If you think it’s difficult to stick to the “five a day” of fruit and veg recommendations see how you would have fared 70 years ago with wartime rationing.

The Imperial War Museum in London is taking a nostalgic trip back to see how we coped with wartime rationing.

Did you know that carrots could help you see in the dark and prepare for the blackout? It was all part of a wonderful propaganda campaign which really was a “Hell’s Kitchen” for those who lived through it.

There was “Dig for Victory”. The posters screamed at us to cultivate every piece of land saying you were “doing your bit” if you cultivated for the cookhouse. An hour in the garden was billed as better than an hour in the queue.

You wasted nothing and even what was classed as waste went in the pig bins to feed pigs and poultry which of course went back into the food chain.

The wonderful women who managed to make meals from these rations, which went on long after the war was over, were regarded as the backbone of our country in those dark days.

This remarkable exhibition is a tribute to them. I wonder what Marco Pierre White would have done with this, a typical individual’s war time ration:

3 pints of milk
3 1/4oz – 1Ib meat
1 egg or 1 packet of dried eggs every 2 months
3-4 oz cheese
4 oz bacon and ham
2 oz tea
8 oz sugar
2 oz butter
2 oz cooking fat

This wasn’t for a meal by the way. It was for a week!

Graham Smith for Third Age.