5 ms·

How Meals Win Wars

86 points by rosser 13y ago

dmckeon 13y ago
That night marked the beginning of a transformation for the battalion of soldiers. ... Sleepy midnight chow became a teeming communion of comrades ... In this case a meal was the center of a transformation, but could another popular shared recurring activity have worked? Say, for startups, a game room, or a pizza and trivia night?
- weisser 13y ago
  Those are far more structured forms of socialization. Food causes people to sit down and face each other as they eat but aside from that they can talk about whatever they want to.
- stfu 13y ago
  trivia night Just to bring a personal anecdote why meals are less problematic: Trivia night would be the fastest way to push me away. I hate made up, faked up bonding events that have no other intention than to force me in a social gathering. At least try coming up with something creative, e.g. Lego night or something like that.
  - hello_newman 13y ago
    I totally agree. I get incredibly uncomfortable in those situations. Forced small talk, fake/made up emotions and laughs, awkward moments, and perceived camaraderie that is really just superficial. The bitch about it is, you can't say that to anyone or you sound anti-social. My skin crawls when I think about being forced to go to a "mixer" or a "meet up" or something like that. Growing up in a family where I was the only boy with 3 sisters (girls, of course, being known as the more "social" sex) and a mother who seemed to make friends with everyone, I am still scarred with flashes of awkward moments that happened years ago.
  - rdl 13y ago
    I think there's value in bonding events, but they should be bottom-up -- the team should just pick things they collectively enjoy doing and do those. There are also plenty of things I enjoy doing which I wouldn't want to do with coworkers, for EoE/HR/etc. reasons. Or just because they're not particularly inclusive; if you have a team with a few 22 year old Mormons, a 45 year old ex-hippie, some bikers, "normal nerds", etc., the favorite activities of each aren't likely to overlap, but some kind of mutually fun things still probably exist. Meals are a pretty easy bet on a safe activity, modulo religious/dietary restrictions.
    - jacques_chester 13y ago
      Steve McConnell says Microsoft units were given morale budgets and expected to spend it. On anything. Rent a movie theatre for the team to watch a new movie. Buy a candyfloss machine. Pretty much anything.
lifeformed 13y ago
It seems like the military could easily raise morale a lot this way. They already put so much money into the war, why not purchase one less $90,000 missile and instead fund a big comfort-food meal every other night?
- chacham15 13y ago
  A missile has a better chance of saving that soldiers life than a smidgen of morale. Speaking as former military, these perks are things that you get used to (and thus dont really value much, especially food) and dont really do much for you when your life is on the line.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    That's the problem with morale. It's tough to build, easy to destroy. People quickly factor changes in conditions into their baseline (the hedonic treadmill); from that point removing a positive thing will only cost you. In many ways, it's better to be stingy in the first place (I think Machiavelli pointed this out).
    - rdl 13y ago
      What works well is progressively improving conditions, which is what you get by applying constant effort in productive ways. I remember how happy people in Iraq on bases were to -1) have some kind of frame to hold the bag to shit into instead of squatting beside their truck 0) have someone else burn their shit for them 1) get porta-potties 2) get porcelain toilets in trailers 3) get porcelain toilets in trailers which didn't electrocute them 4) toilets less than 500m from their homes 5) get bathrooms in their trailers 6) get hardstand buildings. What doesn't work is when you're downsizing and taking away things.
      - jacques_chester 13y ago
        You're right that progressive improvements are good. But they still get quickly baselined. Today the poo-bag-stand is a gift from the logistics gods. Tomorrow it's just how you crap. And if they take it away, blam, shitty moods all round. The example often cited in tech circles is when the free soft drinks fridge disappears or is replaced with paid drinks. Free soft drinks are quickly baselined; taking them away is destructive of morale. I guess by "stingy" I meant that improvements should be chosen carefully. Where possible they should be sustainable indefinitely and be improvements that take longer to baseline.
jacques_chester 13y ago
Australia's most famous general, Sir John Monash, was famous amongst soldiery in his day for ensuring that soldiers never fought without a hot meal. In the freezing cold trenches of WW1, you have to admit that would count for a lot, as a gesture. Before he was a soldier, he was a civil engineer. Small armies create interesting leaders.
mathattack 13y ago
Cutting food for soldiers in a crazy hellish warzone just seems pennywise and poundfoolish. Even if you don't believe all that the article talks about, why short change your million dollar soldiers on food that can make them more effective?
- mpyne 13y ago
  I don't think the reasoning here is related to money, for once. As I understand it MREs are actually fairly expensive to procure through the logistics system even in CONUS (something on the order of $10 each). The MSNBC article that is linked mentions the cause as being simply that the soldiers and Marines pulling security have to be the last ones there, so they need to start moving the support staff (including cooks) out earlier. They're probably already almost maxing-out the airlift and sealift they're able to provide to take servicemembers and materiel back out of Afghanistan, which would give a plausible reason for why the cooks have to start leaving half a year in advance of the rest.
guylhem 13y ago
Disclamer - I don't really "enjoy" food, and I would happily live on soylent green if it was available - to get done with it and save time. I don't know how my personal experience may apply - a large university hospital is not the army. But after reading the article, it reminds me so many things. Common meals, especially when you work in a high pressure environmenss, do create something special - something even above "team spirit", a kind of zen moment that provides a unity of purpose. I remember when 10 years ago I worked as a medical resident in the ICU, and the SAMU (french helimed, basically, if you are really badly damaged, we fly a physician, a paramed and a nurse in a chopper, to right where you are). It was physically quite demanding: when the times are slow, residents for example had to check the expiration dates, reload doses of the drugs that had been put to use in the kits, test the batteries of the various devices, etc. Boring. But when you hear a beep, or when your team name is called, you go. You run to the chopper, or to the ICU if they are low on personel and have to give you other assignements. Anytime in between the beep/run/equipment maintainance, you try to sleep and eat - anyway you can. Back when I did it, it was either in 8h cycles (in one sane departement) or in 24h cycles (everywhere else- a law was voted, but didn't help a lot. too bad) Anyway, one of the "advantages" of working in 8h rotations or doing a straight 24h was that we also had access to food, 24/7 - made daily by a cook around 11am-1pm and conditioned in small portions, but also industrial food of various kind (things you stuff your pocket with if you worry about fainting when your blood glucose sinks too low, but that you'll do your best NOT TO EAT.) When we were lucky and could get a meal at 1pm, you could just ask the cook what he could do for you, depending on what he had, and he usually made it, in minutes - that's magic when all your thoughts are one something else. I still remember - you've got fish today? Put some butter over it, fry it, then add me french fries on the side! Then 2 minutes the food come, it's good, and I start taking about the patient issues with a senior who also ordered specials: eggs, upside down, and a raw steak. The stuff made by the cook, regardless of what it was, was simply better because it provided an emotional connection too. Even when it was conditioned in small portions for when the cook had to leave, it had been prepared by a team member we knew and truste to make the better with what was available. There's no way to express that. How you feel : you are tired, it's 1 or 2 am, you are hungry, you know you still have to work 6 more hours, and you are angry because of something - anything. The nurse misread something. A patient died. A test you expected wasn't ready - anything bad. You are concerned. Then half the team go and share a meal in the break room, and it's like another world. The hassle goes away. You think about what you will do differently, thanks to the inspiration provided by these few minutes of comfort. And the guys or girls you had problems with, or even entered in a shouting match with - well, at that magic time of the day, everything is laid flat, and everyone understand and forgives. That's where the so called "team player spirit" grows. The chef is not there, but his food made that happen. I still have my opinions about food, but a place with a 24/7 on site chef, that I could place a high value on.
rdl 13y ago
The point of midrats is not "fourth meal", but "people don't work 9-5" -- it's for when you work at night (becomes lunch), or have to leave at 4am (so it's breakfast), etc. Each meal in Iraq cost about $45/person. Not sure what it was in Afghanistan.
- shadowcats 13y ago
  WTF? That meal cost seems insane. Did you fly in grassfed beef fillet every day and have it prepared by ninjas or something? Didn't you eat the local food?
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    It'd be the all-up cost. Delivering sorta-fresh food to the far side of the planet in regions where people try to blow up your food trucks is expensive. You think food is bad? Look up the all-up cost for fuel.
    - rdl 13y ago
      Yeah, it was almost all transport and security and staff, not food. Although, they did have some good food (it ranged from public high school at worst to high-end corporate cafeteria at best; varied by base and time). Surf and turf (although food safety required them to overcook steaks) one night a week. Ice cream. Generally a line with lots of choices for entree. Mostly it was frozen stuff from the equivalent of Sysco, but mid-range, not the absolute cheapest it could be. An order of magnitude better than MREs or the meals at US bases. Absolutely none of it was from Iraq or Afghanistan; there was some bought from approved vendors in Kuwait/UAE and trucked/flown in. Fresh fruit and veg for Afghanistan flew from Bahrain 3-5 days/week. The big improvement was putting RO water purification in country, rather than trucking bottled water (used for all potable use) from far away. The standard unit of water was a 12-pack of 1.5L bottles, later a 24 pack of 20oz bottles, or one level up from that, a pallet (you could just call a guy and have him drop a pallet of water on base anywhere you wanted).
      - 13y ago
VLM 13y ago
Not much research done by the journalist: "Observationally: Cooks seem to put 10 or so basic meals into rotation" More like exactly 19. http://nsrdec.natick.army.mil/media/fact/food/UGR.htm http://nsrdec.natick.army.mil/media/fact/food/UGR.htm Also the characterization of the cook misses the point that the difference isn't the dude's motivational direction, but his effort. All .mil chefs I met tried their absolute best, its just "the best" is not so great in the sandbox without heroic effort, heroic effort as seen in that one E-5's efforts. As an Army REMF I always ate pretty well indeed. Its interesting that the nicknames never change, in that you can change the name to UGR-B, or whatever, all you want, but the troops will eternally call then T-Rats as in tray rations (as far as I know they're still calling then T-Rats, maybe its recently changed) Interestingly the average civilian doesn't eat all that many meals either. I've probably eaten a lot of grilled chicken caesars salad over the years. Homemade chicken fajitas with homemade guacamole last night, like practically once a month.

86 points by rosser 13y ago

That night marked the beginning of a transformation for the battalion of soldiers. ... Sleepy midnight chow became a teeming communion of comrades ... In this case a meal was the center of a transformation, but could another popular shared recurring activity have worked? Say, for startups, a game room, or a pizza and trivia night?

weisser 13y ago
Those are far more structured forms of socialization. Food causes people to sit down and face each other as they eat but aside from that they can talk about whatever they want to.
stfu 13y ago
trivia night Just to bring a personal anecdote why meals are less problematic: Trivia night would be the fastest way to push me away. I hate made up, faked up bonding events that have no other intention than to force me in a social gathering. At least try coming up with something creative, e.g. Lego night or something like that.
- hello_newman 13y ago
  I totally agree. I get incredibly uncomfortable in those situations. Forced small talk, fake/made up emotions and laughs, awkward moments, and perceived camaraderie that is really just superficial. The bitch about it is, you can't say that to anyone or you sound anti-social. My skin crawls when I think about being forced to go to a "mixer" or a "meet up" or something like that. Growing up in a family where I was the only boy with 3 sisters (girls, of course, being known as the more "social" sex) and a mother who seemed to make friends with everyone, I am still scarred with flashes of awkward moments that happened years ago.
- rdl 13y ago
  I think there's value in bonding events, but they should be bottom-up -- the team should just pick things they collectively enjoy doing and do those. There are also plenty of things I enjoy doing which I wouldn't want to do with coworkers, for EoE/HR/etc. reasons. Or just because they're not particularly inclusive; if you have a team with a few 22 year old Mormons, a 45 year old ex-hippie, some bikers, "normal nerds", etc., the favorite activities of each aren't likely to overlap, but some kind of mutually fun things still probably exist. Meals are a pretty easy bet on a safe activity, modulo religious/dietary restrictions.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    Steve McConnell says Microsoft units were given morale budgets and expected to spend it. On anything. Rent a movie theatre for the team to watch a new movie. Buy a candyfloss machine. Pretty much anything.

lifeformed 13y ago

It seems like the military could easily raise morale a lot this way. They already put so much money into the war, why not purchase one less $90,000 missile and instead fund a big comfort-food meal every other night?

chacham15 13y ago
A missile has a better chance of saving that soldiers life than a smidgen of morale. Speaking as former military, these perks are things that you get used to (and thus dont really value much, especially food) and dont really do much for you when your life is on the line.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  That's the problem with morale. It's tough to build, easy to destroy. People quickly factor changes in conditions into their baseline (the hedonic treadmill); from that point removing a positive thing will only cost you. In many ways, it's better to be stingy in the first place (I think Machiavelli pointed this out).
  - rdl 13y ago
    What works well is progressively improving conditions, which is what you get by applying constant effort in productive ways. I remember how happy people in Iraq on bases were to -1) have some kind of frame to hold the bag to shit into instead of squatting beside their truck 0) have someone else burn their shit for them 1) get porta-potties 2) get porcelain toilets in trailers 3) get porcelain toilets in trailers which didn't electrocute them 4) toilets less than 500m from their homes 5) get bathrooms in their trailers 6) get hardstand buildings. What doesn't work is when you're downsizing and taking away things.
    - jacques_chester 13y ago
      You're right that progressive improvements are good. But they still get quickly baselined. Today the poo-bag-stand is a gift from the logistics gods. Tomorrow it's just how you crap. And if they take it away, blam, shitty moods all round. The example often cited in tech circles is when the free soft drinks fridge disappears or is replaced with paid drinks. Free soft drinks are quickly baselined; taking them away is destructive of morale. I guess by "stingy" I meant that improvements should be chosen carefully. Where possible they should be sustainable indefinitely and be improvements that take longer to baseline.

jacques_chester 13y ago

Australia's most famous general, Sir John Monash, was famous amongst soldiery in his day for ensuring that soldiers never fought without a hot meal. In the freezing cold trenches of WW1, you have to admit that would count for a lot, as a gesture. Before he was a soldier, he was a civil engineer. Small armies create interesting leaders.

mathattack 13y ago

Cutting food for soldiers in a crazy hellish warzone just seems pennywise and poundfoolish. Even if you don't believe all that the article talks about, why short change your million dollar soldiers on food that can make them more effective?

mpyne 13y ago
I don't think the reasoning here is related to money, for once. As I understand it MREs are actually fairly expensive to procure through the logistics system even in CONUS (something on the order of $10 each). The MSNBC article that is linked mentions the cause as being simply that the soldiers and Marines pulling security have to be the last ones there, so they need to start moving the support staff (including cooks) out earlier. They're probably already almost maxing-out the airlift and sealift they're able to provide to take servicemembers and materiel back out of Afghanistan, which would give a plausible reason for why the cooks have to start leaving half a year in advance of the rest.

guylhem 13y ago

Disclamer - I don't really "enjoy" food, and I would happily live on soylent green if it was available - to get done with it and save time. I don't know how my personal experience may apply - a large university hospital is not the army. But after reading the article, it reminds me so many things. Common meals, especially when you work in a high pressure environmenss, do create something special - something even above "team spirit", a kind of zen moment that provides a unity of purpose. I remember when 10 years ago I worked as a medical resident in the ICU, and the SAMU (french helimed, basically, if you are really badly damaged, we fly a physician, a paramed and a nurse in a chopper, to right where you are). It was physically quite demanding: when the times are slow, residents for example had to check the expiration dates, reload doses of the drugs that had been put to use in the kits, test the batteries of the various devices, etc. Boring. But when you hear a beep, or when your team name is called, you go. You run to the chopper, or to the ICU if they are low on personel and have to give you other assignements. Anytime in between the beep/run/equipment maintainance, you try to sleep and eat - anyway you can. Back when I did it, it was either in 8h cycles (in one sane departement) or in 24h cycles (everywhere else- a law was voted, but didn't help a lot. too bad) Anyway, one of the "advantages" of working in 8h rotations or doing a straight 24h was that we also had access to food, 24/7 - made daily by a cook around 11am-1pm and conditioned in small portions, but also industrial food of various kind (things you stuff your pocket with if you worry about fainting when your blood glucose sinks too low, but that you'll do your best NOT TO EAT.) When we were lucky and could get a meal at 1pm, you could just ask the cook what he could do for you, depending on what he had, and he usually made it, in minutes - that's magic when all your thoughts are one something else. I still remember - you've got fish today? Put some butter over it, fry it, then add me french fries on the side! Then 2 minutes the food come, it's good, and I start taking about the patient issues with a senior who also ordered specials: eggs, upside down, and a raw steak. The stuff made by the cook, regardless of what it was, was simply better because it provided an emotional connection too. Even when it was conditioned in small portions for when the cook had to leave, it had been prepared by a team member we knew and truste to make the better with what was available. There's no way to express that. How you feel : you are tired, it's 1 or 2 am, you are hungry, you know you still have to work 6 more hours, and you are angry because of something - anything. The nurse misread something. A patient died. A test you expected wasn't ready - anything bad. You are concerned. Then half the team go and share a meal in the break room, and it's like another world. The hassle goes away. You think about what you will do differently, thanks to the inspiration provided by these few minutes of comfort. And the guys or girls you had problems with, or even entered in a shouting match with - well, at that magic time of the day, everything is laid flat, and everyone understand and forgives. That's where the so called "team player spirit" grows. The chef is not there, but his food made that happen. I still have my opinions about food, but a place with a 24/7 on site chef, that I could place a high value on.

rdl 13y ago

The point of midrats is not "fourth meal", but "people don't work 9-5" -- it's for when you work at night (becomes lunch), or have to leave at 4am (so it's breakfast), etc. Each meal in Iraq cost about $45/person. Not sure what it was in Afghanistan.

shadowcats 13y ago
WTF? That meal cost seems insane. Did you fly in grassfed beef fillet every day and have it prepared by ninjas or something? Didn't you eat the local food?
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  It'd be the all-up cost. Delivering sorta-fresh food to the far side of the planet in regions where people try to blow up your food trucks is expensive. You think food is bad? Look up the all-up cost for fuel.
  - rdl 13y ago
    Yeah, it was almost all transport and security and staff, not food. Although, they did have some good food (it ranged from public high school at worst to high-end corporate cafeteria at best; varied by base and time). Surf and turf (although food safety required them to overcook steaks) one night a week. Ice cream. Generally a line with lots of choices for entree. Mostly it was frozen stuff from the equivalent of Sysco, but mid-range, not the absolute cheapest it could be. An order of magnitude better than MREs or the meals at US bases. Absolutely none of it was from Iraq or Afghanistan; there was some bought from approved vendors in Kuwait/UAE and trucked/flown in. Fresh fruit and veg for Afghanistan flew from Bahrain 3-5 days/week. The big improvement was putting RO water purification in country, rather than trucking bottled water (used for all potable use) from far away. The standard unit of water was a 12-pack of 1.5L bottles, later a 24 pack of 20oz bottles, or one level up from that, a pallet (you could just call a guy and have him drop a pallet of water on base anywhere you wanted).
    - 13y ago

VLM 13y ago

Not much research done by the journalist: "Observationally: Cooks seem to put 10 or so basic meals into rotation" More like exactly 19. http://nsrdec.natick.army.mil/media/fact/food/UGR.htm http://nsrdec.natick.army.mil/media/fact/food/UGR.htm Also the characterization of the cook misses the point that the difference isn't the dude's motivational direction, but his effort. All .mil chefs I met tried their absolute best, its just "the best" is not so great in the sandbox without heroic effort, heroic effort as seen in that one E-5's efforts. As an Army REMF I always ate pretty well indeed. Its interesting that the nicknames never change, in that you can change the name to UGR-B, or whatever, all you want, but the troops will eternally call then T-Rats as in tray rations (as far as I know they're still calling then T-Rats, maybe its recently changed) Interestingly the average civilian doesn't eat all that many meals either. I've probably eaten a lot of grilled chicken caesars salad over the years. Homemade chicken fajitas with homemade guacamole last night, like practically once a month.