The health benefits of rationing, The importance of seasonal eating, The impact on gut health, Should we bring back rationing?

Like anyone who grew up in the 1990s and beyond, Claudia Marquis, a video journalist at The Telegraph, first learnt about wartime food rationing in a Year Six history class. But she had only ever known a restricted diet herself, after she was diagnosed with coeliac disease at the age of two.

Coeliac disease is triggered by gluten consumption and is an autoimmune disorder where cells inside the small intestine attack themselves, so most with it follow a strict gluten-free diet. That means avoiding products like bread, pasta, cakes and cereals.

“I had a special cupboard for my food at school, and I could never eat things at birthday parties or on trips away without checking all of the ingredients first,” Claudia recalls. Fortunately, with a great-grandfather like Fred Marquis – latterly Lord Woolton, made in recognition of his work as Minister of Food – eating in a different way to most was never a cause for embarrassment.

Marquis himself had colitis, another autoimmune condition managed mostly through diet. Claudia’s father, Marquis’ grandson, remembers Lord Woolton’s diet to have been a plain and unvaried one.

Lord Woolton, the wartime Minister of Food and Claudia’s great-grandfather, circa 1944 - Getty

What people ate during the ration, which lasted from January 1940 to the summer of 1954, was not unlike what Marquis had always eaten at home. The food minister had a task on his hands in getting the nation to accept it themselves, however. With supply lines under attack from the Axis powers, feeding the country at all would be extremely difficult, and ensuring fairness in access to food even more so.

While the wealthy ate well and obesity was scarce, food poverty and malnutrition was rampant in the poor working families that made up much of the population. A 1936 survey estimated that 4.5 million people had inadequate diets.

The picture is not so different today. According to a report by the charity FoodCycle, 7.2 million UK households struggle to afford healthy meals in 2025. Hunger may not be so widespread, but fresh food can often be out of reach to those on tight budgets, leading many to rely on ultra-processed products that are low in fibre and protein and high in salt, sugar and preservatives.

These foods are often far cheaper given their long shelf lives, but they are also delicious, and whatever the size of our wallets, too many of us have a dependence on them. We consume around 60 per cent of our calories from them each day, a major reason why one third of adult Britons are officially obese. What’s more, one in five adults now live with diabetes or prediabetes, and we have the lowest life expectancy in Western Europe.

The health benefits of rationing

What would happen if ultra-processed foods were suddenly removed from our diets? Rationing was “a unique opportunity to look at what happens when you level the playing field, which is what it was designed to do,” says Sam Rice, author of The Midlife Kitchen and The Telegraph’s nutrition expert.

“General mortality rates went down. Rates of cardiovascular disease went down. Children tended to be taller if they were growing up in that period.” For all, but especially the least affluent, “it was definitely a net benefit”.

Lord Woolton serving food at a mobile field kitchen, circa 1945 - Getty

Marquis averted disaster at home by ensuring that no one starved. People in other parts of Europe were not so lucky. One of the worst-hit countries was the Netherlands, where a German blockade in 1944 led to a huge famine. It was during this time however that a massive breakthrough was also made in the understanding of coeliac disease. “A Dutch paediatrician called William Dicker found that a lot of his coeliac patients saw their symptoms disappear during that period, and come back once more foods became available,” says Rice.

The reintroduction of bread – and with it, gluten – was his “eureka moment”, and “subsequently the first dietary treatments for coeliac disease were created, like the gluten-free diet”.

The 1940s were really “the beginning of our understanding of gut health and gut conditions,” says Rice. What we know 80 years on is that the foods people ate during rationing would have been excellent for their gut health, and the health of our guts are crucial to everything from our risk of colorectal cancer and ability to maintain a healthy weight, to our moods, brains and memories.

The importance of seasonal eating

People “would have been eating very seasonally”, says Rice, meaning that they got the full benefit of the vitamins in their fruit and vegetables. A “waste not, want not” attitude to eating encouraged people to use the skins and ends of vegetables, “where most of the fibre is stored”.

Other foods such as the National Loaf, a wholewheat brown (or grey) bread that replaced refined white bread and used both germ and bran, was packed with yet more fibre and micronutrients. Milk was available in generous amounts, so people made it into yoghurt at home, which was high in prebiotics. “That certainly would have been a big boost to their guts,” Rice says.

One person’s weekly portion of rationed foods in Britain during the Second World War - PA/PA Archive

These days, people with coeliac disease are often advised to take good care of their gut health. Doing so limits inflammation and “makes my gut more resilient to any foods containing gluten that I eat accidentally,” Claudia says. Recent research suggests that all of us could do with consuming gluten with greater moderation, as some studies have found that cutting down on gluten can improve digestion, reduce bloating and help to counteract fatigue.

Foods such as the Woolton Pie, so named for Lord Woolton, were often made without gluten, as the flour ration was tight. The pie was filled with root vegetables including carrots, swedes and cauliflower, which weren’t rationed as they could be grown at home. It was sometimes topped with wheatmeal pastry, but more commonly with a mixture of mashed potato and lard (to save on the butter ration).

The impact on gut health

The variety of vegetables, providing fibre and micronutrients, and the potato-based pastry on top “would have been excellent for people’s gut health,” says Rice. Even the lard would have had benefits: it is “lower in saturated fat than butter, and higher in monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats, including omega three, as well as being lower in cholesterol and containing some vitamin D”. Her only complaint by modern standards is that the pie “didn’t contain much protein”. These days, she says, you’d want to add a tin of lentils or beans to make up the difference.

Woolton pie listed on the day’s lunch menu at a Gillette factory in England during World War II in 1941 - Getty

The pie is still enjoyed today by Claudia’s aunt, Lady Alexandra Elletson, who is Fred Marquis’ granddaughter. “I would have met him when I was three or four, but sadly I was too young to remember it. I would have loved to have a conversation with him about the war, because I think of him very highly,” Lady Elletson says. An avid cook, she always boils, fries or bakes from scratch, and she has an attitude to food that Marquis surely would have approved of.

“I love seasonal food,” Lady Elletson says. “I don’t want strawberries in October. I make a roast every Sunday, even if it’s just my husband and I at home, and the meat does me in sandwiches or pies for the rest of the week.” The Woolton pie is a favourite because “it’s comfort food, it really fills everyone up,” she adds. “All the men and women working during the war needed carbs to fuel them. A pie had to have that lovely pastry on top.”

Should we bring back rationing?

So, should we bring back rationing? Britain ended the Second World War in significantly better health than it had been when the conflict began. Obesity was extremely scarce, infant mortality decreased dramatically, and malnutrition was no longer the scourge on our health that it had been. A lot has changed for the worse since then.

William Sitwell, The Telegraph’s restaurant critic and author of Eggs or Anarchy, a book about the life of Fred Marquis, says he would love to see rationing return. “But it would take a war”, he admits, and ultimately, we are all much better off a little overweight and with sub-optimal gut health than we are “dead on a battlefield”.

In any case, we would be far better “teaching the country how to cook,” says Lady Elletson. “Lots of people don’t know how to cook today, or what should be on their plates. Your stomach is about the same size as your fist, and that’s how much you should be eating.”

As for Claudia, she’s glad to live in a time where she’s free to choose how she eats, within the restraints of a gluten-free diet. “I enjoy what I eat, and there are lots of options for people with coeliac disease and stomach conditions today,” she says, “but rationing certainly taught people to think carefully about how they fuel their bodies, and we could all stand to learn from that.”

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