Listen to the Doctor

Dr. Carrot popped up in an email from Britain's Imperial War Museums. The image was a World War II poster, part of a campaign urging British families to "eat their vegetables" because produce was not subject to wartime rationing. Vegetables would deliver vitamins to children, a real issue in working class families in those days. Meat was rationed; Britain didn't end restrictions on meat purchases until 1954! It's hard to imagine now; the government knew that to maintain support for the war, they had to distribute the isolated island nation's limited food supplies "evenly and sustainably." Hence rationing.

'Waste not, want not' was the ethos of the era. Any scraps of food left over were even collected by local councils in order to feed pigs or chickens.

The United States also limited food purchases with "coupons" during that war, though more to divert manpower and industry to the fight than because of shortages of imports. That US rationing had an impact on my upbringing even though I was born shortly afterward. Like many comfortable citizens of this rich land, my parents thought the main meal of the day had to include meat. What to do when ration coupons were limited? Their answer was to explore alternative meats that were not rationed. They discovered beef liver and smoked tongue and decided they liked them, so we continued to eat these meats throughout my childhood. I did learn to ask whether we were having either one when I asked a classmate home to dinner in the mid-1950s. Wouldn't want some kid retching at the dinner table.

The US then went on to because a prosperous consumption society in the 1950s. The economy boomed after Depression and devastating war. It was a great time for most white families, the world the MAGAs wax nostalgic for. 'Waste not, want not' became downright unAmerican. Unfettered capitalism thrived on more, more, more.

But no more. We who consumed so happily set in motion climate change and now face consequences we can barely imagine. Meanwhile, let's pull together and eat those carrots!
...Dr. Carrot is pretty weird looking, don't you think? Check the shoes. They would seem to indicate that the doctor is female. But were there many women doctors then? I doubt it. Maybe those are spats? The doctor appears bald -- usually a male trait.

Erudite Partner suggests Dr. Carrot is nonbinary.