6. Lend Lease and American food rationing
During the early years of the Second World War, Britain relied on food imports from the United States and Canada to feed its population at home, and its troops throughout the Empire. During the period of Lend-Lease, the American food production chain routed food to Great Britain, and later the Soviet Union. The US government also prepared to impose food rationing on the United States, an option already in place in Britain. It was the first federally imposed restrictions on the purchase of food ever in the United States, imposed following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The first American food rationed, sugar, in May, 1942, was followed by rationing of meat, cheese, processed foods, and many other foodstuffs.
Most American grocers and the food production change welcomed the rationing, since in the weeks which followed Pearl Harbor and the disastrous campaign in the Philippines, panic buying and hoarding affected supplies. Retailers, weary of arbitrating disputes between customers and their employees, supported rationing almost unanimously. Black marketers did not, and a spate of delivery truck hijackings was quashed by the FBI and in some cases local law enforcement. Rationing stabilized the availability of food in stores, though shortages of some items, such as coffee, continued through most of 1943, since the ships bringing it to America sailed in waters infested with German U-boats.