Does it take a world war to cure an economy in a depression and fix bad eating habits? World War II required the rationing of food and materials as well as creating millions of jobs in industrial labor to churn out the war machine. In other words, the war forced a controlled diet and physical exercise on a nation fighting a war in Europe and the Pacific. At the outbreak of our current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we were asked to continue shopping. I’m thinking obesity wasn’t a problem during World War II.