Could you cope with rationing?

Possibly Calli. I think the idea was that we were destined for great academic things and would have little interest in food or stoop so low as to have a family to cater for. Yeah, right … though one of my classmates did marry very well- a titled man she met at uni - probably had servants … ?

i never went hungry although only remember the last years of WW11 food rationing. I followed many of my mothers rationing days recipes when first married and paying a mortgage on our first home .

Germanshepherdsmum

That lad will make someone a wonderful husband Biglouis! I didn’t have cookery lessons at school (wish I had but it was permitted only for those deemed unable to learn a second foreign language - yes I know …). My son did cookery at school though as a matter of course and he has made an excellent husband!

Did you g to my school, GSM?

it's proving very useful now, though, doing Latin Wordle which I now find more interesting than cooking

Yes of course we would cope and I used to pride myself on cooking for largeish numbers economically and enjoyed it. Lost all interest in it now. I’m sure that facility has gone in younger generations.
I do find the massive supermarkets rather obscene. Too much variety for me!

The U.K. can never be self sufficient in food. Possibly if we all became vegans and used the grazing land for veg production, but wheat alone for bread would take up vast acres, and of course much land whilst suitable for grazing would not be suitable for veg etc.

I really doubt that fertilizers and crops bred for improved yields are enough to compensate for a population increase of some 20 million since WW2.

I don't know why you think most countries are practically bankrupt - we are certainly not in Denmark, nor are the other Scandinavian countries or most of the EU.

If rationing is ever brought in for any reason, I imagine we will all cope.

I am not yet too old to grow potatoes, and although I have no desire at all to keep hens, if push comes to shove, I suppose we will have to.

I have lived on a small income all my life, so I am used to making food stretch.

Caleo, that's very sad. You wonder how people survived.

Pepper, I'm trying to remember what my mother said about being hungry during WWI. She was the wife of an army private soldier all she had was his pay. She lived in a Glasgow tenement in a respectable working class area called Shawlands. She had a little son. I seem to remember she said there was some sort of rationing but it was ineffective compared with the efficient system in WWII. She had been trained in household management and was a very able woman. She definitely did say she went hungry sometimes.

Caleo, I didn't realise that in WW1. That must have been awful, given families would be larger in those days.

Second world war rationing made reasonably sure people did not go hungry whereas during the first world war people including my mother actually had no food.

I'd consider myself a fool if I could not endure rationing like everyone else.

No not with just that. However people also gardened. I'd miss my cheese, I love cheese, and the tea....I could stretch it out, weak tea...but with a garden, yes.....minestrone and the like.

That lad will make someone a wonderful husband Biglouis! I didn’t have cookery lessons at school (wish I had but it was permitted only for those deemed unable to learn a second foreign language - yes I know …). My son did cookery at school though as a matter of course and he has made an excellent husband!

Growing up in the 1950s I learned to cook in school and at home. However I never enjoyed it and always considered it a boring chore. Im not particularly interested in food as such and would never bother to cook a meal for myself.

My nephew enjoys cooking and shopping in person so he can see what he is getting. For every main meal he cooks 3 portions - one each for himself and his flatmate and one for me. He brings them along in containers so I can just pop them into the microwave. I just send him a bit of money to cover the basic cost.

If some things are in short supply he just makes do with others.

M0nica

Not all the increase of yield can be attributed to fertilizer use, which has shown signs of a decline in use in recent years www.statista.com/statistics/659270/overall-nitrogen-fertilizer-usage-uk/.

A lot of it comes from the introduction of new crops and new varieties of crops and cultivation methods.

Yes new varieties, with better resistance to disease and crop quality, fertilizer reduction has been due to government restrictions on the amount that can be applied to crops, to reduce nitrate levels in water

I reckon, even with rationing, food need not be dull. I grow all the traditional root crops and brassicas but also squashes and pumpkins, courgettes and sweetcorn, soft and hard fruit, aubergines, peppers, tomatoes. I freeze the surplus, I will eat our last corncob for lunch tomorrow. Surplus crops can also be made into jams, and chutneys. herbs can be grown on windowsills.

We could have, what in France, were smallholders markets, where people gathered with surplus from their gardens - 2 cauliflowers, a mass of spinach, 1 doz eggs, a bunch of rhubarb and some jars of home made jam to sell. The mainly elderly ladies would sit on chairs with their produce on small tables in front of them, chatting away and often knitting. When DGD was small I bought some knitted dolls clothes off one of these stalls.

If it was compulsory then I’d have to cope!
I grow veg so that would help, I imagine that it would be a pretty boring meal plan but hopefully I’d also lose some weight, looking on the bright side ?

Not all the increase of yield can be attributed to fertilizer use, which has shown signs of a decline in use in recent years www.statista.com/statistics/659270/overall-nitrogen-fertilizer-usage-uk/.

A lot of it comes from the introduction of new crops and new varieties of crops and cultivation methods.

M0nica

Maizie Crop yields have increased significantly over the last 70 years as well as ways of production. We could produce much more now than then.

But no one is talking about self sufficiency. We would sltil import food, that is unlikely to be difficult, their are no enemy submarines roaming the seas destroying our shipping, except we no longer have any shipping these days, it is all registered under flags of convenience.

We are talking about an insufficiency of food that needs, therefore, to be rationed - and that is a very different circumstane, even though the result may be the same as far as our diet is concerned.

Crop yields have increased greatly, their production does rely on much increased fertilizer use, population has also increased.
It’s highly unlikely that a blockade preventing imports would happen but supply disruption if the Ukraine war spreads would very quickly cause chaos, it only takes one lunatic to do that.

Maizie Crop yields have increased significantly over the last 70 years as well as ways of production. We could produce much more now than then.

But no one is talking about self sufficiency. We would sltil import food, that is unlikely to be difficult, their are no enemy submarines roaming the seas destroying our shipping, except we no longer have any shipping these days, it is all registered under flags of convenience.

We are talking about an insufficiency of food that needs, therefore, to be rationed - and that is a very different circumstane, even though the result may be the same as far as our diet is concerned.

Despite the valiant efforts of veg growers, chicken & rabbit keepers; digging up parks etc. (God forbid we have bomb sites to cultivate) & rationing, we were not self sufficient in food during WW2 with a population of some 45 million. We now have 66 million plus and the same amount of land. Anyone who thinks we'd be OK has their head in the sand...

Antonia The rations you quote are for those foodstuffs that were rationed, many foodstuffs, including fruit and vegetables were not rationed.

The items on the list are animal products and in the circumstances land produces more food if growing arable crops than cattle, so production was limited and supply rationed. The other items, sugar and tea, needed to be imported, although the war did lead to the expansion of producing sugar from sugar beet.

paddyann54 I was born in wartime and lived in Lewisham, the archtypal inner city borough. Even when people did not have gardens parks and commons were ploughed up and divided into allottments, also bomb sites.

In this modern world, there is nothing to stop that happening again. Modern housing developments, even in inner cities tend to have areas of grass, even quite small ones, around them and as many city farms, community gardening projects and windowsill gardens show can be productive of food even the most unpromising surroundings can be.

sarah1954 I dont know where you come from by my family all lived in the city centre ,mostly in tenement flats .Not a garden in sight .Rationing was a very different experience from those who could pop out and pull some veg ,or collect eggs etc .

But when you add bread (never rationed) and seasonal fruit and veg it’s tough but obviously doable, people managed and would do again if they had to, apart from those who have no idea how to cook and rely on ready meals and takeaways. Bulking up meagre ingredients into a tasty meal was an art form in the wars and well before.

If we are considering emergency conditions where food could not be imported then it would have to be arable crops because livestock especially beef and sheep are so much less efficient. As you see from the ration list it is protein that was rationed not energy foods

The staple energy crops for human consumption we can grow in the UK are Wheat and Potatoes along with other root vegetables, production of those is dependant on chemical fertilisers particularly nitrogen, so sufficient energy (gas) would have to be available for that.

Ironically such rationing would result in a great improvement in health of the population