LONDON — Evoking an era of World War II austerity, British families are being urged to cut food waste and use leftovers in a nationwide effort to fight rising global food prices.
It’s not back to ration books, “victory gardens” or squirrel-tail soup yet, but warning bells are being rung by experts at all levels of Britain’s government as well as from the World Food Program.
With food and energy prices soaring around the world, a constant supply of high-quality, affordable food is no longer guaranteed, the officials are warning Britons. That could mean an era of scarcity like Britain’s 1940-54 food rationing, during the war and its aftermath.
“Well, of course, in the war years it was not only immoral to waste food — this was one of our slogans then — it also was illegal,” said Marguerite Patten, 92, who worked at the Ministry of Food during World War II.
During the war, Nazi Germany’s U-boats crippled the flow of ships carrying food to Britain. Diets were tightly controlled by rationing.
“Recent food price rises are a powerful reminder that access to ever- more-affordable food cannot be taken for granted,” Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a foreword to a bleak new report by Britain’s Cabinet Office.
