Sometime back in April of this year, the almighty FB algorithm suggested a page called the 1940s Experiment. It is the creation of a lovely lady, a little younger than me, from the UK, and she is a wartime rationing historian. Her story of living frugally and weight loss intrigued me. Thus, I went down the rabbit hole of researching what people ate and the recipes for some of these dishes. What got my immediate attention was that most of the meals that I saw fit or could fit neatly into a lectin-free lifestyle. Granted, there would have to be some serious swaps like sweet potatoes for regular potatoes and non-lectin-based flours for wheat flour, and hence, baking our own version of the “national loaf”, or luckily finding an alternative for it at Bread SRSLY, allulose instead of normal sugar, which means making my own allulose-sweetened jam instead of using regular sugar. And yet, I hesitated.
Once again, FB suggested a video in my Reels feed that piqued my interest. I watched this short video that popped up in my FB Reels feed from 1940s Cooking from Olga. It was about prepping and packing for a picnic. She made a simple sandwich of cheese and chutney, a green salad, a potato salad, lemonade, and sliced very modest pieces of fruited cake, and added a small bowl of blackberries.
Now, I freely admit, by our modern and somewhat gluttonous portion sizes, what she prepared for four people hardly seemed like enough for one. I know that I could have eaten it all in one serving. However, we are not talking about me and my bad eating habits. You can see by watching the video that once everything was plated on a period-appropriate picnic plate (something that is akin to a modern salad plate for size reference), there was a plate brimming with food.
And then something clicked for me: a WWII ration diet wasn’t too far off from eating “plox” as far as portion sizes were concerned, and minimal animal source proteins and veg heavy fit into the plan as well. It all made sense that hadn’t before. The only thing that needed to be done was to swap out the lectins for their non-lectin equivalent, as I mentioned above.
So I thought to myself, can I be more intentional with food rather than mindlessly eating? Can I live off a British WWII Ration diet and make it completely Plant Paradox compliant? Can I do it for a week as I usually struggle beyond three days?
Since I am a foodie, I plan on keeping track of my challenge and food experiments on my rather comatose blog. Tune in to find out.
Of Food & Foxes 