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The History of MREs with Jacqueline Raposo · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
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Speaker 1: to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
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Speaker 1: tuning in. My name is Ben, and as usual, I
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Speaker 1: am starving. My name is Nolan. Ben. I have one
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Speaker 1: question for you. Shoot, are you down with m R? E?
0:41
Speaker 1: You know me? Do you know you? You already said that, Yeah,
0:45
Speaker 1: and you're I said that as well. Okay, so we're
0:47
Speaker 1: we're all caught up. We know each other, we are ourselves,
0:49
Speaker 1: We know each other, and we also know our super producer,
0:53
Speaker 1: Casey Pegrham. That's true, but we have an unknown quantity
0:58
Speaker 1: in the room in spirit sort of to day. Yeah,
1:01
Speaker 1: it's true. That's true. No, we are not diving into
1:05
Speaker 1: today's episode on our trio Lonesome. Yeah. We are joined
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Speaker 1: today by a friend of ours, a pure podcaster of ours,
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Speaker 1: Jacqueline ropos So, the host of one of the most
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Speaker 1: exciting podcast we've had come out recently, which is Service
1:25
Speaker 1: Veteran Stories of Hunger and War Now. Jacqueline is a
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Speaker 1: freelance food writer, and when you and I were talking
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Speaker 1: about how we could team up and collaborate, we thought
1:39
Speaker 1: who better to help us explore today's episode than a
1:43
Speaker 1: real life expert. So, Jacqueline, thank you so much for
1:46
Speaker 1: joining us today. Well, I am so glad to be here.
1:50
Speaker 1: I'm very enthusiastic about this MRI topic, so I'm excited
1:54
Speaker 1: to nerd out about it for a bit. Well, I
1:56
Speaker 1: will a little bit behind the curtain. Ben has long
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Speaker 1: been and an m R E enthusiasts himself. It's a
2:02
Speaker 1: bit of a bit of a collection. If I'm not mistaken.
2:05
Speaker 1: I think you acquired a couple of new ones recently
2:08
Speaker 1: that you were a little bummed about because they were
2:10
Speaker 1: of the breakfast variety. Yeah, that's correct. You can't wait
2:14
Speaker 1: them all. I got a deal on some Mr E
2:18
Speaker 1: like at the Army StarPlus store where do you even?
2:20
Speaker 1: I got him online and there were random pools and
2:23
Speaker 1: I actually have one for you that have got to
2:26
Speaker 1: give you what. Yeah, And you know there there's several
2:30
Speaker 1: different menus as as you know, Jacqueline, and uh. You
2:34
Speaker 1: can get a deal where you'll say, okay, I'll get
2:36
Speaker 1: a low price on like three or four of these,
2:39
Speaker 1: but you don't get to choose. The man don't get
2:41
Speaker 1: to pick. You get what you get. Yeah, are you
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Speaker 1: just anti breakfast or just anti m R E. Breakfast.
2:47
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm skeptical of eggs that don't need refrigeration.
2:51
Speaker 1: Oh that is a good point, you know what I mean. Well,
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Speaker 1: we'll get into more of that and the whole idea
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Speaker 1: of food preservation and you know, making things last long,
3:00
Speaker 1: longer than they should than the normal shelf life. But
3:02
Speaker 1: to start off, obviously, today we are talking about m
3:06
Speaker 1: r E s which stands for meals ready to eat.
3:10
Speaker 1: Why do they leave the tea out the uh? Oh?
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Speaker 1: Because he has implied yeah, yeah, and also, uh it
3:19
Speaker 1: just sounds better m r E. But they went through
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Speaker 1: a couple couple of different lines, and um, you know, Jacqueline,
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Speaker 1: when you set off to create the podcast service, it
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Speaker 1: feels like you tapped into this rich, fertile soil of
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Speaker 1: stories that are unfamiliar to a lot of people. And
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Speaker 1: just speaking for myself, a lot of these stories were
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Speaker 1: unfamiliar to me before we started preparing for this episode.
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Speaker 1: Could you tell us a little bit about what inspired
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Speaker 1: you to create this podcast? Yeah, well, actually directly, this
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Speaker 1: breakfast m r E issue was sort of it. I
3:58
Speaker 1: was I was dating a guy who did two tours
4:00
Speaker 1: in Iraq as an army captain, and he started telling
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Speaker 1: me stories about doctoring his m r. E s up,
4:05
Speaker 1: especially the instant coffee, the uh, the powdered eggs, the
4:09
Speaker 1: powdered milk products they had, the breakfast ones. I'm excited
4:13
Speaker 1: to hear what you got in your breakfast Emory's I've
4:15
Speaker 1: never got I've never seen those, but talking about how
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Speaker 1: horrible they are to eat out in the field when
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Speaker 1: you're hungry and you're tired. And he started talking about
4:22
Speaker 1: mixing them up and trying to make them taste better.
4:26
Speaker 1: And I told the story to my grandfather who was
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Speaker 1: in the army in World War Two, and he sort
4:30
Speaker 1: of started laughing and nodding his head and saying, how
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Speaker 1: oh yeah, the instant coffee and how horrible it was
4:36
Speaker 1: back then, and started telling me sort of similar stories
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Speaker 1: about how bad their k rations were. And that made
4:43
Speaker 1: me think about this whole world that I just didn't
4:47
Speaker 1: as a food writer and as someone who knows that
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Speaker 1: you know, who's every generation of my family has served
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Speaker 1: going back to the Civil War, Yet I did not
4:54
Speaker 1: know this stuff. And so I was like, oh, wow,
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Speaker 1: this is a whole element of food history that we
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Speaker 1: have not sort of gotten down. Um. So hearing hearing
5:04
Speaker 1: just that sort of umbrella of how bad the food
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Speaker 1: was and and in some ways still is, is a
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Speaker 1: very sort of exciting thing to get to delve into
5:12
Speaker 1: with every episode. Yeah, yeah, this is Uh, this is
5:15
Speaker 1: funny because we also have a lot of people our
5:18
Speaker 1: audience who are veterans or they have family members in
5:22
Speaker 1: the military, and so a lot of people, I think
5:26
Speaker 1: it's safe to say, at least here in the US,
5:28
Speaker 1: have grown up maybe seen in m R. E as
5:30
Speaker 1: a kid, and you know, it's a cool thing. It's
5:32
Speaker 1: packaged at lasts forever. Uh. And if you if you
5:36
Speaker 1: like Noel and I are a fan of kits, then
5:39
Speaker 1: you know, you open it up and you have so
5:42
Speaker 1: much cool stuff to play with, at least as a kid.
5:44
Speaker 1: You know, when you're out in the field and it's
5:46
Speaker 1: your job, you're just trying to eat something that doesn't
5:49
Speaker 1: taste terrible. Right. Uh. We we delved into, uh, the
5:55
Speaker 1: history of army food because one thing, what we've got
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Speaker 1: to say to anybody who's thought I had a terrible
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Speaker 1: m R E. Uh, you're the worst. At mar E
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Speaker 1: today is still way way better than what armies eight
6:09
Speaker 1: for the like majority of human history. Right, Well, because
6:14
Speaker 1: they have such a bad rap it's insane. Like I mean,
6:16
Speaker 1: you think about, uh, the idea of these you know,
6:19
Speaker 1: m R E packages and it's army food in general
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Speaker 1: is always kind of notoriously had this really terrible rap.
6:26
Speaker 1: And like you said, if it's made leaps and bounds, um,
6:30
Speaker 1: you know, by today's standards, there a whole lot better.
6:33
Speaker 1: But uh, it's often said that, um, you know, an
6:36
Speaker 1: army this is a quote uh in in Uh some
6:39
Speaker 1: of the research we found an army marches on its stomach.
6:42
Speaker 1: And so these things are not only I mean obviously
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Speaker 1: first and foremost, they're about survival. So the idea of
6:48
Speaker 1: of flavor and taste probably you know, a third fourth
6:52
Speaker 1: kind of priority there. Um. But the history of of
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Speaker 1: m R. E s in general is a really really
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Speaker 1: fascinating one kind of goes hand in hand with the
7:01
Speaker 1: history of food preservation and things like canning and like
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Speaker 1: salted meats and all of that. Why don't we start there,
7:08
Speaker 1: go into a little of the backstory. Yeah, Well, I
7:12
Speaker 1: think the first thing we have to think about is
7:13
Speaker 1: just how armies are moving across time. So if we think,
7:18
Speaker 1: you know, way back, if we think back to the
7:21
Speaker 1: Sumerians and the ancient Egyptians. You know, if if you're
7:25
Speaker 1: if you're battling sort of other tribes that are a
7:27
Speaker 1: couple of miles away, then you're just bringing the equivalent
7:30
Speaker 1: of like snacks with you, right, and then you're going
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Speaker 1: home and you're cooking, so thinking of bringing with you
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Speaker 1: starchy things like bread, which way back when would have
7:39
Speaker 1: been something made from barley or rye, not wheat, because
7:42
Speaker 1: they weren't cultivating wheat. Um. Then it became hard tack,
7:45
Speaker 1: which is basically a cracker version. It's sort of like
7:48
Speaker 1: a hard bread because we're not thinking these like, you know,
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Speaker 1: fluffy yeasted breads that we have today, which would eventually
7:53
Speaker 1: become a problem for the military of how to make
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Speaker 1: you know, light and fluffy bread that would not get moldy.
7:57
Speaker 1: And last, these are like crackers and hard beds. And
8:01
Speaker 1: then one thing that I don't know exactly why this was,
8:04
Speaker 1: but these ancient militaries usually carried onions with them. I
8:07
Speaker 1: don't know if onions are a thing against scurvy, maybe
8:10
Speaker 1: because I don't know if they actually like put two
8:12
Speaker 1: and two together with needing vegetables until until much later,
8:15
Speaker 1: until we get more towards our revolutionary and civil wars.
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Speaker 1: But a lot of them, the Sumerians, the Assyrians, the Egyptians,
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Speaker 1: they usually carried an onion with them, or it could
8:25
Speaker 1: have been because a lot of times when they did
8:27
Speaker 1: have to go a little bit further when they were
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Speaker 1: traveling for a couple of days at a time, these
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Speaker 1: guys were also cooking for themselves. Sometimes they would be
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Speaker 1: carrying twenty pound bags of grain on their shoulders as
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Speaker 1: well and actually cooking. There's also nothing more of a
8:42
Speaker 1: badass flex than just taking a giant bite of a
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Speaker 1: raw onion. Yeah. I think that might have had something
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Speaker 1: to do with it. That's just conjecture on my part.
8:50
Speaker 1: It's like, if they treat themselves that way, what are
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Speaker 1: they going to do to us? Run exactly onion to
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Speaker 1: your belt as was the style of the time for
8:58
Speaker 1: the Simpsons fans. Yeah, this is This is fascinating because
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Speaker 1: I love that you're pointing out the soldiers, especially when
9:07
Speaker 1: we look at empires where they were moving across the
9:10
Speaker 1: great distances. They did have to cook, and they did
9:14
Speaker 1: have to haul their supplies. Uh. Supply chain is something
9:17
Speaker 1: that's still bedevils modern militaries today. Uh we found that
9:22
Speaker 1: in the West, at least in ancient Rome, Uh, soldiers
9:26
Speaker 1: did have a ration of food that was supplied to them. Uh.
9:31
Speaker 1: And one thing that might interest a lot of people
9:34
Speaker 1: is that, as we'll find, militaries would frequently have alcoholic
9:39
Speaker 1: beverages as part of their ration. But it wasn't like
9:44
Speaker 1: a huge you know, ancient Greco Roman party time. Uh.
9:48
Speaker 1: The wine was often safer than the groundwater. Right. So
9:54
Speaker 1: so now we have these guys were carrying like twenty
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Speaker 1: pounds sacks of grain and then you know they're lucky
9:59
Speaker 1: on in and maybe a sack of wine. It's just
10:03
Speaker 1: it's bizarre. Well, and like as far as the wine piece, again,
10:06
Speaker 1: that was part of that was a functional thing more
10:08
Speaker 1: than I just wanted to get slashed every step of
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Speaker 1: the way. It was a lot easier and more predictable
10:13
Speaker 1: to to drink wine than it was the questionable quality
10:17
Speaker 1: of water that you might get. Right. And then even
10:20
Speaker 1: back in the days of your all military options were
10:25
Speaker 1: not created equally. So, Uh, Jacqueline, could you tell us
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Speaker 1: a little bit about how people ate in the navy, Right,
10:33
Speaker 1: that's something that we we know was even more of
10:37
Speaker 1: a difficult proposition. Well, the navy was sort of like
10:39
Speaker 1: a double edged sword because in a way in the
10:41
Speaker 1: Navy's you've got some space on chips to be transporting
10:45
Speaker 1: things with you, but then you've got you know, moisture
10:47
Speaker 1: and humidity issues. You've got things that are rotting and
10:51
Speaker 1: going bad. So you've got yeah, more room to be
10:54
Speaker 1: transporting you know, wine, which you know is is great
10:58
Speaker 1: and all that, and the beer and the rum and
11:01
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. But then on top of that,
11:05
Speaker 1: you've got problems with grains going bad. You've got a
11:07
Speaker 1: lot of fish, so we're talking about salted fish, cod
11:10
Speaker 1: and whatever is going to be native to whatever part
11:14
Speaker 1: of the world. This this navy is sort of moving
11:18
Speaker 1: within and then a lot of things going just bad
11:22
Speaker 1: on on navy ships. There's not a lot of space
11:24
Speaker 1: to cook. There's not It's not like our modern navy
11:26
Speaker 1: where they've got these amazing kitchens, right um, And so again,
11:31
Speaker 1: hard biscuits, salted meat, salted fish, not fresh water to
11:36
Speaker 1: wash it down with. You're gonna get a little bit
11:38
Speaker 1: of like the sugar from the wine or the beer
11:41
Speaker 1: to give you a little bit of energy. But you know,
11:43
Speaker 1: when you talk about your digestive system and marching on
11:46
Speaker 1: your stomach. It's not exactly like this nice clean energy
11:49
Speaker 1: we we think of nowadays when we're talking about working
11:51
Speaker 1: out or going hiking. It's a lot of a lot
11:54
Speaker 1: of grumpy men. Absolutely, And when we're talking about salted
11:57
Speaker 1: fish and salted meat, we're not talking about a nice
11:59
Speaker 1: lock or like a charcootery tray, right, Like, this is
12:02
Speaker 1: pretty kind of rudimentary, not particularly tasty stuff, right yeah.
12:08
Speaker 1: And this is way before we know about you know,
12:10
Speaker 1: bacteria growing and what that is. So these are also
12:13
Speaker 1: like things hanging in the open air, you know, as
12:16
Speaker 1: they're being moved about, and this is the way it's
12:17
Speaker 1: done for you know, hundreds of years before we get
12:20
Speaker 1: to the idea of actually even how we move meat
12:23
Speaker 1: and fish from place to place and like cut it
12:25
Speaker 1: off the carcasses and transport it in different ways. So
12:27
Speaker 1: this is literally like carcasses hanging and and just drying out,
12:32
Speaker 1: which in some ways can make amazing presciuto and stuff
12:35
Speaker 1: like that, but in other ways can just be like,
12:36
Speaker 1: you know, things are eating away from the insides of
12:39
Speaker 1: animals and coming to the surface before you're hopefully cooking
12:42
Speaker 1: the bacteria out of them. Um. So a lot of
12:44
Speaker 1: a lot of inconsistency and you know then put that
12:47
Speaker 1: on men and a ship. So not not not delicious,
12:51
Speaker 1: but they were cooking their food, right, I mean, they
12:53
Speaker 1: would have some sort of like olive oil for example,
12:56
Speaker 1: where they could use that as a as a cooking implement. Yeah,
12:59
Speaker 1: that's why. Lot of times they're carrying some sort of
13:02
Speaker 1: cured meat product that actually has like fat in it too.
13:05
Speaker 1: So they'd either be carrying lardo or carrying sausages, or
13:09
Speaker 1: carrying like cured pork. Especially for for the ancient Roman Empire,
13:13
Speaker 1: the Romans actually comparatively had like really good pork products
13:16
Speaker 1: because they were you know, Romans, you have some sort
13:18
Speaker 1: of fat to cook with you, you've got the onion,
13:21
Speaker 1: you've got some sort of grain, you've got a cured meat.
13:23
Speaker 1: So there there is a semblance of being able to
13:26
Speaker 1: make something with you know, whatever liquid you can find
13:30
Speaker 1: and fire. And this is where too, you know, compared
13:33
Speaker 1: to complanning about our m rs today, this is a
13:35
Speaker 1: very you go and fight and then you got to
13:38
Speaker 1: cook for yourself. A lot of the time it's not
13:41
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's it's either pillaging and finding food
13:44
Speaker 1: from the villages you're going into and just taking their
13:47
Speaker 1: food or stopping on the side of the road and
13:50
Speaker 1: cooking your own food with your rations. And a lot
13:52
Speaker 1: of times the rations were, oh, it's this amount of
13:55
Speaker 1: bread to cook into some to make a stew with
13:58
Speaker 1: your with your meat and whatever else you can find,
14:01
Speaker 1: or you know, finding vegetables on the side of the
14:04
Speaker 1: road on these farms, or you know, using the grain
14:07
Speaker 1: that you're given as a ration. It's not they're not
14:10
Speaker 1: snack packs, you know, like you're that you're just eating
14:12
Speaker 1: as you go, right. This is way before the culinary
14:15
Speaker 1: revolution of the lunchable, uh. And that's also that's one
14:19
Speaker 1: of the reasons why civilian populations often hated or feared armies,
14:26
Speaker 1: even friendly armies, because you know, if you've got an
14:29
Speaker 1: army going through the country to the border, they're still
14:33
Speaker 1: going to have to eat whatever they can find. So
14:36
Speaker 1: even if it's quote unquote your army or you're part
14:39
Speaker 1: of the same empire, it could it could pose a
14:42
Speaker 1: real threat to your livestock and your crops, right exactly.
14:46
Speaker 1: And that's like one of I mean, that's one of
14:48
Speaker 1: the main reasons why we have all of these just
14:50
Speaker 1: constant land wars. In ancient history. You can't sort of
14:55
Speaker 1: take over other people's land with your military if you're
14:59
Speaker 1: not a are being their resources. And there are some
15:02
Speaker 1: really weird things that I love about uh different civilizations
15:06
Speaker 1: and how they would do that as they went on.
15:08
Speaker 1: My favorite or is actually the Mongols, and they would
15:11
Speaker 1: this is to me by far the weirdest. They were
15:13
Speaker 1: these fierce riders and they so they would you know,
15:16
Speaker 1: be riding one horse with two trailing behind them, so
15:18
Speaker 1: then then they could switch horses and be riding, you know,
15:21
Speaker 1: further than other armies had ridden. And while they're doing that,
15:25
Speaker 1: they're taking meat and curing it like underneath their saddles,
15:29
Speaker 1: like letting like the heat of their bodies and the
15:32
Speaker 1: friction like beat up this meat on their saddles, or
15:36
Speaker 1: the same thing with milk. They're like taking this like
15:38
Speaker 1: milk and letting it become cheese in their saddle bags
15:42
Speaker 1: as they're going along. So it becomes this sort of
15:45
Speaker 1: like weird. Yeah, I know, right, it's it sounds disgusting
15:47
Speaker 1: to be like curing cheese and and pounding meat from
15:52
Speaker 1: the heat of your horse. And then they I don't
15:55
Speaker 1: know how true this is. I read enough that makes
15:57
Speaker 1: me think that this was definitely true that they would
16:00
Speaker 1: also because they could not just you know, pull up
16:02
Speaker 1: grass and get nutrients from grass, but that's what horses do.
16:05
Speaker 1: They would now and then just like slice a little
16:08
Speaker 1: vein in their horse and drink some blood to get
16:09
Speaker 1: those nutrients, knowing that it wasn't going to kill the horse.
16:13
Speaker 1: And that's not too crazy. I think we're burying the
16:15
Speaker 1: lead here a little bit. You just coined a really
16:17
Speaker 1: incredible catchphrase, pounding meat by the heat of their horse.
16:21
Speaker 1: Pounding meat by the heat of their horse. Yeah, that
16:23
Speaker 1: is a very evocative expression there. Um. One thing that
16:27
Speaker 1: came up that in this research that I thought was
16:29
Speaker 1: fascinating I don't think we've talked about yet is in
16:31
Speaker 1: the Byzantine Empire, they were super resourceful. Um they had
16:35
Speaker 1: these little like hand kind of mills, I guess, yeah,
16:39
Speaker 1: but they would yeahs so and and the and they
16:43
Speaker 1: would kind of, uh, you know, make their own bread
16:46
Speaker 1: on the go, which seems insane to me, Like what
16:49
Speaker 1: a commitment that is. Can you talk a little b
16:51
Speaker 1: about what that process might have been, like, like how
16:53
Speaker 1: do you get it to rise? Like how do you
16:55
Speaker 1: do all this? I don't understand. That's the thing. We're
16:57
Speaker 1: not talking about risen breads at the point. Like that's
17:00
Speaker 1: why when we say hard tack, it's called hard tack,
17:04
Speaker 1: you know, and which is essentially that's that's a cracker.
17:06
Speaker 1: But these are not um, these again are not like
17:08
Speaker 1: the light fluffy breads. They're more they're I'm trying to
17:11
Speaker 1: think of like the equivalent of today, but they're they're
17:14
Speaker 1: flatbreads essentially comparatively, So, yeah, you're grind, you're grinding flower,
17:18
Speaker 1: which because it does have you know, some of these
17:21
Speaker 1: flowers do have a good amount of gluten, and then
17:23
Speaker 1: they are going to sort of develop um, you can
17:25
Speaker 1: sort of add salt if they're fermenting them to like
17:28
Speaker 1: you can ferment a flower for a while. So some
17:30
Speaker 1: of these flowers are going to ferment. And if you
17:32
Speaker 1: stick that on a hot pan, that's going to give
17:36
Speaker 1: a sense of rise to it too. You're gonna have
17:38
Speaker 1: enough reaction there that you're gonna get a little rise there.
17:41
Speaker 1: But again, they're not we're not thinking about ovens here.
17:43
Speaker 1: We're not thinking about like big camps necessarily where they're
17:47
Speaker 1: having these big stone ovens and they're coming out with
17:49
Speaker 1: these big loaves of bread like they would have that
17:52
Speaker 1: in you know what we would consider maybe these base
17:55
Speaker 1: camps of these forts and things like that, but that's
17:58
Speaker 1: where other people would be cooking for them with properly
18:00
Speaker 1: ground flowers. These are going to be like rudimentary ground,
18:04
Speaker 1: coarsely ground flowers, almost like a moza, like an unleavened
18:09
Speaker 1: bread kind of situation. Exactly. Yeah, so it's it's different.
18:12
Speaker 1: It's it's definitely survival bread, not you know, it's not
18:17
Speaker 1: luxurious comparatively, it's sorrowful bread for sure. For hundreds, if
18:28
Speaker 1: not thousands of years, this kind of stuff was more
18:31
Speaker 1: the rule than the exception until a revolutionary moment in
18:36
Speaker 1: food storage history, which is a weird sentence, you know,
18:39
Speaker 1: out of context. That is a the invention of a
18:43
Speaker 1: Parisian chef named Nicholas A Pair a P P e
18:48
Speaker 1: R t all the way in like the late eighteen century,
18:52
Speaker 1: so seventeen nineties. Uh he is, he is ultimately right
18:56
Speaker 1: the reason that we figured out canning. But that's not
19:00
Speaker 1: exactly what he did, right, Yeah, he figured out our
19:03
Speaker 1: basic like our basic means of why things that are
19:08
Speaker 1: preserved in glass jars, why, like if we were making
19:11
Speaker 1: at home nowadays, if we're making apple sauce or pickles
19:16
Speaker 1: or jam, you know, when we take our mason jars
19:19
Speaker 1: and you know, take our the hot jam that we're
19:22
Speaker 1: making and put it in mason jars and boil it
19:25
Speaker 1: to seal it. That's what he came up with, essentially,
19:29
Speaker 1: and it was in a direct result of Napoleon having
19:33
Speaker 1: one point five million men to feed, and he had
19:35
Speaker 1: tried this sort of like pillage thing. We're like, okay,
19:37
Speaker 1: we're gonna bring some food with us and then we're
19:40
Speaker 1: going to pillage for it, and found out that that
19:42
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna work with one and a half million men,
19:45
Speaker 1: and so said, okay, we're gonna give a prize to
19:48
Speaker 1: whoever can figure this out for us, and a pair
19:52
Speaker 1: of being a chocolate maker at the time, he was
19:54
Speaker 1: a chef and then went into candy, and so he
19:56
Speaker 1: was already working with things like um, using a Marie
20:00
Speaker 1: too slowly, you know, cooke down candies to melt chocolate,
20:06
Speaker 1: to figure out ratios of of sugar, and jams and
20:09
Speaker 1: jellies to have them set correctly. He was already working
20:11
Speaker 1: on that kind of stuff and he really jumped into
20:14
Speaker 1: this contest to figure out how they could preserve foods
20:19
Speaker 1: like they did wine. Like they already knew that if
20:21
Speaker 1: you took wine and put it in a bottle and
20:23
Speaker 1: corked it, it was going to last for a long time. Um,
20:26
Speaker 1: it wasn't going to explode. It's different than champagne, you know,
20:28
Speaker 1: So they figured he figured there had to be a
20:30
Speaker 1: way to do that with food, and that's sort of
20:32
Speaker 1: what he set out to figure out. Well. And it's
20:34
Speaker 1: interesting because a lot of this was just sort of
20:36
Speaker 1: trial and air observational stuff, Like he didn't understand the
20:39
Speaker 1: science behind it at all. He was just sort of like, Okay,
20:41
Speaker 1: this works, I've experimented, this is the best method for
20:44
Speaker 1: getting this done. Let's just keep doing it this way.
20:46
Speaker 1: And then it was it was a good ways later
20:48
Speaker 1: before the actual science of it was figured out. Right. Yeah,
20:52
Speaker 1: what he figured out was essentially taking air out because
20:58
Speaker 1: air is going to do a bunch of different things
21:00
Speaker 1: to food as it breaks down. It's gonna, you know,
21:03
Speaker 1: air oxidize a certain things. It draws sugars out, you've
21:06
Speaker 1: got fat oxidation, It breaks down the cell structure of things.
21:10
Speaker 1: So as food ages, a lot happens essentially because primarily
21:14
Speaker 1: because of air. You've got heat and light and other things.
21:16
Speaker 1: But he found out that, oh, if I just take
21:19
Speaker 1: the air out, and that's why like sealing something in
21:22
Speaker 1: a jar and then boiling it to you know, get
21:24
Speaker 1: as much air out as possible. That was one part
21:26
Speaker 1: of it, and then the other was essentially getting the
21:31
Speaker 1: in the boiling process, getting that sort of at at
21:34
Speaker 1: a certain point where okay, this is cooked to the
21:36
Speaker 1: point that we wanted to a lot of the things
21:39
Speaker 1: already had sugar and salt, which we know again pull
21:42
Speaker 1: moisture out. Um, so we're getting as much of sort
21:45
Speaker 1: of bacteria accidentally killed it's already transformed Byteria. He didn't
21:49
Speaker 1: know this, but those things are sort of cooked out
21:51
Speaker 1: to a point. So we're pulling as much water out
21:53
Speaker 1: of the food substance as possible, using sugar or salt
21:56
Speaker 1: to kell bacteria as much as we can, and eliminating air,
22:01
Speaker 1: which is going to then reduce the food from decomposing
22:05
Speaker 1: more until it's eat And that's basically what he figured
22:08
Speaker 1: out right right, without even knowing the concept of aerobic bacteria. Uh,
22:13
Speaker 1: he was he was fighting, you know, one of the
22:15
Speaker 1: main antagonists in the story of preserving food. And I
22:19
Speaker 1: always love to picture all of the misses that he
22:23
Speaker 1: made along the way, you know what I mean. We
22:25
Speaker 1: don't know too much about all like to your point,
22:28
Speaker 1: and all about all the things he got wrong along
22:31
Speaker 1: the way. But but shout out to him for winning
22:35
Speaker 1: that prize of I think it was twelve thousand gold
22:39
Speaker 1: francs in eighteen ten, uh, and even getting a book
22:43
Speaker 1: deal out of it in his work the Book for
22:46
Speaker 1: All Households or The Art of Preserving Animal and Vegetable Substances.
22:50
Speaker 1: For many years, really really creative title titles were longer
22:54
Speaker 1: back then. People have more time to read. I mean,
22:57
Speaker 1: at least you you know, it spells it out for
22:58
Speaker 1: you know exactly you're getting attention spans. I guess they
23:02
Speaker 1: had more They had more time for that kind of stuff.
23:04
Speaker 1: But that's like a book right there is that title nowadays.
23:07
Speaker 1: So you know, one thing that's very important that you
23:11
Speaker 1: hit on Jacqueline is that we can't quite call him,
23:15
Speaker 1: you know, the quote unquote father of canning or anything,
23:19
Speaker 1: because he was working with glass. And it's not until
23:23
Speaker 1: a few years later, Uh, Peter durand In in England decides, hey,
23:29
Speaker 1: let's switch from glass to these tin containers or technically
23:34
Speaker 1: tin coated iron containers, and soon enough he's off to
23:38
Speaker 1: the races. And this means that the English Royal Navy,
23:42
Speaker 1: the British Royal Navy, is the first military to have
23:47
Speaker 1: what we would call canned food today. Correct. Yeah, and
23:51
Speaker 1: it's it's funny like we don't we don't think about
23:53
Speaker 1: them at all now, but to think about what a
23:55
Speaker 1: novel invention at tin cans. They'd only had glass up
23:58
Speaker 1: until then, and now you have another container that The
24:02
Speaker 1: key is that they're cooking food in these containers. It's
24:06
Speaker 1: not that they're taking food, putting it in a jar
24:10
Speaker 1: and then cooking it. So you're actually cooking the food
24:14
Speaker 1: in the can, and that's sort of the big deal there.
24:17
Speaker 1: Or sometimes you're cooking the food first and then putting
24:19
Speaker 1: in the cannon, then cooking it again. But the fact
24:21
Speaker 1: that you can actually cook a food item in its
24:25
Speaker 1: container and seal it and have it then be pretty durable,
24:30
Speaker 1: that it's not going to I mean, they had problems
24:33
Speaker 1: with this, but it's it's generally that the hope is
24:35
Speaker 1: that it's not going to explode on you because of
24:38
Speaker 1: breakdowns of things inside that it's going to be a
24:40
Speaker 1: really durable container. Like that's that's pretty huge when that
24:44
Speaker 1: has never existed before. And we know that from that point,
24:50
Speaker 1: cans became, you know, the hot new thing. There's still
24:53
Speaker 1: a hot new thing, right, Most people have cans of
24:56
Speaker 1: something in their pantry, even if it's just like souper
24:59
Speaker 1: some black beans, because they keep forever. And the US
25:03
Speaker 1: military figured this out too, right, I think that what
25:07
Speaker 1: we would consider the predecessor, the m R. E, was
25:11
Speaker 1: actually a tin container, right, Yeah, So the first time
25:15
Speaker 1: they started trying this out for the military, before they
25:18
Speaker 1: even figured the actual ration part was just trying to
25:23
Speaker 1: ship meet in tin cans, which they did for the
25:26
Speaker 1: Spanish American War at the end of the nineteenth century.
25:30
Speaker 1: And they were also generally just trying to find a
25:32
Speaker 1: better way to ship meet in general, because meat is
25:35
Speaker 1: the most expensive part of any menu in a restaurant.
25:38
Speaker 1: For the military, it's always meat. And this is before
25:41
Speaker 1: they had even figured out how to break meat down
25:45
Speaker 1: from like this is when they were still shipping whole
25:48
Speaker 1: carcass animals on train cars. They had refrigerator train cars
25:51
Speaker 1: by this point, but this was literally like meat dangling,
25:55
Speaker 1: you know, whole animal, and they weren't breaking it down
25:58
Speaker 1: or freezing it. This is just meat going from you know,
26:02
Speaker 1: Wisconsin or whatever to Florida to then get on boats
26:06
Speaker 1: to go to Cuba or to Puerto Rico or over
26:09
Speaker 1: to Guam or whatever. So they were trying to put
26:12
Speaker 1: meat in cans. And what ended up happening is because
26:16
Speaker 1: they didn't have this food science just as far as
26:18
Speaker 1: how food breaks down, just like as food breaks down
26:20
Speaker 1: with heat. Um, Now you're taking meat in a can
26:24
Speaker 1: and putting it in a very hot climate. And so
26:28
Speaker 1: it didn't work out very well in the Spanish American War. Um,
26:33
Speaker 1: it just sort of went bad. Not in a bad
26:35
Speaker 1: way that it got like what we'd think of as
26:37
Speaker 1: bad bacteria like like salmonilla or eat col i or
26:41
Speaker 1: anything like that, but in a way that people got sick.
26:44
Speaker 1: They already were, they were already having problems with yellow
26:47
Speaker 1: fever and typhoid and things like that. But for American troops,
26:50
Speaker 1: only three eighty five died in combat and two thousand,
26:54
Speaker 1: four d and eighty five died of illness. And so
26:58
Speaker 1: everybody assumed it was the meat, that it was a
27:00
Speaker 1: bad meat. It ended up not being the bad meat.
27:02
Speaker 1: The meat did go bad. It looked They called it
27:04
Speaker 1: embalmed meat, basically embalmed beef because it got it looked gross,
27:09
Speaker 1: it got you know, it had a film on top,
27:11
Speaker 1: and it smelled horrible, just like you know, you leave
27:13
Speaker 1: beef in the refrigerator a little bit too long, it's
27:15
Speaker 1: gonna look brown, and it's gonna smell a little a
27:18
Speaker 1: little tinny, a little like a little minerally, but you
27:20
Speaker 1: can still cook it and then it's fine. Um, think
27:23
Speaker 1: about that times, like you know, twenty that all of
27:25
Speaker 1: a sudden, like the meat is gonna look bad and
27:27
Speaker 1: smell bad, but technically it's still safe if you just
27:30
Speaker 1: cook it. This was a lot worse than it was
27:33
Speaker 1: slimy and smelled horrible, and nobody wanted to eat it.
27:36
Speaker 1: And on top of that, these guys are already sick,
27:39
Speaker 1: and it really sort of put the military off before
27:41
Speaker 1: World War One of wanting to use canned meat for
27:46
Speaker 1: a little while. So it's sort of a little hiccup, um,
27:48
Speaker 1: which they got over, but it wasn't It wasn't the
27:50
Speaker 1: best way to start. Yeah, yeah, we do at least
27:54
Speaker 1: see that. Um. There was there was a move to
27:57
Speaker 1: organize things into kits towards I guess toward the last
28:02
Speaker 1: half or towards the end of World War One, where
28:05
Speaker 1: they would get a ration that was uh, let's say
28:09
Speaker 1: we actually got the numbers here, uh jacqueline for background,
28:13
Speaker 1: here are ridiculous history. One thing that often bedevils us
28:16
Speaker 1: is will learn about historic dinners or meals of importance,
28:20
Speaker 1: and we can never find the menu. So this is
28:22
Speaker 1: big for us to actually know what these what these
28:25
Speaker 1: folks were eating, Uh that twelve ounces of bacon or
28:28
Speaker 1: some kind of some kind of meat, uh to eight
28:31
Speaker 1: ounce cans of again hardtack. Uh. They had some preground coffee,
28:36
Speaker 1: some sugar, a salt pack. Interestingly enough, at the time
28:40
Speaker 1: they were also given a tobacco ration, which I guess
28:44
Speaker 1: just speaks to how common smoking was at the time.
28:48
Speaker 1: But but they went back, the Uncle Sam went back
28:51
Speaker 1: and continually tried to improve this. Um. I believe it
28:56
Speaker 1: was in nineteen thirty six they got some aviation of menus,
29:01
Speaker 1: so you weren't always eating the same thing. And then
29:05
Speaker 1: at the very top of the show you mentioned something
29:08
Speaker 1: called I believe the k ration. It's it comes after
29:13
Speaker 1: the rise of something called the Sea ration in nineteen
29:18
Speaker 1: thirty eight. Now, while these are military food they don't
29:21
Speaker 1: look anything like the m R. E S of today
29:24
Speaker 1: right there. They're kind of, I guess a box. Yeah.
29:27
Speaker 1: So so in the in World War One, they basically
29:31
Speaker 1: used the can like you had a lunch box, you know.
29:33
Speaker 1: They put all these dried sort of foods in the
29:34
Speaker 1: can so that they were generally waterproof and you could
29:37
Speaker 1: carry them around and it just made it easier. Essentially.
29:41
Speaker 1: That's sort of what the k Ration was in World
29:44
Speaker 1: War Two, which they had just taken this idea of
29:47
Speaker 1: all of these military foods throughout history, and what were
29:49
Speaker 1: they They were basically, again, something sort of crackery, something dried.
29:54
Speaker 1: Now we have instant coffee, which came out in World
29:56
Speaker 1: War One, which again is not the same type of
29:58
Speaker 1: coffee that we have now. It was different type of
30:01
Speaker 1: drying process, so it doesn't taste quite the same. Um.
30:04
Speaker 1: But still now they have dried coffee versus like in
30:06
Speaker 1: the Civil War they were actually taking coffee and grinding
30:09
Speaker 1: it and making coffee you know, on the road. Now
30:12
Speaker 1: they've got instant coffee and they're just putting that in
30:15
Speaker 1: the can. By World War Two, they switch up the
30:18
Speaker 1: use of the can with the sea rations and the
30:20
Speaker 1: k rations sort of became that grazing mentality. And so
30:24
Speaker 1: depending on if it was your snack ration, these your
30:27
Speaker 1: field rations. So it's either your snack ration, which could
30:30
Speaker 1: have biscuits, jerky, cigarettes, instant coffee, or your breakfast one,
30:36
Speaker 1: which could have um, again would have usually cigarettes instant coffee. Um,
30:42
Speaker 1: you might like this because it's the breakfast one. They
30:44
Speaker 1: I heard of guys. Uh, they called them poop bars.
30:47
Speaker 1: They were fig bars, um, which in my mind are
30:50
Speaker 1: like fig Newton's, but I guess not nearly as good
30:52
Speaker 1: because they call them poop bars. Well, and it's actually
30:55
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a it's fruited cake. Just for the record,
30:58
Speaker 1: so of course I'm I was sorry. I'm sorry the
31:00
Speaker 1: fruited cake bars that the fruited poop bars of World
31:04
Speaker 1: War two. Um, but they which they didn't like, to
31:07
Speaker 1: the point that when one of my one of my
31:10
Speaker 1: veterans told me that after the liberation of Paris, they
31:12
Speaker 1: went back into Paris and kids were begging for they'd
31:15
Speaker 1: be like cigarette, Papa cigarette, and they would give them
31:18
Speaker 1: the poop bars instead, you know, which was still I
31:20
Speaker 1: guess a treat. But that's how willing they were to
31:21
Speaker 1: give away the poop bars. Um. And then powdered eggs,
31:25
Speaker 1: which you mentioned eggs. Yeah, powdered eggs were by number
31:30
Speaker 1: one out of every complaint that I've heard from World
31:32
Speaker 1: War two veterans are were number one and evidently are
31:35
Speaker 1: still number one. I've read about guy, I've heard and
31:38
Speaker 1: read about people today complaining about the omelets in m
31:41
Speaker 1: RI e s. Today. Powdered eggs are still pretty horrible.
31:44
Speaker 1: But the k rations were sort of would lend to
31:47
Speaker 1: our civilian snacking habits too, because they were biscuits, jerky,
31:52
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes chocolate, which has changed over time. Um,
31:57
Speaker 1: sometimes they've had good chocolate. They've had you know, eminem
32:00
Speaker 1: or chocolate. The taste like chocolate. Sometimes it's not great.
32:03
Speaker 1: They have the d bar, which was intentionally created not
32:06
Speaker 1: to taste good. Um. It was fortified with oats with
32:11
Speaker 1: the sugar was sort of rebalanced. It's it's bitter chocolate,
32:15
Speaker 1: milk powder, oat flour, um and some vitamins added to
32:19
Speaker 1: it so that it intentionally is not something they'd want
32:21
Speaker 1: to eat, but that it's six hundred calories of square.
32:24
Speaker 1: You'd get three of them together so you'd have enough
32:26
Speaker 1: calories and an emergency so those could be in them too.
32:29
Speaker 1: So they were. They changed as World War Two went on,
32:32
Speaker 1: but they were, um, you know, they were sort of
32:34
Speaker 1: the the snack pack version of the rations versus the
32:38
Speaker 1: sea rations, which were the first real meal in a can.
32:42
Speaker 1: Uh So, first off, I love that you mentioned the
32:46
Speaker 1: powdered egg far because I've had some some interactions world
32:52
Speaker 1: War two veterans, and it's weird that they all mentioned
32:54
Speaker 1: the same specific thing. I know, right, Yeah, that was
32:58
Speaker 1: a big swing and a miss. We know now that
33:02
Speaker 1: this evolution see ration k ration all the way like
33:09
Speaker 1: all the way through various different conflicts around the world
33:12
Speaker 1: and in various different missions. We know they ultimately lead
33:17
Speaker 1: to what armies eat today. Here in the United States,
33:22
Speaker 1: we call this the m r E. The meal ready
33:25
Speaker 1: to eat. I believe the first m r E s
33:29
Speaker 1: came out pretty recently in the span of history, right
33:32
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties or so. Yeah, that's when we
33:35
Speaker 1: officially changed the name and put them in this sort
33:38
Speaker 1: of new packaging. Um, because up until the late seventies,
33:42
Speaker 1: we didn't really have the pouch technology that we have now,
33:45
Speaker 1: so from World War Two forward, we had cans and
33:49
Speaker 1: then we had dehydrated foods, and that was sort of
33:54
Speaker 1: what we had up until now. So the powdered foods
33:58
Speaker 1: um in World War Two, it wasn't a powdered eggs um.
34:01
Speaker 1: Talk about menus. I love looking at these old menus
34:04
Speaker 1: you can find. And potatoes were another thing that were
34:06
Speaker 1: powdered in World War Two. They were called flaked potatoes.
34:09
Speaker 1: If they were trying to make them fancy, um, they
34:11
Speaker 1: would use these rehydrated potato flakes. Milk was powdered, Cheese
34:16
Speaker 1: could be powdered. Most of the time. Those were used
34:19
Speaker 1: more in the garrison camps to to feed people, um,
34:22
Speaker 1: not necessarily in the field, but they basically tried to
34:26
Speaker 1: just to save space, right because again you're moving in
34:29
Speaker 1: World War two. We had six over sixteen million people
34:32
Speaker 1: working in World War two, which is why we have
34:34
Speaker 1: all of this innovation that came out of World War Two.
34:37
Speaker 1: But to save space, you dehydrate things. That's the fastest
34:41
Speaker 1: and easiest way to to shrink something down. So they
34:44
Speaker 1: dehydrate milk, they dehydrate eggs, they dehydrate potatoes and then
34:48
Speaker 1: reconstitute them. In regular just dehydration, you just pull the
34:52
Speaker 1: water molecules out some things, and the food stuffs are
34:55
Speaker 1: gonna oxidize, they're going to deteriorate, You're gonna lose some flavor,
34:59
Speaker 1: you're gonna lose some aroma when you rehydrate them. And
35:02
Speaker 1: so those things like the instant coffee weren't gonna smell
35:05
Speaker 1: as good the powdered eggs. You're never going to get
35:08
Speaker 1: the texture of powdered eggs or fluffy, fatty mashed potatoes.
35:12
Speaker 1: And so what they figured out later was freeze dehydrating
35:15
Speaker 1: under pressurized conditions, which is what we use now, which
35:19
Speaker 1: is completely different. Um, So you bring the materials to
35:22
Speaker 1: below the freezing point, you shock those molecules into immobilization.
35:26
Speaker 1: So the water is still going to freeze and sort
35:28
Speaker 1: of separate, but everything else stays intact, or as much
35:31
Speaker 1: as possible, stays intact. So fat molecules, sugar molecules, they're
35:35
Speaker 1: not sort of breaking down. And then with you know,
35:37
Speaker 1: immense pressure, then you vacuum out the frozen water and
35:41
Speaker 1: so everything's okay comparatively. So that form of dehydration just
35:46
Speaker 1: really changed how we have dehydrated foods and led to
35:50
Speaker 1: what the army wanted to sort of do with m
35:53
Speaker 1: ras in the future, or will with what would become
35:55
Speaker 1: the m RAS of the future, with just dehydrating foods
35:58
Speaker 1: like we all know grew up with having astronaut ice cream,
36:02
Speaker 1: you know, for fun as kids, and that essentially is
36:05
Speaker 1: what they thought that they could actually do for military
36:07
Speaker 1: food like but with both sweet and savory foods, just
36:11
Speaker 1: freeze dehydrating food and um, I have not heard this
36:15
Speaker 1: yet because I have not started interviewing Vietnam veterans, but
36:17
Speaker 1: I've been told that I might be hearing some freeze
36:20
Speaker 1: dehydrated foods dropped into those veterans, because again, they're incredibly light,
36:25
Speaker 1: and they can be you know packed, you know, immense
36:28
Speaker 1: amounts of food can be sent in into very remote locations.
36:31
Speaker 1: But then you have the problem of a reconstituted you know,
36:35
Speaker 1: think about like reconstituting freeze dried ice cream. It's not
36:37
Speaker 1: gonna have the texture of ice cream at all. Um.
36:40
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, you know, you've got
36:42
Speaker 1: petrid water conditions, and then imagine doing that like with
36:46
Speaker 1: roast beef or something. It's just not going to be
36:48
Speaker 1: a satisfying food. So that was a huge failure in
36:51
Speaker 1: that way, but that does give us the better coffee,
36:55
Speaker 1: the better coco. Now in m R E's we have,
36:57
Speaker 1: you know, mocacino versus just in sdank coffee, and that
37:01
Speaker 1: comes from a better way of powdering coffee and powder
37:04
Speaker 1: and different and powdering different types of f or like
37:08
Speaker 1: you know, like a nice sanka, like a sanking. Yeah,
37:11
Speaker 1: thank it was. That was another step to you know,
37:13
Speaker 1: we had instant coffee and then head sanka. I still
37:16
Speaker 1: don't really know what it is. I don't understand what
37:18
Speaker 1: senka now they do, I but they make it look
37:20
Speaker 1: really cool on teles right, you made a really good point.
37:30
Speaker 1: We had a little computer glitch and and we're off
37:32
Speaker 1: offline for a second. We were just chatting about how,
37:35
Speaker 1: like so much of the prepackaged food we eat today,
37:39
Speaker 1: it follows a lot of these same rules, but it's
37:42
Speaker 1: just like a better, kind of bougier version of these
37:45
Speaker 1: m R E s. Um I wonder if we could
37:48
Speaker 1: maybe take things to the present and talk about how
37:51
Speaker 1: m R E s have kind of improved h and
37:53
Speaker 1: maybe while they're still not as good as like, you know,
37:56
Speaker 1: our kid cuisines, or whatever. They're a hell of a
37:58
Speaker 1: lot better than they used to be in the early days. Yeah,
38:02
Speaker 1: there's two things I sort of geek out about for
38:04
Speaker 1: this that are not really sexy. But the biggest thing
38:08
Speaker 1: to me is the container. Again, the container itself is
38:11
Speaker 1: this retort pouch, which are the it's the same plastic
38:15
Speaker 1: pouches that now you know give us uh go girt.
38:19
Speaker 1: And are those little squeeze tubes that you know we
38:21
Speaker 1: have peas in and stuff like that. And again they
38:24
Speaker 1: seem pretty innocent, but these things are amazing because they
38:27
Speaker 1: are different layers of material that allow us to cook
38:32
Speaker 1: food inside of them at slightly higher temperatures than you
38:35
Speaker 1: need to in a can. But because there's a greater
38:37
Speaker 1: surface area for a shorter amount of time, and so
38:42
Speaker 1: the food just is going to taste fresher. You're gonna
38:44
Speaker 1: have less of a breakdown of the actual food. So
38:46
Speaker 1: if you put chunks of beef in there, they're going
38:48
Speaker 1: to actually be chunks of beef or beans like the
38:51
Speaker 1: m R e s that I have just to have
38:53
Speaker 1: them are a black beans, you know, so you're going
38:55
Speaker 1: to have the texture of beans not like being mush.
38:58
Speaker 1: And then you can heat them up faster as well
39:01
Speaker 1: in the field, so you don't need to It's not
39:03
Speaker 1: a can that you're heating up to eat. Uh. You
39:06
Speaker 1: know the corned beef and potatoes that are World War
39:08
Speaker 1: two veterans were eating. Now you can have a much
39:11
Speaker 1: wider variety of foods, pastas and things like that that
39:13
Speaker 1: are going to have a better mouth feel. You can
39:15
Speaker 1: heat them up faster. Um. So it's this whole new
39:19
Speaker 1: world because of these specifically made plastic pouches, which plastic
39:24
Speaker 1: was we can complain about it a lot now, but
39:27
Speaker 1: starting in the fifties, the military invested in this finding,
39:30
Speaker 1: you know, in developing with all these private companies developing
39:34
Speaker 1: plastic and what we could do with it, So making
39:36
Speaker 1: a seal that you could it's essentially vacuum seal these pouches.
39:40
Speaker 1: You could pressure cook them and then they they do
39:44
Speaker 1: well in extreme conditions, in heat, in pressure, in human climates,
39:50
Speaker 1: dry climates. Um. They can hold up better than cans did. Uh.
39:54
Speaker 1: So that I think is particularly exciting that these pouches
39:58
Speaker 1: sort of really changed they game when it comes to
40:01
Speaker 1: how our emery's taste today. And we also know that
40:06
Speaker 1: there is a lot of research that goes into this
40:09
Speaker 1: The foods uh science here is fascinating because despite what
40:15
Speaker 1: uh many people in the military may believe, the researchers
40:19
Speaker 1: do actually run extensive taste test and extended you know,
40:25
Speaker 1: feeding tests, both in the field and in the lab,
40:27
Speaker 1: which I feel like sounds like a cool lab ratte job,
40:30
Speaker 1: you know, because it's not all going to be the
40:33
Speaker 1: infamously terrible veggie omelet of two thousand seven or uh,
40:38
Speaker 1: what's that other really creepy captain Country Captain Chicken? Did
40:42
Speaker 1: you ever hear that one? Normal that's still around. We've
40:43
Speaker 1: got a full list here from how stuff works. We've
40:45
Speaker 1: got stuff like beefsteak with mushrooms and Western beans. I'm
40:50
Speaker 1: more of a Northern beans kind of guy myself. We've
40:53
Speaker 1: got this very odd combination of pork rib and clammed
40:56
Speaker 1: showder who asked for that? I don't understand. We've got
41:00
Speaker 1: beef ravioli and potato sticks. Sure, Country Captain Chicken, which
41:05
Speaker 1: is an inherently bad ben I mean, oh, it's like
41:07
Speaker 1: famously bad. This one is famously the dishes, it's like
41:11
Speaker 1: an Indian thing. I think I believe you're correct, and
41:14
Speaker 1: and buttered noodles, um then we have chicken breast and
41:17
Speaker 1: minnestrone stew, chicken with Thai sauce, just generic Thaie sauce.
41:22
Speaker 1: They don't give us any more with it. Well it's
41:24
Speaker 1: yellow slash wild rice peel off. That's a lot of
41:28
Speaker 1: rice combos. You want to give us some more there
41:30
Speaker 1: twenty four and all so, uh, you can favorites. Yeah,
41:34
Speaker 1: you can see the you can see the full list,
41:36
Speaker 1: and you know they want to have this variety. So
41:39
Speaker 1: for every meatloaf with gravy, you might get a chicken
41:42
Speaker 1: tetrazini or so on. Uh. And what we see is
41:45
Speaker 1: that the food science has also verged into psychology. They
41:53
Speaker 1: found that varying the menu means that people will eat
41:57
Speaker 1: more because there's a lot of varieties. So you're getting
42:00
Speaker 1: you know, Country Captain chicken or even manicotti every day.
42:04
Speaker 1: And this is this is something that got that was
42:06
Speaker 1: interesting to me. They found that if they gave things
42:10
Speaker 1: commercial or civilian graphics, people tended to like them more.
42:15
Speaker 1: So that's why hot sauce is a huge commodity in
42:18
Speaker 1: Mr East today. And that's why you know you'll get
42:21
Speaker 1: uh side items like candies and stuff that will have
42:24
Speaker 1: a brand name because I don't know, maybe it reminds
42:27
Speaker 1: people a home, maybe there's familiarity. Maybe you just you
42:30
Speaker 1: don't feel like you're eating out of a drab all
42:33
Speaker 1: of bag, right like like like you said, I think
42:35
Speaker 1: you mentioned this. Um they even have like, you know,
42:37
Speaker 1: kind of sexed up the packaging a little bit where
42:40
Speaker 1: it might have like a cool logo or more of
42:42
Speaker 1: like a snazzy graphic design kind of concept to it.
42:45
Speaker 1: Which you know, I'm a big fan of brightly colored sodas.
42:50
Speaker 1: Don't know why. It doesn't matter what they taste like.
42:53
Speaker 1: I also like things that are green, like I like
42:55
Speaker 1: pistachio ice cream. I like the flavor, but I also
42:57
Speaker 1: love the fact that it's green, or like blue power
43:00
Speaker 1: aid yea or or one of my personal favorites Superman
43:03
Speaker 1: ice cream, which is really just vanilla ice cream, but
43:05
Speaker 1: it's just like multicolored and that makes me I don't know,
43:08
Speaker 1: and I'm just really into it for some reason. Freaks
43:10
Speaker 1: me out. Man, I'm a real sheep. Oh no, no,
43:14
Speaker 1: what is life if not to be lived? We also
43:17
Speaker 1: know that m R e s. In addition to inspiring
43:20
Speaker 1: so much civilian food, they're also used in civilian emergency
43:24
Speaker 1: situations like natural disasters, so we can get a lot
43:27
Speaker 1: of food to people very quickly. But m R E
43:31
Speaker 1: s are not the only example of modern military food.
43:34
Speaker 1: There are tons of other militaries in the world right
43:38
Speaker 1: and they they often have their own kind of thing.
43:41
Speaker 1: I read somewhere that for a number of years, the
43:44
Speaker 1: French version of the m R E, the R C
43:47
Speaker 1: I R, was considered the best, and people would you know,
43:51
Speaker 1: different soldiers from different militaries would meet and they would
43:54
Speaker 1: kind of trade these back and forth. Uh and and
43:57
Speaker 1: even now, if you have listened to this and you
44:00
Speaker 1: are interested in trying an m R E, you can
44:03
Speaker 1: find them online. I think you can. Actually you can
44:06
Speaker 1: pick them up from Amazon even or of course eBay,
44:10
Speaker 1: but buy or beware because you know they may not
44:13
Speaker 1: be as recent as you would like. Learn from my mistakes, folks,
44:17
Speaker 1: don't get stuck with that two thousand seven veggie omelet,
44:20
Speaker 1: which I just want to point out. Apparently the street
44:23
Speaker 1: name for that thing, you guys, is the vomblet. Yeah,
44:28
Speaker 1: what is in the breakfast one that you have been currently?
44:31
Speaker 1: It's the Veggie's several of them. I thought you had
44:33
Speaker 1: a few, know, I have one breakfast one and then
44:36
Speaker 1: I have a m I think a Hollapano chicken dish
44:42
Speaker 1: that I gave to our rider guy pal Matt Frederick.
44:46
Speaker 1: Something I want you to know. Good for for all
44:47
Speaker 1: this coronavirus prepping. Yeah, yeah, oh no, no, I was
44:51
Speaker 1: doing that anyway because I had to build a new
44:53
Speaker 1: bike out back. Coronavirus not with me, and no know
44:56
Speaker 1: you you you had a doomsday prepper shelter before it
44:59
Speaker 1: was invoke? Quick question though, how do you what's this
45:03
Speaker 1: omelet situation? Like you literally just add water and stirred
45:06
Speaker 1: around and it's basically just like weird egg putting kind
45:09
Speaker 1: of or what they come with a flameless heater. I
45:12
Speaker 1: believe so because they also we also found out people
45:15
Speaker 1: want to eat food hot. Uh And this this is
45:19
Speaker 1: where we're at now. We don't know, well I guess
45:22
Speaker 1: I don't know, and I don't think either of us
45:25
Speaker 1: know what the future of m R ease is. But Jacqueline,
45:30
Speaker 1: do you think that the technology involved is kind of
45:34
Speaker 1: at a I don't want to say at a plateau,
45:37
Speaker 1: but at a stable point. Is there anything that people
45:39
Speaker 1: are trying to change with MRS in the future or
45:42
Speaker 1: have we arrived at the perfect army food. Well, I
45:45
Speaker 1: think right now that what they are seeking they've sort
45:48
Speaker 1: of hit as far as making these rations for men
45:53
Speaker 1: and women who are functioning at a very high energy level.
45:58
Speaker 1: They are they are packed with sodium, they're packed with carbohydrates,
46:01
Speaker 1: they're packed with calories. They're jacking them with caffeine, with vitamins.
46:05
Speaker 1: I think that's sort of where they are continuing to
46:07
Speaker 1: try to excel is figuring out how to get all
46:09
Speaker 1: this stuff in the foods and actually making them still
46:14
Speaker 1: palatable and taste good. There are a lot of jokes
46:17
Speaker 1: about m R E. S UM. You mentioned the bomblet.
46:20
Speaker 1: They're called meals ready to Exit. There's a lot of
46:23
Speaker 1: jokes about how bad they are because they're so high
46:26
Speaker 1: in sodium. You know, they're really not great for the
46:29
Speaker 1: body after a couple of days or the digestion literally,
46:32
Speaker 1: but they technically have all the nutrients that people wanted them. Um.
46:36
Speaker 1: I'm particularly curious about getting fresher foods and vegetables into them,
46:41
Speaker 1: because that's still going to be the biggest problem is
46:43
Speaker 1: how you get something other than you know, zapple sauce,
46:46
Speaker 1: which has a lot of sugar and carbs and sometimes
46:49
Speaker 1: caffeine in it. But the difference between m R e's
46:53
Speaker 1: for civilians and soldiers is that they are burning their bodies,
46:57
Speaker 1: you know, and that's really what these foods are intended
46:59
Speaker 1: to do. So I think it's continuing to figure out
47:01
Speaker 1: how to make them durable, portable, you know, consistent, and
47:06
Speaker 1: so that people will want to eat them. And we
47:08
Speaker 1: have a very multi ethnic, multicultural military, and I think
47:12
Speaker 1: that's that awesome thing about the variety of m r
47:15
Speaker 1: as we have now versus when we were in Vietnam,
47:18
Speaker 1: versus the Korean War, World War two. So that to
47:21
Speaker 1: me is the exciting thing to see continue to develop.
47:23
Speaker 1: Just how you know, being American soldiers, how that is
47:28
Speaker 1: just encompassed and this menu, uh so, who knows where
47:31
Speaker 1: that is? How that's going to continue and keep going.
47:34
Speaker 1: Why do you think there isn't more like vacuum seal
47:36
Speaker 1: technology being used. I wonder if that would be an
47:39
Speaker 1: alternative or a way to have like fresher foods that
47:43
Speaker 1: that could last a little longer. That might just be
47:45
Speaker 1: Americans resisting that. I believe that that is already much
47:49
Speaker 1: more commonly used for both militaries and civilians. UM in
47:53
Speaker 1: Asia and in Europe. I forget exactly where, but I
47:57
Speaker 1: believe that that we've just been slower to acquire that. Um,
48:01
Speaker 1: I think that's that might be happening more and more,
48:03
Speaker 1: but I think we've just been slower to acquire even
48:06
Speaker 1: just foods and pouches, has been slower on our ends
48:08
Speaker 1: than it has been in other countries. My last question,
48:11
Speaker 1: and then I will I will throw it to my
48:12
Speaker 1: co host to to to ask any final wrap up questions.
48:15
Speaker 1: Did you guys ever have those milks that came in
48:19
Speaker 1: a bag when you were in when you were in school. Yeah,
48:22
Speaker 1: it's weird milk in a bag. Milk in a bag. Yeah,
48:25
Speaker 1: it's like the same um, it's the same amount of
48:28
Speaker 1: milk as you would get in the typical paper carton
48:32
Speaker 1: that lunch kids get, but it's in this weird bag
48:35
Speaker 1: that looks like some kind of um, like a breast
48:38
Speaker 1: implant or something. Yeah. Yeah, I was trying to think
48:41
Speaker 1: of a different way too. I'm intrigued. You get a
48:45
Speaker 1: little straw stab it in there. You have to stab it,
48:49
Speaker 1: which which made it a hot commodity. It seemed like
48:51
Speaker 1: a bit of a flash in the pan because I
48:52
Speaker 1: only remember it for like one year in elementary school,
48:55
Speaker 1: and then it was back to Carton's. I wonder what
48:57
Speaker 1: the thinking was behind that easier to shift. Maybe you
49:00
Speaker 1: could just PLoP them all into a box and didn't
49:02
Speaker 1: have to stack them take around in other places. But
49:07
Speaker 1: uh milk in a bag, milk in a bag. Aside,
49:11
Speaker 1: I do also want to point out that you can
49:13
Speaker 1: buy uh mr E's from all over the world online.
49:17
Speaker 1: I'm particularly excited about this Korean apparently bulgogi flavored rice
49:22
Speaker 1: I've got on the way. Yeah, and I'm going to
49:25
Speaker 1: check out the technology there. But while we're waiting for that,
49:28
Speaker 1: I want to say, Jacqueline, thank you so much for
49:31
Speaker 1: joining us today and giving us this strange and fascinating
49:36
Speaker 1: journey through the history of food and the history of militaries.
49:42
Speaker 1: For anyone who would like to learn more about service
49:47
Speaker 1: veteran stories of hunger and war, where should they go?
49:51
Speaker 1: Where can they find the show? What? You can find
49:53
Speaker 1: us streaming on all podcasting platforms of course, I heart radio, Apple, etcetera.
49:58
Speaker 1: And you can learn more at of this podcast dot org.
50:01
Speaker 1: And we are also always sharing a lot of extra
50:04
Speaker 1: nerdy food history and outtakes from our veterans on Facebook
50:08
Speaker 1: and Instagram. We are at Service Podcast and you by
50:11
Speaker 1: this point the time this episode comes out, you will
50:13
Speaker 1: have wrapped your first season. Yeah, we just wrapped our
50:16
Speaker 1: first season. So we featured um, a number of World
50:19
Speaker 1: War two veterans themselves and then also some historians to
50:22
Speaker 1: help us sort of recap how World War to change
50:25
Speaker 1: the world. Yeah, and that not only is it a
50:28
Speaker 1: really fascinating podcast where you learn a lot, it's really
50:31
Speaker 1: well produced and and very moving, great storytelling. Really really
50:35
Speaker 1: props for a wonderful show. And congratulations on rapping the
50:38
Speaker 1: first season. Thank you so much, thanks for having me. Yeah,
50:41
Speaker 1: and don't take our word for it, folks, don't delay
50:44
Speaker 1: check out the first season, available in its entirety today.
50:49
Speaker 1: Thanks as always to our super producer Casey Pegram. Thanks
50:53
Speaker 1: to Alex Williams who compose our our banging soundtrack. Thanks
50:57
Speaker 1: to Christopher Haciotas, who, as it turns out, is also
50:59
Speaker 1: the exactive producer of of this of this delightful show Service. Um.
51:04
Speaker 1: He is here in spirit as always. He is like Mufasa,
51:08
Speaker 1: just like a lording over all of us, like a
51:10
Speaker 1: giant uh stately lyon in the sky. Thanks to. We
51:14
Speaker 1: already said to super Case, I'm gonna give him he's
51:17
Speaker 1: so nice to think him twice. Um. Thanks to Gabe Losy,
51:20
Speaker 1: our incredible research associate. UM I think we we. It
51:23
Speaker 1: turns out he's not a bot. Uh. He is an
51:26
Speaker 1: actual human person um and he's gonna be on the
51:29
Speaker 1: show at some point soon. So you're gonna hear the
51:31
Speaker 1: true voice of Gabe. You heard it here first, folks.
51:35
Speaker 1: He is the Chicken Tu Trazeni of our show. We'll
51:39
Speaker 1: see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for my
51:49
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