In literature, the term “ration” is employed both in its literal sense—as a measured or allotted portion of food or supplies—and in a more figurative way to comment on human condition and societal constraints. Several authors depict rationing in military and wartime scenarios, such as the precise addition of soluble coffee to reserve rations ([1], [2], [3]), the modest weekly allowances described by Walt Whitman ([4], [5]), and the practical advice for carrying coffee and sugar rations even at the expense of bread ([6], [7]). Meanwhile, ration also appears in broader reflections on deprivation and the careful management of scarce resources, whether in prison settings ([8], [9], [10]) or as a metaphor for the limited portion of daily life that one can claim ([11]). Through these varied instances, literature uses “ration” to evoke both the physical reality of measured sustenance and the deeper symbolic notion of what is available to us in times of need.