Every week housewives would queue with their ration books at the shops they had registered with, so they could buy an allowances of groceries.
Lord Woolton, a department store boss was brought into government as minister of food, in order to implement the rationing.
During World War I people were very aware that some were doing very well out of the conflict, whilst others struggled (war profiteering is alive and well today). So, during World War II rationing attempted to create a more equal system, although I'm sure those with riches and power didn't really suffer much hardship.
What would surprise most, is that according to the government's National Food Survey, the amount of calories each person consumes a day has steadily declined since the rationing era. Yet we are constantly bombarded with advice to cut our calories from government policy, the media and naturally those with a vested interest in selling lower calorie lifestyles.
In 1942 we ate 2,269 kcal yet by 2000 the figure had dropped to 1,750 kcal. Yes thats right, we now eat less, yet are fatter and unhealthier than ever. Like I've said countless times cutting back on calories is not the way to a healthy existence.
Despite this, Dr David Haslam, chairman of the National Obesity Forum still thinks that overeating after the end of rationing in the 1950s and our current plentiful food supply is responsible for obesity.
"We have a situation where food is available everywhere, open round the clock - cheaper, poor quality, bigger portions - a situation where food is ubiquitous. It is the first time really in history where food is limitless."
Food might be abundant, but I would suggest that it is the cycles of binging followed by guilty dieting, foods that lack nutrition and the ever increasing prominence of polyunsaturated fatty acids in our food that plays a bigger factor in our current obesity crisis.
Haslam states; "We haven't developed an instinct that tells us when not to eat. Our strongest instincts tell us to eat."
However, he is wrong. We do have this instinct, it's called Leptin, it just won't respond if we indulge in a low calorie existence. If we don't eat enough how can we receive a signal to tell us to stop eating? Sure I hear you muttering about people consuming McDonalds mega meals, but these highly processed foods consisting of soy derivatives, corn syrups, laced with unsaturated oils, along with semi starvation/binge cycles may cause a situation in which the body becomes malnourished. So would it not seem obvious that the body would continue to signal us to eat? You're starving your body of nutrients.
Should we bring back rationing?