15 ms·

How army rations helped change food

113 points by ohjeez 9y ago

mboto 9y ago
You can see a list of rations from around the world here http://imgur.com/gallery/BvExp9V http://imgur.com/gallery/BvExp9V http://imgur.com/gallery/USkcw http://imgur.com/gallery/USkcw
- smcl 9y ago
  In the first link they all look surprisingly edible. I think that the french one also includes some brandy which is pretty cool. The caption on the Russian one about the "Cblp" (Сыр, pron. "seer") made me smile :)
- bane 9y ago
  There's an entire community of ration reviewers on youtube, one of the best is gundog. If you watch enough videos they'll start to reference each other in trades of hard to get rations. https://www.youtube.com/user/gundog4314 https://www.youtube.com/user/gundog4314 You can also just buy them, they aren't cheap though http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1313.TR12.TRC2.A0.H0.Xmilitary+ration.TRS0&_nkw=military+ration&_sacat=0 http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m5... I've eaten a few of the U.S. ones. Most of the menus are surprisingly good. The thing that blew my mind the first time was the flameless heater. If you're clever with it you end up with a nice hot meal. Kind of amazing considering they specifically don't want to use any chemical preservatives, but still have long life and thermal range stability.
ethbro 9y ago
Although mentioned near the end of the article, the beginnings of food canning are fascinating (if you're into that sort of thing): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning#History_and_development_of_canning https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning#History_and_developm...
- ghaff 9y ago
  I happened to be researching this for a book a few months back. I noticed at the time that article on Wikipedia appears to be missing a bit of history although much of that missing information actually appears elsewhere on Wikipedia (and is sourced). Canning seems to have originated with the Dutch navy in the mid-1700s and there was a small salmon canning industry in Holland by the end of that century.
BrandonMarc 9y ago
It's amazing how many of these things were only understood and put into widespread practice in the past one or two centuries. Wide-ranging aspects of modern life are impacted by the fact that we can depend on grocery stores with quality food, and it's all too easy to take for granted how this changes the way we live compared to our recent ancestors.
yourapostasy 9y ago
HN readers who served in armed forces, if you ever got a chance to trade rations with armed forces of other nations, which nation's military rations impressed you the most (either in a good or bad way)? And as a tangent, if you also got to eat in the field kitchens of other nations' armed forces, which nation's field kitchen impressed you the most (in a good or bad way)? I've heard praise from US armed forces services members for French, Dutch, and New Zealand rations before, curious about others' experiences.
- wodenokoto 9y ago
  There are several YouTube channels devoted to reviewing military rations from all around the world.
  - keehun 9y ago
    "Let's get it on a plate. [. . .] Alright!" A recent video about a United Arab Emirates 24hr Ration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMSse6J-wfU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMSse6J-wfU
    - parshimers 9y ago
      "Yeah, Nice."
    - DanBC 9y ago
      That's one of my favourite youtube channels. I'm not sure why. I think his review of Israeli rations might be an example of a less appetising ration - a lot of olives and a lot of tuna. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryh_HgKoy54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryh_HgKoy54
      - paulmd 9y ago
        Hah, I'm a big fan of his as well. It's a very small and weird internet world. I never thought that MREs would be something that's interesting enough to subscribe to. It's ironic because he's a gourmet of the ultimate pre-packaged food. And he's so infectiously enthusiastic about it, even when something tastes nasty he's so upbeat about it. "Hmm... yeah... that definitely tastes a little off... (another bite, chews thoughtfully) yeah that's definitely starting to go... /nods sagely as he chews." "(opens bulging can of creamed corn) Oh yeah that stuff definitely has botulism... the smell is AWFUL! /shit eating grin"
exhilaration 9y ago
There was a 99% Invisible episode about this: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/war-and-pizza/ http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/war-and-pizza/
- joezydeco 9y ago
  The 99PI episode is great. It goes into a bit more detail about how it's not only important to develop these food technologies but also get the overall food industry to adopt them as well. If a war does happen, the manufacturers are already prepared to ramp up ration production.
Mz 9y ago
A lot of medical breakthroughs also come out of the military. The Military: A strangely civilizing force for reasons most people are largely unaware of.
- angersock 9y ago
  The entire field of plastic and reconstructive surgery basically came out of The Great War.
  - Mz 9y ago
    I read or heard somewhere that a lot of modern brain surgery techniques came out of Vietnam. Thanks to the basically new invention of military helicopters, they could rapidly medivac people who previously would have just died in the field with no hope of survival. They had people out cold with dirt in their hair, etc, and they began doing things like going in through the mouth which was cleaner, had less hard structures between it and the brain than the scalp and generally healed up better. I also saw a video, probably a TED talk, by a guy who was asked by the military to revolutionize prostheses for military members who had lost an arm. He initially said that their ambitious goal for improved functionality could not be done. They inundated him with stats on people who had lost an arm serving their country. Their punchline was the number of soldiers who had lost both arms. At that point he caved and accepted this crazy sounding, "impossible" task which led to radical improvements in the tech, iirc.
    - pchristensen 9y ago
      Probably Dean Kamen: https://www.ted.com/talks/dean_kamen_previews_a_new_prosthetic_arm https://www.ted.com/talks/dean_kamen_previews_a_new_prosthet... possibly https://www.ted.com/talks/todd_kuiken_a_prosthetic_arm_that_feels https://www.ted.com/talks/todd_kuiken_a_prosthetic_arm_that_...
  - dvtv75 9y ago
    I recall reading that the peak of medicine under the Roman Empire was not reached again until The Great War. Quite interesting, and it makes me wonder how far we would have come had the Roman Empire not fallen.
ThrustVectoring 9y ago
One of my favorite cheeses - Cougar Gold - was developed with military funding. Typical cheeses will build up carbon dioxide gasses, which makes putting cheese into a sealed container problematic. Washington State University was doing research into making can-able cheeses without that gaseous build-up in the 1940s, and got a grant for it.
- zwieback 9y ago
  I had no idea. I love this cheese, occasionally we get a gift of it from a WSU alum.
- desdiv 9y ago
  TIL that Washington State University makes and sells[0] its own cheese from its own dairy herd. [0] http://cougarcheese.wsu.edu/DirectionsWEB/webcart_itemBuy.php?itemid=100 http://cougarcheese.wsu.edu/DirectionsWEB/webcart_itemBuy.ph...
chiph 9y ago
And it all started with Nicolas Appert. > In 1795 the French military offered a cash prize of 12,000 francs for a new method to preserve food. After some 14 or 15 years of experiment, Appert submitted his invention and won the prize in January 1810 on condition that he make the method public https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Appert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Appert
- kilroy123 9y ago
  Just curious, how much money is this in today's dollars (or Euros)?
  - chiph 9y ago
    The online calculator I found only goes back to the middle of 1901, so 12,000 FF back then is worth about 47,110 Euros today. Going back earlier than 1901 would require some interesting historic research. But a guess would be that it would have been serious money.
  - elnate 9y ago
    If it helps at all, enough to build a canning factory according to Wikipedia. > Unfortunately for Appert, the factory which he had built with his prize money was razed in 1814 by Allied soldiers when they entered France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning#French_Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning#French_Origins
peteretep 9y ago
I ate a lot of UK ration packs in the UK and while I certainly had favourites, they were remarkably good
- paulmd 9y ago
  I recently stumbled on a youtube channel of a guy who goes through and samples food from various ancient ration packs. Even 50 years down the road, many of them are still edible and very tasty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2FOcFiqLeE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2FOcFiqLeE This is such a weird, niche thing but it's actually fascinating to me. The internet is a weird, weird place. edit: Hah, someone else posted a link to another of his reviews of a UAE ration, and another reviewer who does the same thing with MREs. Turns out the internet is a smaller world than I imagined.
Dove 9y ago
Well, this is a subset of the things the military has given us. It has also given us duct tape, for example. And NASA gave us velcro. The common theme here, it seems to me, is that when people are working in hostile environments for high stakes, problems which are normally easy, such as preparing and storing food, fixing leaks, or keeping things put, can become insurmountable barriers which warrant a great deal of ingenuity and investment. The solutions found in those contexts can apply to the rest of us and make the problem easier. So I would expect, for example, long range spaceflight to yield medical advances in self-diagnosis and treatment.
myrandomcomment 9y ago
French, German, Dutch, Korean. French wins hands down for yummyness.
Semiapies 9y ago
"Under high pressure, microorganisms burst, and the food is sterilised, a process that today yields preservative-free lunch meats, packaged guacamole that stays green under its wrapper, and fresh-tasting bottled juices (the process is sometimes called cold pasteurisation)." A confusing bit of nomenclature, as "cold pasteurisation" is also used to refer to using ionizing radiation on food for the same purposes.
teddyknox 9y ago
Why do BBC articles do so well here?

113 points by ohjeez 9y ago

You can see a list of rations from around the world here http://imgur.com/gallery/BvExp9V http://imgur.com/gallery/BvExp9V http://imgur.com/gallery/USkcw http://imgur.com/gallery/USkcw

smcl 9y ago
In the first link they all look surprisingly edible. I think that the french one also includes some brandy which is pretty cool. The caption on the Russian one about the "Cblp" (Сыр, pron. "seer") made me smile :)
bane 9y ago
There's an entire community of ration reviewers on youtube, one of the best is gundog. If you watch enough videos they'll start to reference each other in trades of hard to get rations. https://www.youtube.com/user/gundog4314 https://www.youtube.com/user/gundog4314 You can also just buy them, they aren't cheap though http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1313.TR12.TRC2.A0.H0.Xmilitary+ration.TRS0&_nkw=military+ration&_sacat=0 http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m5... I've eaten a few of the U.S. ones. Most of the menus are surprisingly good. The thing that blew my mind the first time was the flameless heater. If you're clever with it you end up with a nice hot meal. Kind of amazing considering they specifically don't want to use any chemical preservatives, but still have long life and thermal range stability.

ethbro 9y ago

Although mentioned near the end of the article, the beginnings of food canning are fascinating (if you're into that sort of thing): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning#History_and_development_of_canning https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning#History_and_developm...

ghaff 9y ago
I happened to be researching this for a book a few months back. I noticed at the time that article on Wikipedia appears to be missing a bit of history although much of that missing information actually appears elsewhere on Wikipedia (and is sourced). Canning seems to have originated with the Dutch navy in the mid-1700s and there was a small salmon canning industry in Holland by the end of that century.

BrandonMarc 9y ago

It's amazing how many of these things were only understood and put into widespread practice in the past one or two centuries. Wide-ranging aspects of modern life are impacted by the fact that we can depend on grocery stores with quality food, and it's all too easy to take for granted how this changes the way we live compared to our recent ancestors.

yourapostasy 9y ago

HN readers who served in armed forces, if you ever got a chance to trade rations with armed forces of other nations, which nation's military rations impressed you the most (either in a good or bad way)? And as a tangent, if you also got to eat in the field kitchens of other nations' armed forces, which nation's field kitchen impressed you the most (in a good or bad way)? I've heard praise from US armed forces services members for French, Dutch, and New Zealand rations before, curious about others' experiences.

wodenokoto 9y ago
There are several YouTube channels devoted to reviewing military rations from all around the world.
- keehun 9y ago
  "Let's get it on a plate. [. . .] Alright!" A recent video about a United Arab Emirates 24hr Ration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMSse6J-wfU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMSse6J-wfU
  - parshimers 9y ago
    "Yeah, Nice."
  - DanBC 9y ago
    That's one of my favourite youtube channels. I'm not sure why. I think his review of Israeli rations might be an example of a less appetising ration - a lot of olives and a lot of tuna. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryh_HgKoy54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryh_HgKoy54
    - paulmd 9y ago
      Hah, I'm a big fan of his as well. It's a very small and weird internet world. I never thought that MREs would be something that's interesting enough to subscribe to. It's ironic because he's a gourmet of the ultimate pre-packaged food. And he's so infectiously enthusiastic about it, even when something tastes nasty he's so upbeat about it. "Hmm... yeah... that definitely tastes a little off... (another bite, chews thoughtfully) yeah that's definitely starting to go... /nods sagely as he chews." "(opens bulging can of creamed corn) Oh yeah that stuff definitely has botulism... the smell is AWFUL! /shit eating grin"

exhilaration 9y ago

There was a 99% Invisible episode about this: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/war-and-pizza/ http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/war-and-pizza/

joezydeco 9y ago
The 99PI episode is great. It goes into a bit more detail about how it's not only important to develop these food technologies but also get the overall food industry to adopt them as well. If a war does happen, the manufacturers are already prepared to ramp up ration production.

Mz 9y ago

A lot of medical breakthroughs also come out of the military. The Military: A strangely civilizing force for reasons most people are largely unaware of.

angersock 9y ago
The entire field of plastic and reconstructive surgery basically came out of The Great War.
- Mz 9y ago
  I read or heard somewhere that a lot of modern brain surgery techniques came out of Vietnam. Thanks to the basically new invention of military helicopters, they could rapidly medivac people who previously would have just died in the field with no hope of survival. They had people out cold with dirt in their hair, etc, and they began doing things like going in through the mouth which was cleaner, had less hard structures between it and the brain than the scalp and generally healed up better. I also saw a video, probably a TED talk, by a guy who was asked by the military to revolutionize prostheses for military members who had lost an arm. He initially said that their ambitious goal for improved functionality could not be done. They inundated him with stats on people who had lost an arm serving their country. Their punchline was the number of soldiers who had lost both arms. At that point he caved and accepted this crazy sounding, "impossible" task which led to radical improvements in the tech, iirc.
  - pchristensen 9y ago
    Probably Dean Kamen: https://www.ted.com/talks/dean_kamen_previews_a_new_prosthetic_arm https://www.ted.com/talks/dean_kamen_previews_a_new_prosthet... possibly https://www.ted.com/talks/todd_kuiken_a_prosthetic_arm_that_feels https://www.ted.com/talks/todd_kuiken_a_prosthetic_arm_that_...
- dvtv75 9y ago
  I recall reading that the peak of medicine under the Roman Empire was not reached again until The Great War. Quite interesting, and it makes me wonder how far we would have come had the Roman Empire not fallen.

ThrustVectoring 9y ago

One of my favorite cheeses - Cougar Gold - was developed with military funding. Typical cheeses will build up carbon dioxide gasses, which makes putting cheese into a sealed container problematic. Washington State University was doing research into making can-able cheeses without that gaseous build-up in the 1940s, and got a grant for it.

zwieback 9y ago
I had no idea. I love this cheese, occasionally we get a gift of it from a WSU alum.
desdiv 9y ago
TIL that Washington State University makes and sells[0] its own cheese from its own dairy herd. [0] http://cougarcheese.wsu.edu/DirectionsWEB/webcart_itemBuy.php?itemid=100 http://cougarcheese.wsu.edu/DirectionsWEB/webcart_itemBuy.ph...

chiph 9y ago

And it all started with Nicolas Appert. > In 1795 the French military offered a cash prize of 12,000 francs for a new method to preserve food. After some 14 or 15 years of experiment, Appert submitted his invention and won the prize in January 1810 on condition that he make the method public https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Appert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Appert

kilroy123 9y ago
Just curious, how much money is this in today's dollars (or Euros)?
- chiph 9y ago
  The online calculator I found only goes back to the middle of 1901, so 12,000 FF back then is worth about 47,110 Euros today. Going back earlier than 1901 would require some interesting historic research. But a guess would be that it would have been serious money.
- elnate 9y ago
  If it helps at all, enough to build a canning factory according to Wikipedia. > Unfortunately for Appert, the factory which he had built with his prize money was razed in 1814 by Allied soldiers when they entered France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning#French_Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning#French_Origins

peteretep 9y ago

I ate a lot of UK ration packs in the UK and while I certainly had favourites, they were remarkably good

paulmd 9y ago
I recently stumbled on a youtube channel of a guy who goes through and samples food from various ancient ration packs. Even 50 years down the road, many of them are still edible and very tasty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2FOcFiqLeE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2FOcFiqLeE This is such a weird, niche thing but it's actually fascinating to me. The internet is a weird, weird place. edit: Hah, someone else posted a link to another of his reviews of a UAE ration, and another reviewer who does the same thing with MREs. Turns out the internet is a smaller world than I imagined.

Dove 9y ago

Well, this is a subset of the things the military has given us. It has also given us duct tape, for example. And NASA gave us velcro. The common theme here, it seems to me, is that when people are working in hostile environments for high stakes, problems which are normally easy, such as preparing and storing food, fixing leaks, or keeping things put, can become insurmountable barriers which warrant a great deal of ingenuity and investment. The solutions found in those contexts can apply to the rest of us and make the problem easier. So I would expect, for example, long range spaceflight to yield medical advances in self-diagnosis and treatment.

myrandomcomment 9y ago

French, German, Dutch, Korean. French wins hands down for yummyness.

Semiapies 9y ago

"Under high pressure, microorganisms burst, and the food is sterilised, a process that today yields preservative-free lunch meats, packaged guacamole that stays green under its wrapper, and fresh-tasting bottled juices (the process is sometimes called cold pasteurisation)." A confusing bit of nomenclature, as "cold pasteurisation" is also used to refer to using ionizing radiation on food for the same purposes.

teddyknox 9y ago

Why do BBC articles do so well here?