Can a family survive on wartime rations?

[Chef]

[the-gnole]

Not implying anything Sue, but there are so many people around who do cook individual stuff to deal with each childs whims and fads, hunger is a good way to get kids to eat stuff, only excuse is allergy, but then all would get the same as the one.

[archer1958]

where have all these allergies come from TG ? Didnt seem as many when i was young

[the-gnole]

where have all these allergies come from TG ? Didnt seem as many when i was young

Very true, when I was at school there were maybe one or two kids with Asthma, now we are lucky if one or two don't have asthma.

There aere so many things that have changed over the years, mass produced food stuffs, more chemicals in our daily lives, more transportation/industrial fumes in the atmosphere, Jabs for this, jabs for that jabs for the other, but is anyone doing a lifetime study of there effects over a long period.

By the time he is 13 months old, he will have been given 50 vaccines (51 when they introduce chickenpox vaccine). This is because the number of injections is not the same as the number of vaccines, for instance, MMR is one jab but three vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella. Prevnar is one jab but seven vaccines for seven types of pneumonia.

Here is the 2008 UK Vaccination Schedule:

2 Months: DTAP/HIB/IPV (tetanus toxoid, diphtheria toxoid, pertussis bacteria, Hib bacteria, 3 polio viruses), Prevnar (7 types of pneumonia) = 15 different viruses or bacteria.

3 Months: DTAP/HIB/IPV (tetanus toxoid, diphtheria toxoid, pertussis bacteria, hib bacteria, 3 polio viruses), Meningitis C (1 meningitis C bacteria) = 8 different viruses or bacteria.

4 Months: DTAP/HIB/IPV (tetanus toxoid, diphtheria toxoid, pertussis bacteria, hib bacteria, 3 polio viruses), Meningitis C (1 meningitis C bacteria), Prevnar (7 types of pneumonia) = 15 viruses or bacteria.

12 months: Hib vaccine (hib bacteria), Meningitis C (meningitis C bacteria) = 2 bacterium.

13 Months: MMR (measles, mumps and rubella viruses), Prevnar (7 types of pneumonia) = 10 viruses or bacteria.

(Source for Schedule: http://www.immunisation.nhs.uk/Immunisation_Schedule (schedule correct at January 2009).

Now compare that with the vaccines given in the war years, has anyone any ideas which ones were given, any oldies here that remember?

[Chef]

[preppingsu]

Bringing this back on topic (feel free to start a new thread under healthcare to discuss allergies and why there are so many - I'm with gnole on this one, who knows the impact chemicals etc are having and no one is studying this)
If using rations I would be worried about providing enough for the energetic men in my family, especially if they are having to undertake more manual work. It wouldn't bother me eating less but how could we keep up calorific content on rationed food?

[maryb]

I'm not convinced that the wartime diet was an optimum diet. I'm sure it was a vastly improved diet for a lot of the population when you think that John Boyd Orr's studies showed that 8 out of 10 children in schools run by London County Council showed signs of malnutrition in the late 1930s.

Fact is the war eliminated poverty by eliminating unemployment. If you increase the amount of food that previously unemployed people can buy then it is bound to make them healthier. My own view is that the 30s diet of middle class families was close to ideal. Plenty of meat and milk and fish and eggs and cheese and vegetables with bread and jam to fill up kids who came from home from school ravenous. I have always found it hard to believe that marge could be better for you than butter in moderation and lo and behold, now it seems that hydrogenated vegetable fat is far worse for you than saturated fat.

But the food we eat now is not the same as the food that people ate back then. Factory farming and hybridisation of wheat in particular. Anyone noticed how people used to get things like styes and boils quite regularly, not necessarily in poor families, and since the widespread use of antibiotics in animals it's almost unheard of?

[the-gnole]

If using rations I would be worried about providing enough for the energetic men in my family, especially if they are having to undertake more manual work. It wouldn't bother me eating less but how could we keep up calorific content on rationed food?

Both my Grandfathers were Policemen at the local bomb factory during the rationing of WWII, both had a four or five mile cycle ride each way to work and an eight to twelve hour shift, OK not manual work, but a lot of walking involved. They supplemented their rations with local produce from the gardens or from the wildlife they caught or shot and one lived in the country so had a pig for meat, Gran was a cook at an hotel and did a lot of home cooking as well, They were fit and healthy, not over weight and doubt that they went hungry, after all, not "Everything" foodwise was rationed

[diamond lil]

I think men worked far harder then than now Sue and the meals would be fine.

[the-gnole]

There would be a lot of upset if they told people that all they could have per week was -

3 pints of milk

3 1/4Ib - 1Ib meat

1 egg or 1 packet of dried eggs every 2 months

3-4 oz cheese

4 oz bacon and ham

2 oz tea

8 oz sugar

2 oz butter

2 oz cooking fat

+ 16 points a month for other rationed foods (usually tinned) subject to availability.


These weekly rations were stretched with the help of un-rationed extras like bread (incidentally not rationed until after the war), cereal, potatoes, offal and fruit and vegetables.

http://www.homesweethomefront.co.uk/web ... ing_pg.htm

But they would learn