{"id":69,"date":"2014-09-25T22:40:17","date_gmt":"2014-09-26T03:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewartimekitchen.com\/?p=69"},"modified":"2014-09-25T22:40:17","modified_gmt":"2014-09-26T03:40:17","slug":"sixteen-points","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewartimekitchen.com\/?p=69","title":{"rendered":"Sixteen Points"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 120px; height: 240px;\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ss&amp;ref=ss_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=thewartimekit-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=0750243066&amp;asins=0750243066&amp;linkId=WUNDVPQWXZXQKGGR&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>By December of 1940, store shelves were getting \u00a0bare. Most shops had run out of items such as tinned (canned) salmon, meat, and fruit. But the Ministry of Food had a plan:\u00a0 Ration points. On December 1, 1941 (a week before the US enters the war due to the bombing of Pearl Harbor), if you had a ration book, you would receive sixteen points per month to spend on any\u00a0food items\u00a0you liked (and were available).<\/p>\n<p>The first items up for grabs with ration points were canned items: fish, meat, vegetables, and fruit. \u00a0Soon other items were added as they became more scarce, such as condensed milk, cereals, crackers, cookies, \u00a0and sweets. There was a catch. The prices in &#8220;points&#8221; varied depending on the availability of the items. The Ministry of Food had been stockpiling items months before\u00a0so\u00a0the program would have an initial success and the stores would have full shelves.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTTwb9ZsIYJfU-soqlcdYqFPIJidUIoddpMvvviFbsDampkI309sw\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Grocers had a lot of tinned items to sell with points when the program began. There were two major drawbacks to the plan: 1)\u00a0as\u00a0certain foods became popular, the price in points would increase. What was 8 points one month, might be 12 or 16 the next month. The newspapers listed items for sale in the shops and their points value. 2) There were long lines. One would have\u00a0never left the house without your ration book and coupons! My grandmother said to me about shopping during the war, &#8220;If you saw a line you got in it.&#8221; \u00a0You usually then found out what you were in line for when you got closer to the counter. A positive note in wartime was\u00a0instead of just getting your monthly rationed items, you could actually feel like a shopper again. SPAM\u00a9\u00a0became very popular in the UK. The American brand of processed and spiced ham was made available through the Lend-Lease Act, and\u00a0became a wartime staple on many British tables. In wartime Britain, a 10-oz (284-gram) tin of SPAM cost 1 shilling and sixpence (about 20\u00a0cents), and sixteen\u00a0points.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 120px; height: 240px;\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ss&amp;ref=ss_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=thewartimekit-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=B001EQ5NHE&amp;asins=B001EQ5NHE&amp;linkId=QHMWC36WGMPQCHWZ&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By December of 1940, store shelves were getting \u00a0bare. Most shops had run out of items such as tinned (canned) salmon, meat, and fruit. But the Ministry of Food had a plan:\u00a0 Ration points. On December 1, 1941 (a week before the US enters the war due to the bombing of Pearl Harbor), if you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewartimekitchen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewartimekitchen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewartimekitchen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewartimekitchen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewartimekitchen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thewartimekitchen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70,"href":"https:\/\/thewartimekitchen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/70"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewartimekitchen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewartimekitchen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewartimekitchen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}