
How army rations helped change food - ohjeez
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170515-how-army-rations-helped-change-food
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yourapostasy
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
There are several YouTube channels devoted to reviewing military rations from
all around the world.

~~~
keehun
"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)

~~~
DanBC
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
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"

~~~
Semiapies
"Oh. Ugh. _Hmmm..._ Yeah, that's bad. It's like cardboard infused with old gym
socks and a bit of...lemon, maybe? _another obvious crunch of him taking a
bite_ "

It's very much like he treats his mouth as an instrument of historical study.
If he doesn't taste it, how will anyone _know?_ Given he avoids eating things
he thinks will certainly make him sick, it seems more "weird, but strangely
admirable" than "demented". At least, to me.

Occasionally, _very_ occasionally, you'll hear him hit a point where the food
is so awful that he goes, "Why am I eating this?" But even then, it seems like
a damn fair question, so you feel for the guy. :D There's a reason my friends
and I nicknamed the channel, "Steve, Don't Eat It!"

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ThrustVectoring
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.

~~~
desdiv
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.ph...](http://cougarcheese.wsu.edu/DirectionsWEB/webcart_itemBuy.php?itemid=100)

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chiph
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
Just curious, how much money is this in today's dollars (or Euros)?

~~~
chiph
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.

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mboto
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)

~~~
bane
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.m5...](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)

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.

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Mz
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
The entire field of plastic and reconstructive surgery basically came out of
The Great War.

~~~
Mz
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
Probably Dean Kamen:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/dean_kamen_previews_a_new_prosthet...](https://www.ted.com/talks/dean_kamen_previews_a_new_prosthetic_arm)

possibly
[https://www.ted.com/talks/todd_kuiken_a_prosthetic_arm_that_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/todd_kuiken_a_prosthetic_arm_that_feels)

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BrandonMarc
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.

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ethbro
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_developm...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning#History_and_development_of_canning)

~~~
ghaff
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.

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exhilaration
There was a 99% Invisible episode about this:
[http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/war-and-
pizza/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/war-and-pizza/)

~~~
joezydeco
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.

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Dove
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.

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Semiapies
"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.

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

~~~
paulmd
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.

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

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teddyknox
Why do BBC articles do so well here?

