPS DURING WW2AND WAS MARRIED. mY DAUGHTER WAS BORN IN 1944It seemed like everything was rationed wE HAD TO FEED HER CANNED MILK (pet )and each can cost 1 and one half ration points .It seemed everything was rationed . Gasoline had different values . One stamp would allow 2 gallons, another 5 gallons etc . Igot my shoes from the military , so I gave my ration to my wife . I managed to get 2 tires for my car when I got back from overseas, but I dont remember the procedure .I had to go through to get them . Let me think on this and maybe I can add more later Big George

-- George Wilson (cwwhtw@aol.com), November 23, 2001.

A old family friend tells the story that when they were rationing gas in this country he and his fiance were married. The fellas that he worked with all contributed gas rationing coupons to him for a wedding present so that they could go on a honeymoon. I have heard that in Europe they would trade cigarettes for goods since the money was no good. During Y2k he stocked up on cigarettes and he isn't even a smoker. Do they have a lifespan of their own?

-- Mary (Mary@home.com), November 23, 2001.

I used to play with the food rationing tokens that my grandmother still had in her possession, as well as looking at the ration books that she had left over at the end of the war.

In addition to what other people have stated, due to the rubber shortage, Thomas Edison began working on producing latex for car tires from the sap of common Goldenrod. It apparently worked very well, I saw some of them on display while touring his home in Florida many many years later. I also have seen a newsreel footage (I love Turner Classic Movies channel and the 'filler' newsreels and short subjects they throw in) of a man who had made tires for his car out of wood.

Nylons were also in very short supply, as the available nylon supply was also used in the war effort (I can't remember, but I think they also had something to do with the manufacture of tires -- inner tubes or something -- and parachutes. I think.), and I remember finding a cache of old family magazines in my grandma's attic that I would page through, and one had advice for women on how to use a tanning solution in a bottle to spread on their legs, and then paint a thin black line up the back of their leg to look like the seam that nylons all had back then so it would look like you had nylons on (leave the house without them? Horrors!!). Nylon stockings were a big barter item.

As mentioned, coffee and sugar were in short supply, and 'hoarders' were considered something of social pariah's for not supporting the war effort. I have a wonderful old children's book that was published during WWII, called 'Barnaby', and it addresses in an off- handed way, the black market coffee and sugar rings that sprang up during that time. Apparently the black market dealing in at least those two commodities (smuggled?) was an arrestable offense.

-- julie f. (rumplefrogskin@excite.com), November 24, 2001.


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