They say an army travels on its stomach. It’s true, and if you cut off the enemy’s supply lines, they will suffer enormously. Soldiers at war required a lot more calories than the average person, and lack of it will result in fatigue, inability to think and respond, and disease. The logistics of supplying an army with adequate food is an ongoing experiment, and the entire world has benefitted from military food research. Food preservation methods such as canning and freeze-drying were developed to feed an army. In fact, about half the products we see in grocery stores owe some of their manufacturing process to military development.
That food research in the US is done at Natick Labs, not far from Boston. This is where the US Army is looking for new ways to make food portable, preserved, and palatable. This is where MREs were invented, and where they are still working on making them more varied and tasty. It was here they developed the technology to heat field rations without fire or electricity. And a pizza that would taste good after three years without refrigeration. They design food for different scenarios, like what can be mass-produced in a military kitchen, what can be shipped to remote areas, and what soldiers can carry with them. The latter has given us a new development called the Close Combat Assault Ration, in which the maximum amount of calories is stuffed into the smallest package possible, almost like astronaut food from the Apollo program, except these taste good. Read about the research and technology that goes into military food at Atlas Obscura.
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You’ll also enjoy reading the associated posts The Evolution of American Military Food, Food Innovations That Came from War, and Feeding Armies Through History from Atlas Obscura.
Source: neatorama