Doctors privately reported during the second world war a rise in cases of scurvy and rickets brought on by food rationing, according to health ministry files released at the national archives yesterday.

Civil servants, who were convinced that the British were enjoying a healthier diet during the war, dismissed the doctors' concern and blamed the patients involved for not eating or washing themselves properly.

The evidence of the impact of rationing on people's health was coordinated at the Ministry of Health by Magnus Pyke, who later became a popular exponent of science on television.

A consumer survey for the ministry showed that meat, including bacon, topped the list of what people considered healthy foods, but the official propaganda effort had secured second place for vegetables, and there was a wider acceptance of wholemeal bread.

Milk and fresh fruit, which were in short supply, hardly figured.

A survey of employers concluded that staff had lost weight but that this was good for them.

A welfare officer at the planemakers De Havilland reported: "People have lost weight but it has had no bad effects.

"In fact the general worker is better for it. He is eating less but more balanced foods, drinking less and walking more, and this is good for him. It is the supervisory grades who suffer from being run down and losing weight through mental strain."

But doctors took a different view. John Wilkinson at Manchester Royal Infirmary wrote in June 1942 of having seen in the previous four months eight cases of scurvy from vitamin C deficiency.

But his fears were dismissed by a Dr Quine at the Ministry of Health, who told a colleague: "Officially we must keep an open mind. But it is quite clear that such persons as do suffer from scurvy do so of their own free will and not because the necessary food is not available and within the means of all. After all, boiled potatoes are the nation's chief antiscorbutic."

Similar fear of an increase in skin rashes was also dismissed by Whitehall. "It must be born in mind that many people who are working in industry for the first time are now getting oil on their skins which they scrub with poor quality soap," an official said.