We are spoilt for grocery choice thesdays and don't realise it.

A housewife poses with a week's worth of groceries in 1947 (except milk). It cost $12.50. Of this she feeds herself, husband, 2 kids and a cat.

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ninalanyon · 61-69, T

That's a very odd collection of food. Doesn't look like enough vegetables for four people for a week. And no one needs that much salt in one week. A smaller packet than that lasts three of us in this house over a month and I use some almost every day to bake bread rolls. And they have thirty six eggs which seems like rather a lot, especially as there is no flour with which to bake a cake. If she's not baking why does she have what looks like a couple of kilos of caster sugar?

Which country is it from?

meggie · F

@ninalanyon USA. I guess one week a certain thing was bought in a large quantity and then the next week something else. They probably couldn't get all that was on offer in one week. My nan said they used salt to clean their teeth as there wasn't anything else.

HumanEarth · F

@ninalanyon

Most people back then had home vegetables gardens.

HootyTheNightOwl

@ninalanyon 1947... Wasn't rationing a thing in the US for WWII???

I know that we were still living with rationing in the early years of the 60's - so vegetable gardens and trading with neighbours would have been in, too.

Salt would have been a preservative back then as well, so it wouldn't all have gone onto your food during and after cooking.

ninalanyon · 61-69, T

@HootyTheNightOwl I don't really know about rationing in the US. I don't think they had it in the same way as the UK and other European countries. I was born in England just after the end of food rationing.