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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To suggest that enforced national food rationing might help solve the nation's obesity problem?

350 replies

Lucia39 · 30/05/2009 00:13

During the period 1939-1954 the nation's diet was, apparently, the healthiest it has ever been.

So would a similar regime assist helping those who are increasingly "dimensionally challenged"?

Vegetables, fruit, and pulses would be more freely available but meat, dairy produce, sugar and fats would be strictly rationed.

Any thoughts?

OP posts:
moondog · 30/05/2009 00:13

Agree.
The bloaters loose on our streets turn my stomach.
Yuck.

hmc · 30/05/2009 00:14

My thoughts - you need a slap. I'd be happy to deliver it.

jarbelle · 30/05/2009 00:15

How would it deal with a toddler who needs lots of dairy though ??

moondog · 30/05/2009 00:16

Toddlers don't need a lot of 'dairy' though.

Thunderduck · 30/05/2009 00:16

YABVU.

Plonker · 30/05/2009 00:16
Hmm
FluffyBunnyGoneBad · 30/05/2009 00:17

I agree. Some advice on portion control is also very much needed.

skramble · 30/05/2009 00:17

Lve it do it now!!

GlastonburyGoddess · 30/05/2009 00:18

good idea but i would never work

skramble · 30/05/2009 00:18

Oh scary where di that grin come from I didn't do thaat.

skramble · 30/05/2009 00:19

Scry

Original poster
Lucia39 · 30/05/2009 00:19

jarbelle: Pregnant women, nursing mothers and young children would get extra rations - just as they did during the period referred to in my OP.

OP posts:
skramble · 30/05/2009 00:19
Grin
Laquitar · 30/05/2009 00:19

Lucia get a life darling! Or get some sex fgs.
You keep posting the most stupid things and start the most stupid threads.

jarbelle · 30/05/2009 00:20

Sorry moondog, must of got it wrong when they said toddlers need about 500mls.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Thunderduck · 30/05/2009 00:20

Do people really want to be told what they can and can't eat?
Sod that. I don't need or want a government to dictate what I can and can't have. I'll spend my money as I please.

TheCrackFox · 30/05/2009 00:21

The average woman, during the war, went up a dress size.

BananaFruitBat · 30/05/2009 00:22

Unfortunately I think the problem is more to do with take-aways and TV.

skramble · 30/05/2009 00:22

Ooh do we get to paint on stockings too?

skramble · 30/05/2009 00:23

how do we ration takeawyas and tv:

Original poster
Lucia39 · 30/05/2009 00:24

GlastonburyGoddess: It would work because everyone would have a Ration book. Of course, just as during the period 1939-1954, you'd get the rich who'd find other means of getting more than the rest of us but legislation could be put into place to deal with those caught - just as it was during the period mentioned.

OP posts:
FluffyBunnyGoneBad · 30/05/2009 00:24

Stockings with gravy browning! I feel sick.
Portion advice and excercise I think.

Thunderduck · 30/05/2009 00:24

Lucia. You are a loon.

Original poster
Lucia39 · 30/05/2009 00:25

TheCrackFox: You need to provide some evidence for that statement!

OP posts:
edam · 30/05/2009 00:25

People who spout that claptrap about WW2 and rationing were not alive then.

The nation was very far from 'the healthiest it has ever been'. At the outbreak of war, the Government discovered a horrifying proportion of men were ineligible for active service, thanks to grinding poverty and no healthcare.

Rationing was NOT 'a good thing' to protect people's health. It was desperation. My godmother was a young mother with a baby, living in a town. Young women like her, who couldn't work, were starving. Literally. If you were in a factory, at least you got a mid-day meal at a British Canteen. If you had a garden, you could at least grow your own fruit and veg.

But generally, people were bloody hungry because this country depended on imported food and the enemy was torpedoing the ships trying to bring it over. Thanks to the extraordinary bravery of the men involved in the North Atlantic Convoys, some of them made it through.

None of us alive today should be faffing around thinking, ooh, let's play at rationing like 21st century Marie Antoinettes.

Not unless you also want to go back to the days when young women whose babies were born dead had to take the bus home with the body in a shoe-box - as happened to my Godmother's sister. 'Don't you know there's a war on', the nurses said...