Angry Planet - Coming soon, a pizza that stays fresh for three years - courtesy of the U.S. Army

Episode Date: September 30, 2015

The need for armies, both ancient and modern, to travel long distances to thwart enemies and take territory has made militaries one of the driving factors behind food science.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters' News. I can literally go through the grocery store and I think remove at least 50% of its contents if I take anything that has a military origin or influence. This week on War College, we go from the front lines to the grocery aisle

and find out how our food supply has been changed forever by military innovation. You're listening to War College, a weekly discussion of a world in conflict focusing on the stories behind the front lines. Here's your host. Jason Fields. Hello and welcome to War College. I'm Reuters' opinion editor, Jason Fields. And I'm Matthew Galt with War is Boring.

Today, we're talking to journalist and author, Anastasia Mark De Salcedo, about her latest book, Combat Ready Kitchen, How the U.S. military shapes the way we eat. Anastasia, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me, Jason and Matthew. It's said that an army marches on its stomach. Often people don't realize how true that is. What is it about the...

diets of the early great conquerors such as the Romans that gave them an edge in combat? Well before we talk about the edge let's talk just about what you need for food that would be taken into battle and that is the very first wars were fought relatively close to home and that would have been in ancient Sumer and the ancient Sumerian city stakes were constantly warring but they were very close by a matter of miles. So soldiers could literally go home for lunch. They brought with them some barley cakes, some beer, and some green onions, but that was about it.

In other civilizations, which began to roam further afield to fight wars and conquer new lands, they had a need to bring food with them. And that's really where this whole entry of the military in food science and food preservation begins. And so that would mean food that was dried or salted. It could be smoked or it could be pickled. And some of the very first foods were, again, these cakes that people brought. But very quickly, ancient armies hit upon the idea of a preserved protein. And that would have been dried or salted.

When you say really early, how early were talking? That would have been, and I was just about to get to that, that would have been in ancient Egypt, when they began to travel with a bit of dried or salted fish. And in fact, this was so important to them that soldiers received an allotment every three months as their wages. So they were actually paid in food? They were paid in a bit of food, that is correct. One of the great bits of your book that I really love when you talk about the Mongols, which is one of the greatest land armies to ever walk the earth.

Around 1,200 AD, 1250s or so, right? Can you describe their diet to us? Yes, I actually found their diet to be one of the more interesting of the warrior cultures. And one of the things that I noticed about the Mongols is they were really their whole lot. were oriented toward war and preparing their citizens to be warriors. And their food reflected that. What they ate, at least on the trail, were powdered milk. They were, in fact, the inventors of powdered milk,

and this would be put into probably a bladder, an animal bladder with water. And while the Mongol was galloping across the plains, it would be shaking up into a milkshake. And the other ration would have been a sort of cured horse meat or other kind of remnant that would have been pressed between the rider's saddle and cured with a sweat of the horse's flanks and as he rode. And then it would kind of be this hard little salty bit of meat, a jerky. a jerky.

And they also drink the horse's blood, correct? Oh yes, I'm glad to remember that piece. And there was an infallible emergency ration when everything else ran out. And that was that the Mongol warrior would cut a vein in his mount's neck and drink straight from that. And actually, there was an episode of bizarre foods on the travel channel that talked about But have Mongols still do that. Oh, do they?

That's fascinating. They apparently still do that in their yurts on the step. It is a tradition that has gone on, at least in nomadic peoples. So that gives you actually both protein as well as liquid, right? Yes. So, I mean, it's actually not simply just an act of desperation, but it's somewhat efficient. Yeah, I would, I mean, the protein is probably a. superior food when you compare it to the barley cakes and the beer of the ancient Sumerians,

although they might have been more fun. So all this talk of blood, I think, kind of transitions into the next thing I wanted to ask you about, which was the Aztec Empire, or the Aztec kingdoms, rather, and their need for food and kind of the what that drove them towards. Okay, I'm going to be a little bit careful on this because I may get run off the internet by hordes of pitchfork waving Redditers. But one of those theories about what gave rise to the cannibalism among the Aztecs is that they had experienced several years of crop failures and were unable to feed themselves.

So around 1500, three Aztec city states formed an alliance and began what we know to be the Aztec Empire. And what they sought in the subjugated city states was not sort of the typical state spoils of war, but simply edibles. And those included tributes, you know, the normal kind of stuff that they might provide troughs and stuff. But it also included enemy soldiers. And these were marched back to the capital and then went through the process that most of us know about of human sacrifice. And one of the theories about this is that this was because in that region there had been no large mammal that could be domesticated when agriculture was born. And so the diet was really primarily a vegetarian one, at least for commoners. And so this system, around which there was an entire religious and political institutions built,

allowed the nobles, and that would include the warriors and priests, to on regular basis, at least get a little animal protein. So you're talking about it was for the upper class. For the upper class exclusively. That's definitely, I had not heard that before. I was actually in Mexico City a few years ago, and they hadn't brought that up, interestingly enough. What sort of evidence are you citing?

What sort of evidence am I citing? Yeah. Oh, I had not done my own research on this, so I'm citing other, you know, researchers. and there were several anthropologists. I think that the fact that the Aztecs practice can well as I understand it is not in dispute. Why is the question? And there's sort of this balance between what this theory, which is called the ecological theory,

and others who believe it was more of a religious and ideological bend. But I can see that those two things could be coexistent. Right, that makes sense. It's a, yeah, absolutely. So we've been talking largely about ancient militaries, and I do want to, before we move on too far, I actually, you know, I hate to pass over the Romans entirely simply because they're my favorite ancient civilization. So can you talk a little bit about, I mean, the Roman Army is famous for standardization, and was that, was the diet also part of that?

Well, I can't say for sure, but I mean, certainly they had, they produced, their agricultural system tended to produce things in great quantities, and so in that sense it could have been. What I found very interesting about the Roman Empire was the spread of pork products, And that actually occurred because a couple things. One is that all Roman legionnaires were also landowners and farmers, and that was considered to be a great honor. And so on farms, naturally, you might have a few pigs because they forage very well, and so they're easy to grow.

And the second reason is that, of course, the Romans had really, tapped into the world salt supply, and so they were able to pay their soldiers in wages and salt, as we all know, and that's where the word salary comes from. And that salt was used to cure prosciutto and sausages and bacon. And that spread far and wide with the Roman Empire and persist to this day. Just make clear to people. We're talking largely during, I guess, the Republican and late Republican period, because after a while, they no longer had any land to give away. But I will stop being pedantic right there, I promise. And so, Matt, I knew you had a question to ask about something somewhat more modern. As the armies moved farther and farther afield, the military

needed ways to preserve the food. And one of the big innovators was, was what were the French, correct, during the French Revolution? It was also a French Revolution in food preservation. Yes. That is actually a very interesting moment in the history of food preservation

and in the history of food science. And it's the moment that I would mark the military's entrance into the kitchen, so to speak. Until then, armies had relied on traditional folk methods to preserve food. And again, that is drying, salting, pickling, and smoking. And after the French Revolutionary War, either due to difficulty in feeding soldiers, starvation, and hunger experience in that country, the French government began to look for a fifth major way to preserve food.

And in 1895, a challenge was issued to any would-be food technologists who could come up with this method. That was met by a celebrity chef who could for royalty and then had retired to start a candy shop. His name was Nicholas a pear. And actually, the candy shop was the perfect place to do this sort of experimentation. And he spent over 10 years, I think at night, working on this method of present. of green food and what he did was to put fruit and vegetables, meat, and other things into a glass container inside a larger metal container with boiling water in it. This is something that's very common in a candy shop which is called a water bath and it maintains the food, it cooks the food

at a constant temperature and then he would stuporpeer up the glass container and that that food would stay fresh for months if not years. He, this was, it took him quite a while to persuade the French government to accept his invention. And, and finally in 1809, they just deemed it good enough and awarded him 12,000 francs. Unfortunately, they also took claim to the invention. And so, Nicola Paird died a pauper and unknown. but he had literally invented the fifth major food preservation technique and it changed our larders and the world. I remember growing up, I was taught in high school that Upton Sinclair wrote the jungle and that it caused a great scandal

because people didn't realize how their food was being prepared and kind of paved the way for the Pure Food and Drug Act and the FDA. What I did not know, and what I was very interested to read in Combat Ready Kitchen, Anastasia, is about the United States Army's beef scandal in the hand that it had in it. And I was wondering if you could kind of tell us what happened. Well, this is actually another very interesting moment because it was the moment in which meat eating in the military was modernized. And the reason for that is that until the Spanish-American War, meat had arrived literally on the hoof. That is to say that cattle was driven to camp and was slaughtered in camp and prepared right then and there. And for the Spanish-American War, the U.S. military had finally decided a few decades earlier

to switch over to a system of chilled carcass beef and camp. meat. So this was a radical departure. And the kerfuffle that I'm going about to describe may in part have been sort of a old guard which really wanted to have the on the hoof meat and a new guard that wanted the modern meat. But what ended up happening is that during the Spanish-American War, both the chilled carcasses and the canned beef was prepared in Chicago, which was the center of the meatpacking industry and then shipped via train and by boat to Cuba and Puerto Rico. And of course these are very hot countries and on the way these shipments would get temporarily or for a while exposed to heat and sunlight. And so some of it, some of the carcass beef probably spoiled and the cans experienced some deterioration

inside the can. When the soldiers were given their rations, they complained mightily, and one of those soldiers was Teddy Roosevelt, who complained very mightily. And after the war, a general, whose name was General Miles, spoke out about the terrible rations that had been given to the soldiers, and he, based on a doctor's inspection, suggested that it had been embalmed using embalming fluids, And this created a great scandal. And there was a congressional investigation and hundreds of witnesses and thousands of pages written. And in the course of that, the questions were really avoided about exactly what had happened with the meat. But there was a lot of sort of, let's see, behind covering, shall we say, by the military and the meat industry.

in their attempt to prove that the meat had been okay. And General Miles ended up disappearing into the shadows of history. His name was tarnished, and several others also were hurt by the skin. But one person who profited from it was Teddy Roosevelt, who used it in part to ride into the White House. And one of the very first things that he did was to push through the pure, Food and Drug Act, which gave rise to the FDA. He wrote it into the White House by saying,

look at what we're feeding our troops. How dare we? That sort of thing? Yeah, that kind of thing. So I'm going to do another time jump, and we're going to talk a little bit more about the modern American diet and how it's shaped by the military currently. And I think to start that conversation,

we need to talk about the Natick Soldier System, or Soldier System Center, and what exactly is it, and how does it shape our diet today? Well, the Natick Soldier Assistance Center is one of 80 Defense Department research laboratories around the country, and there, they research anything to do with supporting the individual soldiers. So that would be tents, air drop, textile. body armor, and of course, food or rations.

And so there's a special research directorate, the Combat Feeding Directorate, that its sole job is just to work on issues related to rations, figuring out new menu items, sort of assessing existing ones, tweaking them, and overseeing projects among university and industry collaborators in all sorts of food sources.

science in order to further improve the ration. What is it exactly that the NADIC Center is actually putting out there? What are they feeding our soldiers? Well, most of what they focus on just the foods that are eaten in the field. Those are combat rations and they have several lines of combat rations. The two that are probably of most interests are the meal ready to eat and something new, which is called the First Assault Ration. The meal ready to eat consists of an entree that would be in a foil and plastic pouch.

It has bread in a pouch. It has snack food. It has a dessert. It has powdered drinks and probably an energy bar. The First Strike Ration is something that was developed more recently and was fielded first in 2007. And the reason was that the army had found that soldiers were stripping what they said called field stripping, the MREs, of all the nutritional things and just taking the snack food and bringing that with them. So they said, well, you know, we're just going to go with the flow here and just develop sort of a snackier ration.

And so the first assault has things like sandwiches. It has jerky. It has, again, snack food and candy and energy bars and drinks. And are they, so how do they balance the nutrition versus taste for the military? I mean, I guess you've got to get people to eat the stuff, but on the other hand, it sounds like soldiers are already a little bit choosy the way they were taking apart the MREs. Well, in fact, the first considerations for the Natick Center are not probably palatibility and nutritional quality, although they're certainly important, but shelf life. And there's a mandate, a congressional mandate, that a combat ration must be able to last for three years at 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

So any of these items would fit that description. And that means that they must be imperishable and they must be durable because a lot of times, you know, they would be shipped under difficult conditions. They're airdroped. They're stuck into backpacks. And then third, they have to be affordable because the Army is very aware that it's preparing things with the taxpayers' dollar. and it really tries to mind budget. So finally, kind of after that, I would say comes palatibility and nutrition.

So a combat ration has to balance all these different factors. And how do we do? I mean, do you have any idea of whether or not soldiers are somewhat happy with what we send out to them? Well, that's an interesting question. I think that my feeling is that over the years, the rations have improved, but they're still not there yet. And the reason that I say that is that there are still issues on the battlefield of soldiers not eating and drinking enough, and that's been a constant issue that has not yet been resolved.

And it may not have to do with the food itself, I don't know, but one of the, the idea would be that you could really maintain a soldier's, nutritional profile even, you know, in a very stressful situation. A lot of critics of the American diet kind of say that we eat all this highly processed junk food and that this industry, the food industry is kind of pushing it on us. And you kind of uncovered and argue in combat ready kitchen that is in fact the military that's altered our diets and our culture has changed to accommodate it because the military has invented all these wonderful ways to process it. ways to process food or wonderful to them.

So how do this stuff make the jump from the military to the public? Well, this is the part of the book that surprised me the most when I started to understand it, which is that the Combat Feeding Directorate and any DOG research facility actually has a mandate to get the research that it conducts into the private sector. And this is because of our policy of preparedness, which was put into place after World War II, and is intended to make sure that at a moment's notice, the military and the commercial sector that supports, it can gear up for World War III, should that ever happen. In the case of combat rations, it means that the Army wants to make sure that the food industry could quickly convert its production lines to manufacturing rations.

or better yet, that consumer items that it manufactures already meet military specifications. And in fact, that is the case. And you find many consumer items in soldiers' diets. So something like Cheetos or saran wrap, just stuff that's on the shelves in the grocery store. All of these kind of have their origins in the American military. Correct. Do you have any other examples that you? can share with us? Oh, I have so many that I can literally go through the grocery store and I think

remove at least 50% of its contents if I take anything that has a military origin or influence. And that starts in a place you wouldn't expect it in the produce section where routinely we now purchase salads and greens that come in little plastic bags and just open those up and dumped them into bowl and dust them with dressing. Well, those little plastic bags are filled with modified atmosphere packaging, which was something that was developed by the Navy and Whirlpool during the 1960s, and was first used to ship celery and lettuce to Vietnam. I can continue on in the produce section.

I could take a long time. I mean, there's something recent called High Pressure Processing that the NADIC Center developed with the consortium. of major food companies and a couple universities as well as the Food Safety Center for the FDA. And high pressure processing is used now to do the refrigerated guacamole that stays green for weeks for single serving fresh juices and smoothies. And Hormel had a tremendous hit with it in about, I think, 2006 as when it came out with a line of preservative-free deli meats.

This is not a finished process by any stretch, right? I mean, this is something that is ongoing. Absolutely. And just to give you a sense, I can just go by with them and throw them in. I can throw in many, perhaps most of the items in the meat department from boneless meat to restructured meat products. We can look at anything that would be freeze-dried. We can remove whole shelves in the bakery item from supermarket bread to cookies and baked goods that are soft and moist at room temperature.

We can take, as you mentioned, the Saran Wrap, tinfoil, TV dinners, converted rice, frozen orange juice. We can talk about anything that's microwave because the military invented the microwave. we can even the consumer dishwasher in the military had a hand in that and the soaps that are used in it. Let's see. Should I go on? Matt, I think you wanted to ask, and I hope you don't mind me taking it from you, but did the Army invent the McRib? That was Matt's question. We had to get it in there. The Army did, in fact, invent the technology, which is called restructured meat on which the McRib is based. Yes.

So there is no McRib without the American military. Absolutely not. Another thing that you mentioned in your book, and you just mentioned just now, is bread. And you say that people in other countries, especially, like, say France, don't think that Americans actually eat bread. If it's not bread, then what are we eating if you buy, like, a loaf of bread from the grocery store? Well, I'm not exactly sure, but I think one of the, there was some early work done on this by an Army contractor that made one major contribution to our non-stailing supermarket bread, and what it called it was a non-stailing bread-like product. I think that's pretty accurate, because what we eat has not been fermented, which is the traditional way that bread has been made and has a lot of different add. including one which came through this contractor, which is the addition of bacterial enzymes

to prolong the freshness and softness of bread after baking. And this is kind of a really cool thing because all breads have enzymes that come from the yeast and come from the wheat itself. And these break down starches and then yeast, the yeast consumed starches and excrete carbon dioxide and that's one of the things that makes the bread rise. After the bread is baked, these enzymes are inactivated. But bacterial enzymes, because they're heat tolerant, like their host organism, are not inactivated. And so they continue to break down starches after baking. And since bread stales and reforms it starches almost immediately after being cooked, this has been a godsend for the food industry because it can now create loads that stay fresh for a couple, at least a

couple weeks after they've been baked. So if you consider that bread, that's bread. Well, I'd go back to the non-stealing bread-like product. I think that's a very accurate description. That's my favorite, along with Del Vita now, processed cheese food. Okay, so can we, we've got to wrap up. And so I think the perfect question is, so what crazy new food products is the military dreaming up now?

What can we expect? Well, it's dreamed up and it's just about to feel if it hasn't felt already the three-year shelf-stable pizza. And I am sure that this is going to be a big hit because this is going to be a pizza that is moist and fresh and when stored at room temperature for up to three years. And so you'll be able to just have your packaged pizza in your closet and your glove compartmental. and your college dorm and when the desire hits, you just unwrap it and bite in. Okay.

I can't wait to send my son off to college with a whole bunch of those, especially the amount of pizza he eats. Absolutely, you should stock by the box load. Just ship it on to his dorm room. I'll keep him happy. Well, I just thank you so much for this conversation. I really feel like I've learned more than I wanted to know.

The book is Combat Ready Kitchen, how the U.S. military shapes the way you eat. And our guest has been Anastasia, Mark De Salcedo. Thank you for having me. Next time on War College. The machine gun is really the industrialized 20th century, coming out of effectively nowhere and just beating people over the head. And that's kind of what World War I was in every aspect.