1944 - Food Availability

Food Availability

Bengal's rice crop fails again as in 1942. Millions starve, some because they refuse to accept wheat flour (see Burma, 1943).

Bread, flour, oatmeal, potatoes, fish, fresh vegetables, and fruit other than oranges remain unrationed in Britain. Prices are controlled so that the average householder has about half the food budget available for unrationed foods after buying rationed foods plus foods whose distribution is controlled or allocated on a "points" basis.

U.S. meat rationing ends May 3. Meat consumption rises to 140 pounds per capita, up from 128.9 last year, as national income rises to $181 billion, up from $72.5 billion in 1939. A large proportion of the meat is sold through black-market channels organized by criminal elements.

Dutch civilians survive in many cases only by eating sugar beets and sometimes flower bulbs. A poster put up by the underground shows a prisoner in a German uniform with a ball and chain attached to one foot as he sits at a wooden table eating with a spoon from a bowl labeled "Pulp." The legend says, "Don't shoot a single Jerry. Let them eat pulp for 20 years."