by LOUISE ATKINSON

Last updated at 21:14 02 July 2007

You were only allowed one egg and three rashers of bacon a week - but Britons were never healthier than when we lived on wartime rations. So what happened when one modern family gave it a try?

We all know we're eating too much but the statistics make grim reading. Today, almost a quarter of all adults in the UK are obese.

Even more horrifying, a quarter of all British toddlers are already overweight.

Our diet contains too much fat, sugar and salt - and it's putting us at greater risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke and even Alzheimer's.

The search is on for healthy and workable solutions. Scientists are busy working on a whole host of "fat" drugs - only last week, Italian researchers announced they'd developed a pill that expands in the stomach to make dieters feel full.

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A more drastic option is major surgery - every year, thousands of Britons undergo gastric banding to reduce their stomach size so they can't overeat.

There's also myriad weight-busting diets, but as health experts debate the best solution, there could be one old trick they're missing: wartime food rationing.

While this was ostensibly introduced to share out limited resources, there was a secret agenda behind the weekly food allowances: to attack "dietetic ignorance" among the population and so improve the nation's health.

It worked. Britons ate better than they ever had before or, some experts claim, since.

As a result of the balanced diet provided by rationing, children's health improved and on average they were taller and heavier than before the war.

The incidence of anaemia and tooth decay dropped - while the average age at which people died from natural causes increased, despite the stresses and strains of war.

The principles behind rationing sound surprisingly similar to today's health messages: reduced consumption of meat, fats and sugar and more of the sort of foods, such as vegetables, which provide essential vitamins and minerals.

Meals were bulked out with healthy oats, pulses and bread - brown bread became the norm.

So would a wartime diet help us today? The greatest benefit would be the cut in calories.

Under rationing, men were allowed 3,000 calories a day - slightly higher than 2,500 recommended today. But the reality is most of us consume as much as 3,100 calories.

As Dr Toni Steer, a nutritionist with the Medical Research Council, explains: "Whatever people consume today, it is too much. The reason so many of us are overweight is because we eat too much and exercise too little.

"I suspect many people would find that even after a few weeks on rationing they'd lose weight, even if they didn't increase their activity levels."

A war-time regiment would also help reduce your risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, as well as cancers such as post-menopausal breast cancer, kidney and colon cancer.

Under rationing, people ate very little meat.

"On average in the UK we eat 40-50 per cent more protein than we actually need," says Dr Steer. Eating less meat would reduce the risk of heart disease, and possibly bowel cancer.

When it comes to fat, although we eat only a fraction more than people consumed during the war, far more of our fat is saturated.

But perhaps the biggest change in swopping to a wartime regimen would be the reduction in sugar.

Under rationing, every adult was allowed 8oz (230g) a week - on average we have twice that now.

Just one bowl of a typical breakfast cereal, a serving of baked beans with lunch and a Jaffa Cake would take you over your World War II sugar ration without so much as a sprinkling of white stuff.

As well as affecting dental health, excess sugar consumption has been linked to weight gain, diabetes and by some experts even to cancer.

During the war they even drank their tea more healthily. Research has shown that three cups of tea a day can cut the risk of heart attack by 11 per cent and stave off some forms of cancer.

But you get greater benefit from its healthgiving properties if you let leaves steep for five minutes in a pot rather than giving a tea bag a quick dunk in a mug.

Of course, the wartime diet was not perfect. Rationing pre-dated our knowledge of the health benefits of unsaturated fats (the fact that olive oil and vegetable margarines can actively boost the levels of "good" cholesterol).

It would be better to have a slug of olive oil than the weekly wartime 2oz of lard.

And when it comes to fruit and vegetables, the wartime diet lacked the variety experts say we need to get essential vitamins and minerals.

But if the wartime diet was healthier than what most of us eat today, is it actually practical? And would it be enough to sustain the frenetic pace of our modern lifestyle? We asked a family of six to live on rations for ten days. Here is their verdict.

DEE BROOKER, 38, a housewife, husband Colin, 45, a civil servant, and their four children (Felicity, eight, Oliver, seven, Emily, four, and Ben, two) live in Oxfordshire. Dee says:

The first shock was the weekly shop. My supermarket trolley is normally groaning with breakfast cereal, pizzas, pasta and snacks (including eight or nine packets of biscuits) but it now contained porridge oats, cornflakes, wholemeal bread, milk and rather grubby-looking root vegetables.

I'd had to clear out the food cupboards and was rather ashamed of the piles of crisps, cereal bars, biscuits and chocolate. But I was also worried about how on earth we were going to manage - like many parents, we use food treats as bribes and I don't have an alternative parenting strategy.

And although the rations cost less than half my normal shop, I wasn't sure an entire family would survive for a week on so little.

Breakfast was the first hurdle - this is usually Coco Pops or chocolate chip brioche rolls, and I wasn't sure the kids would even try anything else. But they did eat the porridge.

A typical lunch is sandwiches ( chocolate spread for the children, ham or cheese for the adults), crisps, cheese strings, yoghurts - the older children have school dinners.

The wartime version was corned beef sandwiches (wholemeal bread) plus an apple for Colin; jam sandwiches and slice of homemade cake with sliced apple for the children.

I think dinner was the most difficult. We usually have something like readymade enchiladas with beef mince, followed by cheesecake or biscuits.

One of our first wartime dinners was vegetable terrine, ham with mashed swede; wholemeal bread and butter; roly poly pudding; homemade biscuits.

The first thing I noticed was how little food we were wasting. Because we all snack throughout the day, no one is hungry at meal times, and I frequently throw good food in the bin.

But because supplies were limited, I had to serve smaller portions, and the kids were rationed to one homemade biscuit after school.

Every time I placed a meal on the table they'd stare at it in horror, then hunger would get the better of them. I told them this was it, if they didn't eat it there was nothing else (which was true), and they all at least tried everything I made. We had surprisingly few complaints (although I know they did miss

But Colin and I thought the food was lovely. And as we were filling up on vegetables at every meal - a lot more than we would eat normally - we weren't hungry between meals and didn't feel the urge to snack.

After nearly ten days I'd lost 2lb and was back to a size 10, and Colin was thrilled to have lost 5lb and half an inch off his waist.

Emily and Ben appeared slimmer - a good thing as they were looking rather chubby. The others were on school dinners which is probably why there was no difference in their weight.

Colin and I also had more energy, and our digestive systems seemed to benefit - we've both become wonderfully regular in our trips to the loo.

But I think the real transformation was in the children: they slept better, had more energy and weren't as "hyper"; there was markedly less fighting and whingeing.

And Oliver was transformed - he normally spends a lot of time slumped in front of the TV and is quite lethargic, but he's been extremely active, careering around like a madman, which is totally out of character.

The only blip was when he once resolutely refused to eat any more porridge and then wouldn't come to the table to join us for spam fritters at lunchtime.

I finally managed to win him round with some plain air-popped popcorn, and he joined us for the evening meal (fish pie with parsnips).

Now that we've gone back to our old food, the tantrums and general irritability levels have started to rise.

They have returned to the old "I want" whingeing, which is probably my fault for having treats like chocolate biscuits in the kitchen again.

But I am determined not to let so much sugar and additives creep into our diet.

I guess the real downside of wartime rationing was the preparation time.

Meals normally take me about 30 minutes and while I really enjoyed cooking from scratch and the fact that I could see exactly how much salt, sugar and fat we were eating, it all took so long.

One day I spent five hours chopping and preparing food and I was tied to that cooker for two to three hours most days.

It's a real shame that so much convenience food has to be unhealthy and that the only way to get really good food is to spend a lot of time preparing it.

Nutritionist's verdict

Dr Steer says: Wartime rations seem to have boosted the family's vegetable and fibre intake.

This will have improved the efficiency of their digestive systems and made them feel less lethargic.

Sticking to this diet longer term would help their cardiovascular health.

The switch from grazing on highlyrefined, sugary, salty snacks to eating three main meals a day would also have improved their energy levels.

Unrefined foods result in a slower release of energy into the blood, which avoids the energy peaks and troughs associated with eating sugary, refined foods.

But I'm not sure the wartime diet provides the variety and choice that makes eating an enjoyable, pleasurable experience.

The modern diet presents huge opportunities for variety, and research is increasingly showing that a varied diet provides the best balance of nutrients we need to be healthy.

We just need to eat a little less.