Book info

• Title Eating for Victory
• Author Jill Norman
• Year 2007
• Genres History, Cookbooks, War

The period of wartime food rationing is now regarded as a time when the nation was at its healthiest. Food rationing was introduced in January 1940 after food shipments were attacked by German U-boat 'Wolf Packs'.The first food items to be rationed were butter, sugar, bacon and ham, with restrictions also placed on meat, fish, jam, biscuits, cheese, eggs and milk. The leaflets reproduced in Eating for Victory were distributed by the Ministry of Food and advised the general public on how to cope with these shortages.

Thoughts

This is a great little collection of war effort leaflets relating to food, rationing, exercise and generally trying to be healthy. It was eye-opening, because you sort of think of the war and rationing as a time of being hungry and unhealthy, but actually, whilst there may have been a shortness of certain foods, everything else looked super healthy. It made me quite sad to see how we have completely lost the basic building blocks of nutrition. This needs to be hammered into kids from an early age, by parents, schools, shops, governments, whoever. Make it easy and second nature.

I can’t say I read every single recipe, some of them sounded quite grim really, but I liked the little sections such as extra timings to make sure dinner was ready at a certain time, or specific menus for specific days. A good, quick reference read.

Rating: 3 / 5