Entry into the war brought wartime rationing to the United States. Americans were accustomed to ready availability of their favorite foods and consumer goods, so rationing came as a shock, but at least it kept prices low.
Millions of Americans moved to other parts of the country in pursuit of war production jobs. Millions of American women entered the work force, but finding child care was a problem.
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Fanfare
Opening War Theme
“Yes! We Have No Bananas”
Composed in 1923 by Frank Silver and Irving Cohn. Public domain.
Closing War Theme
Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.
My mother, who grew up in the UK, used to mention an expression that was used there in the years just after the war, to explain why various privations such as rationing were still continuing:
“Don’t you know there’s a peace on?”
Much of my childhood was spent hearing about rationing in England, which apparently made US rationing seem like nothing. The phrase: “One egg a week” comes to mind.
N.B. – I just checked this egg story with chatGPT and it held up. Part of the answer:
“Under the wartime rationing system administered by the British Ministry of Food, eggs were rationed beginning in 1941. Typical allocations for an ordinary adult at various points included:
* about 1 fresh egg weekly
* sometimes 1 egg every two weeks during shortages
* dried egg powder imported from the U.S. as a substitute
Children, pregnant women, and some invalids often received priority access. …
Other rationed foods were also limited. Typical weekly adult rations at one point included approximately:
* bacon/ham: 4 oz
* butter: 2 oz
* sugar: 8 oz
* meat: to the value of 1s 2d
* cheese: 2 oz
* tea: 2 oz
Bread and potatoes were notably not initially rationed, partly for morale and calorie reasons
What is striking historically is that despite these restrictions, nutritional outcomes in Britain often improved for poorer citizens because:
* food distribution became more equal,
* vitamin fortification increased,
* and public nutrition policy became unusually systematic.”
Note: I guess they were actually doing better than the US on the sugar for their tea. 8 oz per week is almost 7 teaspoons per day.
As a kid in the ’90s, I had a VHS collection of Looney Tunes shorts made during the war. One such short was Falling Hare, in which Bugs Bunny battles a gremlin on an airfield. The short ends with a plane falling out of the sky stopping just inches above the ground because it ran out of gas. It ran out of gas because it had an A Card. I turn to this joke as a WWII in-joke that would fly over the heads of post-war kids, a baffled myself included.
I know the cartoon. Also worth noting that “gremlins” were imagined creatures invented by RAF pilots, who blamed them for sabotaging their planes. Most people who hear the word today would more likely think first of the 1984 film directed by Chris Columbus.
I saw an excerpt from a informational film shown to Gis in Britain, letting them know how restrictive the UK rations were. A GI visiting a British family for a meal could unknowing eat a whole week’s ration of some foodstuffs. Hopefully the film helped restrain some soldiers, anyway!