The 1940s

[BBarb]

I was a child during the war and everything was rationed. We ate very little meat and an awful lot of bread - bread with everything from jellies at birthday parties to bread to eek out a tiny portion of scag-end stew. Almost everyone was thin.
After the war my mum must have piled on the weight because she started dieting (I was too young to notice the weight, but I did notice the dieting because so much was 'not allowed on my diet')
She had a booklet from the ministry of food which was supposed to help us eat a healthy diet after the privations of wartime, that was her bible. it listed several diets from convalescent diets, to diets for ulcers, and diets for the weight gain or reduction, and one for diabetes among others.
From what I can remember diabetics were told to eat meat, fish, eggs, cheese etc and plenty of green leafy vegetables, but NO starches at all. Wow! (There was no mention of type 1 or 2).
This was more or less the same diet as they recommended for slimming but slimmers were allowed 'Energen rolls' which were kind of puffed up bread rolls almost as light as air and tasted of nothing at all, and Ryvita. She did lose weight but meat was very expensive then and she found it cost to much.
I find it odd that they had the answer to many diabetic problems back then - but somehow it was forgotten.
I wish I could find that booklet, I had it after she died but can't find it in my bookcase.

 

[Northerner]

There was a story a while back about a woman who went on a 1940s-style diet and lost a lot of weight - she wrote a blog about it with lots of recipes on it:

https://the1940sexperiment.com/100-wartime-recipes/

I think part of the problem came along with convenience foods and supermarkets in the 60s and 70s, and the demonising of fat from the 1980s onwards. The simple things have always been better for you! 🙂

 

[Abi]

Imagine how well the diet then could have worked with better knowledge and understanding of insulin use for tighter control and with blood glucose monitoring. I recall reading though that in days of old people with diabetes were actively encouraged to smoke to prevent hunger and straying from the very strict diet and also some were disouraged from exercise due to fears about hypoglycaemic which may have not been compeltely ungrounded when there was less understanding of causes/ prevention and ability to monitor
Hard though for people without a generous food budget. Also dairy products going rancid in summer with no fridges- yuck

 

[BBarb]

From what I can remember the food was not exactly tasty. Whether or not that was due to my mum's cooking skills or not, I can't say - but I do remember a lot of tasteless potato, turnip and carrot mash (no butter) and the un-chewable meat and gristle as well as a lot of grey looking bread - no wonder we were thin.
All that pastry wouldn't be good for diabetics, but if they were only eating their meager share of of the meat ration plus all the greens they could find (including nettles and dandelion leaves) they'd be as healthy as possible and many of the type 2s would have been able to get along without insulin until they started eating the less healthy foods as they came off ration. I bet they'd have been hungry though even if they were eating along what we now think of as the right lines.
I wonder why and when the emphasis changed to the 'healthy plate' regime?

 

[Lucy Honeychurch]

My dad grew up with rationing and said he spent most of his childhood feeling very hungry.

 

[Martin Canty]

I wonder why and when the emphasis changed to the 'healthy plate' regime?

I think a lot of this came down to a few things, the Ansel Keys 7 counties study.... Keys had a hypothesis & cherry picked results to "Prove" it. He also had the backing of the US Government. The healthy plate has gone through several iterations dictated in part by the food industry lobbying to get their particular product a greater slice of the plate.

 

[ukjohn]

I was brought up in the 1940s and can remember rationing well, one meal I always enjoyed was home made faggots peas and mash. I hated Sundays because if we had a roast the cabbage water from cooking was saved and we kids were made to drink a glass of cabbage water it was said to be good for us.

 

[Lucy Honeychurch]

I was brought up in the 1940s and can remember rationing well, one meal I always enjoyed was home made faggots peas and mash. I hated Sundays because if we had a roast the cabbage water from cooking was saved and we kids were made to drink a glass of cabbage water it was said to be good for us.

Yuck!

 

[Dollypolly]

Cabbage water!!!! Omg being told to drink it .

 

[Dave W]

I can just remember rationing and my mum using stamps from her ration book to buy sweets for me. Also cabbage water, which I rather liked. Also orange juice and cod liver oil from the clinic.
The war time diet was a heatlhy one by all accounts. The present 'gold standard' analysis of dietary nutrition- The Composition of Foods Integrated Dataset, is still named after McCance and Widdowson who did a major research project during WWII to assess if the UK's population could exist without imported foods.

 

[Northerner]

who did a major research project during WWII to assess if the UK's population could exist without imported foods.

After Brexit, we might be heading that way again! 😱 😉