Lots of foods were rationed in Britain during WW2, not just sugar. Obviously, too much sugar is bad for you. But the positive effects of rationing could have resulted from forced reductions of other foods.
When World War II began in September 1939, petrol was the first commodity to be controlled. On 8 January 1940, bacon, butter, and sugar were rationed. Meat, tea, jam, biscuits, breakfast cereals, cheese, eggs, lard, milk, canned and dried fruit were rationed subsequently, though not all at once. In June 1942, the Combined Food Board was set up by the United Kingdom and the United States to coordinate the world supply of food to the Allies, with special attention to flows from the U.S. and Canada to Britain. Almost all foods apart from vegetables and bread were rationed by August 1942.
Yeah, I was worried about that too but the authors do a pretty good job of showing that something discontinuous changes across cohorts around the staggered end of rationing for sugar specifically. Rationing was removed for sugar at a different time than other foods and materials so they have some empirical traction. They also show that the composition of people’s diet wasn’t all that affected by the other constraints — the main severely binding constraint appears to have been sugar. If you read the paper and find yourself totally unconvinced, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.
Impeccable research, nice work!
Lots of foods were rationed in Britain during WW2, not just sugar. Obviously, too much sugar is bad for you. But the positive effects of rationing could have resulted from forced reductions of other foods.
When World War II began in September 1939, petrol was the first commodity to be controlled. On 8 January 1940, bacon, butter, and sugar were rationed. Meat, tea, jam, biscuits, breakfast cereals, cheese, eggs, lard, milk, canned and dried fruit were rationed subsequently, though not all at once. In June 1942, the Combined Food Board was set up by the United Kingdom and the United States to coordinate the world supply of food to the Allies, with special attention to flows from the U.S. and Canada to Britain. Almost all foods apart from vegetables and bread were rationed by August 1942.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_Kingdom
Yeah, I was worried about that too but the authors do a pretty good job of showing that something discontinuous changes across cohorts around the staggered end of rationing for sugar specifically. Rationing was removed for sugar at a different time than other foods and materials so they have some empirical traction. They also show that the composition of people’s diet wasn’t all that affected by the other constraints — the main severely binding constraint appears to have been sugar. If you read the paper and find yourself totally unconvinced, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.