Food rationing during World War two: a special case of sustainable consumption?

This article explores some of the strategies applied by consumers for making-do during the Second World War in Norway. By reducing waste, using various substitutes and exploiting underused natural resources such as wild plants, birds, and alternative marine sources of nutrition, Norwegian consumers adapted their diet to a situation of food scarcity. However, their everyday consumption was primarily governed by the regulatory framework installed for dealing with the crisis, namely the rationing system. By 1942, almost all common foods had been placed under rationing. Despite of the many bureaucratic inconveniences of this system, it was largely supported by consumers, who accepted it as a socially just mechanism for distributing scarce resources. The article brings up the question of how far the willingness of consumers to accept rationing was a unique experience of the war, or whether one might imagine a similar design for purposes of sustainable consumption.