People in wartime during WWII lived very ‘green’ as almost anything was recycled and used.

Nothing was thrown away. Milk bottles, for example, were rinsed out with water to create ‘milk-water’ for use in making batters. I remember my mother doing this in the 1950s! I suppose old habits die hard. Kitchen scraps were used to feed the animals. Wastage was avoided at all costs.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Britain was even at it’s healthiest diet wise! Many nutritionists believe that a wartime diet could help us beat the biggest threats to health today. People who are overweight are advised to follow a wartime diet as the weightloss is unbelievable and it mostly doesn’t return like you see in the crash diets as of late. Since the 1950s, cancer deaths have grown from 17% to 25% of all mortality. Experts estimate that up to a third of all cancers are caused by dietary factors and that a return to aspects of a wartime diet could be the secret to surviving modern-day killers such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

My 101st Airborne Screaming Eagle father who survived the four European battle campaigns of D-Day, Carentan, Holland and the Battle of the Bulge writes about the very rare bottle of wine or candy in his letters now resting permanently in the book, COMES A SOLDIER’S WHISPER. After WWII, Dad and his then sweetheart and the object of his affections and the “letters” married in 1946. During our childhood, Mother would recall memories of wartime rationing here in the states with sugar, coffee and bread in particular. She came to loathe spam and said many of their meals consisted of beans with ketchup added.

I have distinct memories of Dad taking his bread and wiping his plate clean every night, as though it had gone through a dishwasher, and we didn’t have dishwashers back then. Well, we didn’t anyway. Dad would try to entice us to finish our meals by saying, “Children are starving in Europe.” Although our young minds had great difficulty wrapping our brains around that thought, it had a profound impact on us. I was made to understand that we had a good life and that there were many in the world not as fortunate and blessed, as we were. Dad was very grateful for the simplest of pleasures in life. He was a country boy from Petersburg, Indiana who would tell us how his family would bury their potatoes underground to act as refrigeration.

Vegetarianism grew in popularity in the 1930s but this growth declined during the war as it became known that Hitler was a vegetarian. The vegetarians in the 1940s received extra cheese instead of meat. There was also new food introduced such as whale or Icelandic salt cod but these were both not very popular as people thought of it as tasting too salty. The emphazis of vegetables and cereals and tight meat rationing meant that vegetarian recipes were enjoyed by many people who also ate meat and fish. Meat-free recipes were a common feature of the wartime diet. A good, filling meal was enjoyed but there were few snacks; so no crisps, sweets and fizzy drinks that people easily use these days. Alcohol was hard to get hold of. Wine was usually home made but the lack of sugar made it difficult to produce and was mostly drunk in rural areas. Beer was available but only to an extend. People rarely got drunk, as there just wasn’t enough.

Next to this diet, the people of the 1940s had another thing that made their diet healthy; exercise! Many led a productive life and the lack of public transport forced people to take their bike (if the Germans didn’t get hold of your bike) or go by foot…

With all seriousness set aside, do visit and “like” The Wartime Ration Diet www.facebook.com/pages/The-Wartime-Ration-Diet/611652742199400 and check out the wonderful and healthy recipes from that era. I haven’t tried them yet, but they do look promising!

Comes A Soldier’s Whisper, remembering history one day at a time.

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