My grandparents and my history teacher talked about how people were more healthy during the UK rationing. Less people overweight and less trips to the dentist

I'm an old UK lady. Thanks to my Grandmother and Mother, I still enjoy steak and kidney, liver and bacon, sliced tongue and stuffed heart. They taught me to eat what was available. As you can see from the comment below, UK rationing was tough - 1 egg a week per person, etc.

desperate times during the war, especially in Europe. I remember the stories of people eating cats and rats. They would tell the family it was rabbit.... cows tongue is still a delicacy in belgium. Its with madeira sauce and mushrooms... I dont eat it but people love it.

My mother and grandmother had to live through the Depression and war time rations in Canada, the same restrictions. My grandmother used to save everything, from wrapping paper to old catalogues. We could take a lot of good advice from these old recipes and food traditions, given the price of groceries these days. You'd like the series "Back in Time for Dinner" (the British version).

Mexican tongue tacos (called lengua) are really good.

The Dutch had near end '44 to-45 WWII tulip bulbs to eat, especially in north Holland, transportation food wasn't possible because infrastructure was bombed by Germans

It wasn't just the United States that brought in war time rationing. Most of her allies did too. Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and many others. I remember in the 1950s my mother would from time to time cook up a war time rationing recipe. Partly because we didn't have a lot of money. But also to put food on the table. A lot of these meals were really good. Mexican spices helped. Necessity is the mother of invention.

In Rotterdam in 1944, during the Hunger Winter, people even removed wallpaper from the walls and made soup from it. the glue was made from pig intestines

This is what we had in England one person one weeks ration Bacon & Ham 4 oz Other meat value of 1 shilling and 2 pence (equivalent to 2 chops) Butter 2 oz Cheese 2 oz Margarine 4 oz Cooking fat 4 oz Milk 3 pints Sugar 8 oz Preserves 1 lb every 2 months Tea 2 oz Eggs 1 fresh egg (plus allowance of dried egg) Sweets 12 oz every 4 weeks

In the UK rationing started in January 1940 with petrol and continued until the last item coal was removed from the rationing list in July 1958. People here were also encouraged to turn their gardens into vegetable patches…along with common land in many areas being turned into public vegetable patches. Fish and game were not rationed in the UK (we are a relatively small island after all where nowhere is any real distance from either the coast or a fishable river), with people being actively encouraged to raise their own chickens and rabbits for both eggs from the chicken and meat from both. I’ve been a vegetarian for over thirty years but as a kid, I loved both tongue sandwiches and oxtail soup. They were just names for foodstuffs (my parents were born in ‘45 and ‘46, so their childhood’s were spent with the country still in rationing) I must admit that when I realised that they weren’t just names but descriptions, I was justifiably horrified. The sawdust filler for flour was born out of necessity and once the rationing was gone so we’re these temporary fillers and substitutes. Though in centuries gone by, sawdust and the like were used as fillers to create a cheaper product for the poor. Hence why it was a known to be a mostly safe addition to fall back on as there would have been people around that had experienced this during the Victorian era before food regulations were brought in. Oh and though getting syrup from a tree is great, it’s not going to help your grains go further. Sawdust would have been a last resort to those on the brink of nothing. The actress Audrey Hepburn, who lived in the Netherlands during their occupation told of how she would scavenge for pine cones to grind down to make bread. She had also been a promising Prima Ballerina prior to the outbreak of war and from a very wealthy titled family but by the end they had nothing and her body was decimated due to malnutrition to such a degree that she was advised that any pursuance of a career in ballet would not be probable due to the long lasting health conditions caused by life in an occupied country caught up in all out war.

I've been reliably informed that the Dutch were that desperate they ate tulip bulbs to survive. Apparently they didn't taste very good, but when your only other option was starvation...

I wonder how you'd react if he went into what people were eating in places like Leningrad 😅😅😅😅😅

Tongue isn't as bad as it seems. Lol. You see,..there's no bumpy part. Lol. That is peeled off...then it's just a very dense piece of meat lol. Would be great stewed

🤣🤣🤣🤣no one eats sawdust. It must have really been desperate times. Make do and mend