Calling on Dr Carrot and Potato Pete
During wartime rationing the British became both inventive and green-fingered. Culinary skills we are, perhaps, appreciating today
WRITTEN BY SARAH PRATLEY tate diktats on what we may or may not purchase might seem unacceptable to the modern shopper. But a rationing system was almost welcome when confronted with bare supermarket shelves amid coronavirus-induced panic shopping. A few weeks after despairing at empty aisles, I selected three tubes of toothpaste from a loaded shelf only to be told – politely but firmly – to put one back.
When we think of food rationing our thoughts turn to Britain during World War II but, actually, what happened then was quite different to the situation we have found ourselves in today. “People are buying more than they would do normally because they’re not eating their lunch at Pret and the supply chains are struggling to cope,” says Dr Annie Gray, food historian and author of Victory in the Kitchen: The Life of Churchill’s Cook. “It’s very different to World War II.”
Struggling to buy loo roll pales in comparison to 1940s rationing. On 8 January 1940, bacon, butter and sugar were the first items of food to ‘on the ration’. Meat followed shortly after in March 1940 and by the
Ssummer of 1942 almost all food was rationed, apart from fresh fruit, vegetables and bread. Items that were not on the ration were generally unavailable or unappetising. Bananas famously disappeared, as did lemons, and oranges became a rare treat. In 1942, the National Loaf was introduced. Made from wholemeal flour, it was grey, gritty and promptly forgotten when white bread returned in the 1950s.
Changing Britain’s eating habits was vital. “During the 1930s the country imported 75% of its food supply,” explains John Leete, author and historian, of Home Front History (homefronthistory.com). “In the early years of the war many merchant ships carrying goods, including foodstuffs, particularly from the USA, were sunk en route to Britain. The Germans planned through their naval campaigns to starve Britain into surrender.” Losing the war as a nation of Oliver Twists begging for more was deemed unacceptable. Britain had to feed itself without merchant shipping but as a geographically small and heavily populated island, this was no small task. Britain consumes far more than it can produce – something that holds true today.
The system put in place in January 1940 had been carefully planned for years. “Preparations for ‘The Emergency’ – or the pending war – began in the mid1930s and accelerated from 1937,” says Leete. Ration books were printed by 1938 and care was taken to provide for different groups. “Extra allowances were given to certain frontline personnel,” explains Leete. “Extra bacon and eggs for air crews and extra milk to members of the Women’s Land Army.”
“Vegetarians got extra cheese,” adds Gray. “There would have been an outcry if pregnant women hadn’t had extra milk and children didn’t get extra bits and pieces.” However, not all enjoyed the benefits of their enhanced ration. “It was notorious that certain mothers would nick their children’s orange juice in order to make their own martinis,” reveals Gray.
Cocktails aside, the nation was encouraged to supplement the ration. ‘Dig for Victory’, launched in October 1939, pushed the nation to grow vegetables and keep pigs and chickens. Britain obediently became green-fingered, with allotments rising to 1.4 million by 1943. “By 1942, at least half of the civilian population was engaged in Dig for Victory,” says Leete. “More than 10,000 square miles of land
had been given over to allotments, including playing fields, railway embankments and public gardens. The moat at the Tower of London became a huge vegetable patch and the Royal Family allocated flowerbeds for growing vegetables.” It was one of many initiatives teaching the nation to eat wisely. The Ministry of Food devised phrases such as ‘go easy with bread, try potatoes instead’. Cartoon characters Dr Carrot and Potato Pete encouraged children to eat healthily and the wartime myth was circulated that carrots improved night vision - handy during blackouts - in order to encourage their consumption. This was backed with endless advice on how to cook on the ration.
“You could pick up a column in your local newspaper, listen to the radio or get supplements from various food companies,” says Gray. “The government ran campaigns and the WI did as well, travelling around the country and running big-scale cookery demonstrations.” Kitchen Front, a BBC radio series sharing cooking tips in five-minute episodes, drew five million listeners daily.
The moat at the Tower of London became a huge vegetable patch
It was a well-oiled system but difficult lessons were the impetus for its creation, including severe food shortages during World War I. “Rationing was not introduced until 1918 prior to which there was, in the early war, panic buying and then, later, starvation and goods being unevenly distributed,” says Leete. Between 1914 and 1916, prices rose by about 60% and families on lower incomes went hungry while elsewhere there was much hoarding and waste. Voluntary soup kitchens were established in place of entirely lacking government initiatives. “The government did learn the lessons of the First World War,” contends Gray.
Research was also being established into the importance of a quality diet. “At the end of the 19th century, the statistics that the government came up with was that a third of young men were unfit to fight because of severe malnutrition,” reveals Gray. “Those returns were really shocking.” It prompted a leap in nutritional studies. “By the Second World War, there was a much better understanding of how many calories and what form they were needed in in order to keep people alive,” adds Gray. A study by
Elsie Widdowson and Robert Mccance of the University of Cambridge in December 1939 tested a worst-case rationing diet, to assess whether Britain could survive on domestic food production only, plus rigorous exercise. The results were positive – a “remarkable” increase in flatulence aside – but rationing was never as severe as the trial run. “Though people complained about being hungry all the time, statistically speaking everyone was getting enough calories,” says Gray. Britain was an unsatisfied nation but never a starving one.
In fact, rationing did much to fortify Britain. Government polls showed the majority supported its introduction. “Rationing kept morale up and a level of civil disobedience down,” explains Gray. “Everybody – rich, famous, Churchill, the King, Mr Smith in Bognor Regis – were all entitled to a guaranteed supply of certain things. It did create this idea that people were in it together.”
The Dig for Victory campaign in particular kept spirits high on the home front. “Meeting to spend time digging for victory brought communities together, new friendships were forged,” says Leete. The Ministry of Food also established more than 2,000 nonprofit British Restaurants to serve affordable meals that didn’t require ration coupons. “A daily lunchtime three-course meal with a cup of tea was as little as one shilling and sixpence – 7½p in today’s money,” explains Leete. The initiative helped those who had been bombed out of their homes, had run out of coupons or were in need.
The nation’s prescribed diet was not only fair and accessible but also remarkably healthy. Britain’s infant mortality rate declined and life expectancy rose. Children grew taller and heavier, and instances of tooth decay and anaemia dropped. They
were practising what is still preached today. “There were very small amounts of sugar, which was key, relatively low levels of fat and low levels of meat, so low levels of all the things we are being told today that we should cut out for our health,” says Gray.
In 1943, the Ministry of Information recorded 27% less meat being eaten than before the war and 36% less butter. With sugar in short supply, carrots were promoted as sweeteners instead. Innovations included carrot pudding and, in place of ice cream, carrots on sticks. “You had enough to live on, you didn’t have more than you needed,” adds Gray.
While fewer biscuits bolstered the upper classes, the poor had their diets improved by, conversely, having more. “If you had been eating a poor diet in the 1930s then your diet would be improved by the 1940s because you are guaranteed to get butter, sugar, flour and meat,” says Gray. For every age and income, the rationing diet was beneficial.
END OF RATIONING
Though rationing served its wartime purpose, it did not end on VE Day. Just three weeks later, the ration was reduced. Continual rain throughout the summer of 1946 ruined Britain’s wheat crop, putting bread on the ration for the first time, and severe frost and snow destroyed potato stores that winter. Potato Pete was hurriedly retired, as even he became a rationed good. “We got quite a lot of food imported from America but the minute the war ended the Americans closed it down,” explains Gray. “Also, it was European policy to try and keep as much of defeated Europe out of the Soviet Union’s hands as possible. It was seen that a starving population would be more desperate and therefore more open to the Soviet influence, so a lot of food was being sent to those countries.”
Rationing finally ended on 4 July 1954 and Britain took no time at all to expunge it from memory. “You do see a swing away from offal, which was not rationed during the war, and towards things like steak,” says Gray. “You also see a massive rise in consumption of butter and sugar. We consumed more sugar per head in the 1950s than we’ve ever done since.” It is evidence of a key problem. Food on the ration was economical, healthy and accessible but it was far from appetising. “Wartime recipes are just revolting,” asserts Gray. “The utter, unbelievable, brown monotony of the food is hard to get across.”
Coronavirus has not reduced us to The Field’s wartime recipes, including such delights as eel pie, economical hare soup and boiled sheep’s head. For that, at least, we can be grateful.