COVICTORY GARDEN and Canada Feeding Rationed Britain

A quick update on the COVICTORY GARDEN seedlings, the peas have nearly all sprouted! Onions are progressing well, some still yet to sprout. The carrots have made their first appearance and the beets have also begun to sprout here and there. Still no sign of Cilantro.

As the war waged on in Europe, Britain continued to feel the strain due to the fall in imports. In the Atlantic, Germany waged unrestricted U-Boat warfare targeting Allied merchant vessels leaving ports in Canada, the United States and throughout the West Indies. 

As I had mentioned in my last post Britain's "ploughing-up campaign" was a huge initiative, and it saved one million tons of shipping space each year, allowing for other important staples to be given priority. Food imports to Britain focused mainly on meat and dairy to provide high calories, protein and calcium, and Canada helped provide much of these. While Britain had shifted from raising livestock to growing wheat and potatoes, Canada had restructured its agricultural to grow coarse feed for pigs and cows, and increased the raising of  livestock significantly. Once these exports reached Britain however, they were distributed under the Rationing system. Rationing was imposed in Britain in January 1940 due to the losses in Food imports required to feed the citizens and members of the armed forces.

Food under ration was purchased using ration tokens or coupons from your ration book, and the amount stated on the coupon was the minimum amount of food the government guaranteed to distribute. At times not all food was available. An important characteristic of the rationing system was that there was to be no differentiation between the classes of society, everyone was to receive:

• 4oz bacon or ham
• 4oz of butter
• 1 egg
• 2-3 oz of margarine
• 1oz of cheese
• 12 oz of sugar (8oz by 1941)
• 14-16oz of meat (usually thinned beef)
• 2 pints of milk (0.95 litres)
• 2oz of tea (In Britain this is a big deal)

per week...

The British working classes were suspicious of the fairness of the rationing system, and therefore the ration was designed to appear simple and just. The importance of this was to ensure that a consensus of "making do" could be fostered, and that any rifts among the classes would not deepen. Food as a source of and boost to morale was very important, a lesson learned from World War I. 

So looking at this photo of my breakfast from this morning, we can see there is one egg (sad looking), three slices of bacon, and a small wedge of cheese representing 3oz. I ate all the bacon, the egg, and maybe an ounce of the cheese. From the list above you can see that my breakfast was my entire week's worth of bacon, cheese, and also my one and only egg if I were under the wartime ration. This would be devastating because I love bacon, and so did the British during the war.

By war's end, ⅘ of Britain's bacon came from Canada. Nutritionists in Britain even argued that bacon should be considered a staple of the British people's diet to add flavour to food, even though it is an inefficient source of energy. (I would agree.) 

Here in Canada we too had an imposed ration system which began in January 1942. While we were able to eat a bit more than our British counterparts, we had a nearly identical ration. At great expense in order to balance out our nutrition however, the government of Canada imported large amounts of oranges and grapefruits from the USA to provide a source of Vitamin C.

Canadians know that the tastiest oranges and grapefruit come from Florida. In Britain during the war oranges could be found in stockings at Christmas, a special treat!