In yesterdays post I wrote about Home Farmer Magazines features on Cooking with Rations, the Plant a Victory Garden WW1 campaign and the better known Dig For Victory campaign of WWII.
I discovered today's Food Programme on Radio 4 was all about rationing too. Apparently it's 60 years since rationing completely ended - 9 years after the war finished.
Sheila Dillon - the presenter of The Food Programme - had a few days living on war time rations and really struggled mainly due to the lack of fats that were allowed. I suppose this is why we have an overweight population - more fat in the diet than really needed. I'm Guilty as Charged!
One of the people Sheila Dillon spoke to on todays programme was Clare Millar a nutritional therapist who runs a Nutrition Consultancy in Bristol which organises courses aimed at coaching,educating and inspiring people to eat using the diet approaches of the 1940s. I don't know what she charges for her courses but I bet they are not cheap. During the war the government produced lots of information for free and a lot of the leaflets were reprinted in a little book called Eating for Victory and of course another place to find info is Dcs blog at Frugal in Norfolk, she really did do it properly back in the mid 1990s.
For several years I worked with a lady who, as a child growing up during the war, had lived in the East End of London. She said they were better fed on rations during the war than they had been before.
I think I heard that the UK still imports about 40% of the food eaten in this country. So I'm glad we are able to grow a lot of our own food and to sell some in the hope that it saves a few local people from buying imported stuff.
Back Tomorrow
Sue
