WW2 Ration Calculator: How Much Food Was a Family Allowed?
During World War II, every person in Britain was allowed only a fixed amount of food each week. Our calculator below shows exactly how much a household would have received.
Enter how many people are in your family and how many weeks you want to cover. The tool scales the standard 1942 weekly ration to show your household total.
WW2 Ration Calculator
See how much food a British household was allowed during World War II rationing. Enter the number of people and weeks, and the calculator works out the total ration based on the standard 1942 weekly allowance per adult.
Based on the typical 1942 UK ration. Allowances changed often through the war, and meat was rationed by price (1 shilling 2 pence worth per adult per week) rather than by weight.
How Rationing Worked in WW2
Britain introduced food rationing in January 1940, a few months after the war began.
Every person was given a ration book full of coupons. You registered with a local shop, and the grocer marked off your coupons as you collected your weekly allowance.
The amounts changed often as supplies rose and fell. The figures in this calculator reflect a typical week in 1942, near the middle of the war.
What Was on the Ration
The ration covered the foods that were hardest to import or produce at home.
Butter, sugar, bacon, cheese, tea, cooking fats, jam, and sweets were all limited by weight. Meat was rationed by price rather than by weight, so a shopper chose between a little good cut or more of a cheaper one.
Eggs and milk were controlled too, and fresh eggs were often replaced by tins of dried egg powder. To see how families actually lived on these amounts, read our guide to what families ate on wartime rations.
The 1942 Weekly Ration Per Adult
These are the typical amounts one adult was allowed each week in Britain around 1942. The exact figures moved up and down through the war as supplies changed, but this is a fair picture of the middle years.
| Food | Weekly amount per adult |
|---|---|
| Bacon and ham | 4 oz (113 g) |
| Sugar | 8 oz (227 g) |
| Butter | 2 oz (57 g) |
| Margarine | 4 oz (113 g) |
| Cooking fat / lard | 2 oz (57 g) |
| Cheese | 2 oz (57 g) |
| Tea | 2 oz (57 g) |
| Jam or preserves | 4 oz (113 g) |
| Sweets | 3 oz (85 g) |
| Fresh eggs | 1 egg (when available) |
| Milk | About 3 pints |
| Meat | About 1s 2d worth (a small joint) |
The calculator above scales these amounts to your household size and the number of weeks you choose, so you can see the full shopping basket a family would have carried home.
What Was Not Rationed
Not everything was limited, and cooks leaned hard on the foods that were free.
Vegetables, especially potatoes and carrots, were never rationed, which is why wartime cooking is full of them. Bread stayed off the ration for most of the war, though it was made from the coarse National Loaf flour.
This is the logic behind dishes like Woolton pie and bubble and squeak, which stretched a tiny ration with plenty of unrationed vegetables.
Ration Calculator FAQ
How much sugar were you allowed in WW2?
The typical allowance was 8 ounces of sugar per adult per week. That is half a pound, which had to cover all baking, preserving, and sweetening of tea.
How much meat could you get on the ration?
Meat was rationed by price, at about one shilling and two pence worth per adult each week. Our guide on how much meat you could really eat explains what that bought.
Was bread rationed during the war?
No, bread was not rationed during the war itself. It was only rationed afterward, from 1946 to 1948, when wheat supplies were at their worst.
Cook the Ration Yourself
Once you see how little a family had, the cleverness of wartime cooking really stands out.
Try stretching your own ration with our 1940s ration breakfast ideas or browse the full set of wartime dessert recipes that made a sweet treat from almost nothing.