No VPN partners or other bullshit, just great content enjoyed by a large variety of people. Most of military food interest, some use it for sleeping, or for better apetite under medical treatments.
His reviews of those old MRE cigarettes are amazing. He makes it seem like he's smoking pure ecstasy (figuratively, actually, w'ever). I've never smoked but watching those segments I'm jonesing hard to smoke one of those.
If you like stories about historical food, check out tasting history! [0] His recent two episodes on the Titanic survivors are gut wrenching. [1]. He also does WWII content. [2]
Several years back I ran across a mention of a british wartime cookbook which was meant for ration book ingredients, and contained a recipe literally titled something like "life sustaining glop". Anyone know which this might have been?
Though I've never heard of the term it's likely a nutrient-rich substance that contains what is needed to "life sustain". Maybe it was a powder that when mixed with water would turn into something that could be consumed. It definitely doesn't sound delicious but hey, when life is on the line, it should not matter much.
Processed food has been around in many forms for a long time (pasta and bread are processed food). You're thinking of ultra-processed foods, which came later.
This was, however, the start of a radical change in food culture in the US. WWII introduced refrigerated food transport, improvements in canning, and developing frozen and shelf-stable meals. The result was 2-3 decades of Americans eating TV dinners and canned foods, as well as the rapid expansion of fast food restaurants. The growth of supermarkets and year-round produce then shrank the available variety of foods, and intensive ag practices reduced the nutritional quality of those foods.
Thank God for Julia Child. She single-handedly turned the tide away from an ocean of bland crap and back towards delicious home-cooked meals (for a small portion of Americans, anyway). It did not stem the tide against the rise in obesity, which began in the 70s, largely due to the explosive growth of cheap fast food and junk food, lobbying, and a lack of education around food and health.
Thank God for Julia Child. She single-handedly turned the tide away from an ocean of bland crap and back towards delicious home-cooked meals (for a small portion of Americans, anyway). It did not stem the tide against the rise in obesity
why would it. home-cooked meals are not uncommonly calorie dense, full of fats and oils.
> It did not stem the tide against the rise in obesity, which began in the 70s, largely due to the explosive growth of cheap fast food and junk food, lobbying, and a lack of education around food and health.
There was a series of science-mistakes that cascaded into the obesity epidemic. Ancel Keys kicked off the chain by slandering saturated fat.
I think there was a protective factor in the food supply that was reduced in the latter half of the 1970’s. Around 1990 McDonald’s was tricked into replacing their saturated frying oil with polyunsaturated oil...
The entire food pyramid is essentially propaganda from what I understand. Corn subsidies and mandatory corn-derived ethanol in gasoline created a surplus of corn, which led to fructose and high fructose corn syrup being added to everything.
I have no idea what the motive behind the food pyramid was, but high-fat foods being 2.25x calorie dense per gram compared to carbs, can lead to a surplus more easily compared to carbs. Just eating less sugar will not help if you are consuming too much fat .
The documentary "Sugar Coated" goes into the history regarding the pro-sugar/anti-fat industry lobbying aspect. The bad science was not a mistake—it was deliberate strategy. The same kind of FUD that "Big Tobacco" participated in. Most people are aware of the later but not the former.
I only had it recently for the first time. Despite being widely seen in the US as a "poor people" food, inflation seems to have hit Spam pretty hard--I'm pretty sure the tin was over $4!
That said, while it looked rather unappetizing in its canned loaf shape, it's mostly pork shoulder, and after I cubed it and pan-fried it for a bit, it tasted like a crunchier ham steak. It was quite delightful when mixed into fried rice.
This is probably anathema to many, but I will cube spam and let it sit in a bowl of water for a few minutes. Likely leads to a huge reduction in salt and fat.
Same as Spam ? The US sent boatloads of it via the Pacific. I've seen it credited with supplying something like 15% of all Soviet wartime calories consumed.
The Soviet and now post-soviet "tushenka" is 100% derived from American WW2 spam. But I think it actually tastes better, try some if you have an Eastern European store around.
> When the war ended in 1945, the military had huge stockpiles of food, including powdered cheese. The government liquidated these stockpiles, sometimes for pennies on the dollar, to private industry. Companies like Frito (later Frito-Lay), Kraft, and others found ways to use these wartime products. In 1948, the Frito company coated puffed cornmeal pieces with dehydrated cheese, and Cheetos were born.[26]
It is absolutely wild the butterfly effect of processed terrible food this may have caused and deaths from obesity. All from trying to find something to do with ultra cheap army surplus.
It's wild to think WW2 indirectly killed people a decade later by making them fat. When you hear about surplus materiel killing people, food isn't what comes to mind.
I’m wondering why on earth the military was storing cheese as a powder… the whole point of cheeses is that they are a great way to store milk. Why didn’t they just store cheese wheels? Surely powdering it makes it go off much faster?
Military food is a really fascinating logistics problem - how do you feed people, potentially across a long period while engaging in calorically demanding tasks? Foodstuffs need to last as long as possible because supply lines are targeted or have been destroyed. That shipment you received may be one of your last. Cheese, like any food with significant moisture, can ultimately rot.
Much of our modern processes are to somehow extend the life of the foodstuff over long periods. This boomed the overly processed food economy we currently have, but it was first built to simply make sure we had food for the long haul. Curing meats in salt is roughly the same process.
In turns of cheese, powder has less moisture stored in the individual cheese granule but may also be reconstituted with added moisture. Powdered forms are easier to package for individual soldiers to carry for themselves rather than a large, bulkier wheel that needs its own storage and transportation methods.
It goes further back. Napoleon offered a prize in 1795 for some way to preserve food for soldiers.[1] The result was "canning" - heating, boiling, and sealing in an airtight container. Originally in glass jars. Later metal cans. Finally vacuum-packed plastic.
Current products include MREs for the military, which are actually somewhat hard to buy commercially since Warnock got tired of dealing with preppers. They really want to sell these things by the container load. There are all kinds of knock-offs available. The real military MREs are designed for young soldiers in good condition doing heavy work, so three of them contain almost 4,000 calories. Civilian versions tend to be smaller portions.
There's also the Humanitarian Daily Ration. It's kosher, halal, vegetarian, lactose-free, and nut-free. Also air-droppable without a parachute. It's basically lentils and beans.
It's intended for people on the edge of starvation. The US military used to give out MREs in crises, but that was too much concentrated energy food for someone nearly starving and could sicken them.
This. Nescafe was great for the same reason, as it weighed much less than coffee grounds.
It's impossible to overestimate how important this was. The U.S. military in WWII had to support an enormous force overseas, to a degree and extent that no other power had to approach. Everything that the force needed in the field had to first go on a ship to be sent overseas. With the U.S. Twelfth Army Group numbering over a million men alone in Europe, small changes to products were magnified at scale, saving tons of weight in the logistics chain.
It's also worth noting that WW2 by and large predates intermodal shipping containers. Apart from some experiments late in the war, the U.S. military did not use containerized shipping to any significant degree. Everything was shipped "break-bulk" which meant that every individual parcel had to be loaded/unloaded by hand every time it changed transportation mode. Also, the ships that carried these goods were tiny by modern standards. Every bit of extra volume and weight mattered much more than it does today.
There's a probably apocryphal story that a Japanese higher-up realized the war was lost when they found out the US had enough spare capacity to build ice cream ships for in-theater cold treats (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream_barge).
First of all I don't think that's the whole point of cheese. Secondly, dehydrating and powdering dramatically extends shelf life and makes shipping cheaper.
> During the war, Nestlé companies supplied both the Axis and the Allies. In 2000, the company agreed to pay millions of dollars to settle claims that a German company they purchased used forced labor during the war.
The sole blemish on Nestlé's otherwise impeccable record. /s
Does anyone know the real backstory here? I'm thinking that Nestlé HQ (presumably in Switzerland) might have had rather limited control over (or even visibility into) their on-paper subsidiaries in Nazi-controlled countries.
> Nestle and the former Brown Boveri & Co., now called ABB, earlier admitted slave labor had been used at their German sites and have paid compensation. Novartis, Nestle and Roche contributed to the $1.25 billion settlement in 1998 that banks organized to settle the Holocaust account claims.
Looking here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggi#World_Wars - it sounds like Maggi wasn't acquired by Nestlé until 1947. Details unclear - but that may have been a case of "spoils of war, sold at auction". If so, then blaming Nestlé for Maggi's prior misdeeds sounds pretty dubious.
From the NYT article, I'd say Nestlé itself has at least some dirt on their hands. OTOH, that article makes no mention whatever of Switzerland's location - landlocked and totally surrounded by the seemed-to-be-winning Axis powers for almost all of WWII. Considering how <cough/> nicely the Axis occupation forces were treating most of the countries which they'd already conquered - the Swiss might have felt that making much of a fuss (over Axis misdeeds) could result their own conquest and occupation.
I highly recommend MRESteve for content about military rations: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA
No VPN partners or other bullshit, just great content enjoyed by a large variety of people. Most of military food interest, some use it for sleeping, or for better apetite under medical treatments.
"I quit smoking years ago, but an after-meal cigarette from 1973 might just tempt me..."
Never gets old :')
His reviews of those old MRE cigarettes are amazing. He makes it seem like he's smoking pure ecstasy (figuratively, actually, w'ever). I've never smoked but watching those segments I'm jonesing hard to smoke one of those.
If you like stories about historical food, check out tasting history! [0] His recent two episodes on the Titanic survivors are gut wrenching. [1]. He also does WWII content. [2]
[0] https://m.youtube.com/@TastingHistory [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ED7kGq4Ieak [2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i8ROieDwLBw
Several years back I ran across a mention of a british wartime cookbook which was meant for ration book ingredients, and contained a recipe literally titled something like "life sustaining glop". Anyone know which this might have been?
Though I've never heard of the term it's likely a nutrient-rich substance that contains what is needed to "life sustain". Maybe it was a powder that when mixed with water would turn into something that could be consumed. It definitely doesn't sound delicious but hey, when life is on the line, it should not matter much.
Is this the real start of processed food and the obesity crisis?
Processed food has been around in many forms for a long time (pasta and bread are processed food). You're thinking of ultra-processed foods, which came later.
This was, however, the start of a radical change in food culture in the US. WWII introduced refrigerated food transport, improvements in canning, and developing frozen and shelf-stable meals. The result was 2-3 decades of Americans eating TV dinners and canned foods, as well as the rapid expansion of fast food restaurants. The growth of supermarkets and year-round produce then shrank the available variety of foods, and intensive ag practices reduced the nutritional quality of those foods.
Thank God for Julia Child. She single-handedly turned the tide away from an ocean of bland crap and back towards delicious home-cooked meals (for a small portion of Americans, anyway). It did not stem the tide against the rise in obesity, which began in the 70s, largely due to the explosive growth of cheap fast food and junk food, lobbying, and a lack of education around food and health.
Thank God for Julia Child. She single-handedly turned the tide away from an ocean of bland crap and back towards delicious home-cooked meals (for a small portion of Americans, anyway). It did not stem the tide against the rise in obesity
why would it. home-cooked meals are not uncommonly calorie dense, full of fats and oils.
> It did not stem the tide against the rise in obesity, which began in the 70s, largely due to the explosive growth of cheap fast food and junk food, lobbying, and a lack of education around food and health.
There was a series of science-mistakes that cascaded into the obesity epidemic. Ancel Keys kicked off the chain by slandering saturated fat.
I think there was a protective factor in the food supply that was reduced in the latter half of the 1970’s. Around 1990 McDonald’s was tricked into replacing their saturated frying oil with polyunsaturated oil...
The entire food pyramid is essentially propaganda from what I understand. Corn subsidies and mandatory corn-derived ethanol in gasoline created a surplus of corn, which led to fructose and high fructose corn syrup being added to everything.
I have no idea what the motive behind the food pyramid was, but high-fat foods being 2.25x calorie dense per gram compared to carbs, can lead to a surplus more easily compared to carbs. Just eating less sugar will not help if you are consuming too much fat .
The documentary "Sugar Coated" goes into the history regarding the pro-sugar/anti-fat industry lobbying aspect. The bad science was not a mistake—it was deliberate strategy. The same kind of FUD that "Big Tobacco" participated in. Most people are aware of the later but not the former.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Coated
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esjTpaohQq4
A good read. I'm glad Spam got a little mention. Terribly underrated IMO.
I only had it recently for the first time. Despite being widely seen in the US as a "poor people" food, inflation seems to have hit Spam pretty hard--I'm pretty sure the tin was over $4!
That said, while it looked rather unappetizing in its canned loaf shape, it's mostly pork shoulder, and after I cubed it and pan-fried it for a bit, it tasted like a crunchier ham steak. It was quite delightful when mixed into fried rice.
> a crunchier ham steak. It was quite delightful
Counterexample: spam fritters. Those and badly cooked ox liver were the two worst school dinners I ever had to force down (Brit, 1970s)
Is there an alternative that isn't as salty? Every time I've tried it (which is only a couple of times) I've found it incredibly salty :/
They make a reduced sodium variety. It's also best to think of it more like bacon than ham and use it as an accent.
This is probably anathema to many, but I will cube spam and let it sit in a bowl of water for a few minutes. Likely leads to a huge reduction in salt and fat.
Salt, yes, but the fat won't dissolve into water.
I always hated spam and then I went to a party that was hosted by a Hawaiian. I didn’t even know an appetizer was spam, it was so delicious.
I think if people try a spam musubi first (a Hawaiian staple), they'll be more inclined to try other forms of spam.
Spam kimbap is godlike, one of my favorite Korean dish
Underrated? It's objectively terrible for you.
Nothing is terrible for you in moderation. It is, however, objectively delicious and underrated.
Dimethylmercury is terrible for you even in moderation.
What’s a moderate amount of dimethylmercury? A molecule?
I'm not volunteering to find out, heh.
The canned meats, "tushenka", also became a USSR thing after the US sent massive amounts of it as lend-lease food.
Same as Spam ? The US sent boatloads of it via the Pacific. I've seen it credited with supplying something like 15% of all Soviet wartime calories consumed.
The Soviet and now post-soviet "tushenka" is 100% derived from American WW2 spam. But I think it actually tastes better, try some if you have an Eastern European store around.
thought this was going to be on the Morganthau plan.
> When the war ended in 1945, the military had huge stockpiles of food, including powdered cheese. The government liquidated these stockpiles, sometimes for pennies on the dollar, to private industry. Companies like Frito (later Frito-Lay), Kraft, and others found ways to use these wartime products. In 1948, the Frito company coated puffed cornmeal pieces with dehydrated cheese, and Cheetos were born.[26]
It is absolutely wild the butterfly effect of processed terrible food this may have caused and deaths from obesity. All from trying to find something to do with ultra cheap army surplus.
It's wild to think WW2 indirectly killed people a decade later by making them fat. When you hear about surplus materiel killing people, food isn't what comes to mind.
I believe Zero Mostel is the authority on this.
I’m wondering why on earth the military was storing cheese as a powder… the whole point of cheeses is that they are a great way to store milk. Why didn’t they just store cheese wheels? Surely powdering it makes it go off much faster?
Military food is a really fascinating logistics problem - how do you feed people, potentially across a long period while engaging in calorically demanding tasks? Foodstuffs need to last as long as possible because supply lines are targeted or have been destroyed. That shipment you received may be one of your last. Cheese, like any food with significant moisture, can ultimately rot.
Much of our modern processes are to somehow extend the life of the foodstuff over long periods. This boomed the overly processed food economy we currently have, but it was first built to simply make sure we had food for the long haul. Curing meats in salt is roughly the same process.
In turns of cheese, powder has less moisture stored in the individual cheese granule but may also be reconstituted with added moisture. Powdered forms are easier to package for individual soldiers to carry for themselves rather than a large, bulkier wheel that needs its own storage and transportation methods.
It goes further back. Napoleon offered a prize in 1795 for some way to preserve food for soldiers.[1] The result was "canning" - heating, boiling, and sealing in an airtight container. Originally in glass jars. Later metal cans. Finally vacuum-packed plastic.
Current products include MREs for the military, which are actually somewhat hard to buy commercially since Warnock got tired of dealing with preppers. They really want to sell these things by the container load. There are all kinds of knock-offs available. The real military MREs are designed for young soldiers in good condition doing heavy work, so three of them contain almost 4,000 calories. Civilian versions tend to be smaller portions.
There's also the Humanitarian Daily Ration. It's kosher, halal, vegetarian, lactose-free, and nut-free. Also air-droppable without a parachute. It's basically lentils and beans. It's intended for people on the edge of starvation. The US military used to give out MREs in crises, but that was too much concentrated energy food for someone nearly starving and could sicken them.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/03/01/147751097/why-...
It says in the article. Powdering involves further dehydration, reducing weight and size. I’m guessing it also improves shelf life.
This. Nescafe was great for the same reason, as it weighed much less than coffee grounds.
It's impossible to overestimate how important this was. The U.S. military in WWII had to support an enormous force overseas, to a degree and extent that no other power had to approach. Everything that the force needed in the field had to first go on a ship to be sent overseas. With the U.S. Twelfth Army Group numbering over a million men alone in Europe, small changes to products were magnified at scale, saving tons of weight in the logistics chain.
It's also worth noting that WW2 by and large predates intermodal shipping containers. Apart from some experiments late in the war, the U.S. military did not use containerized shipping to any significant degree. Everything was shipped "break-bulk" which meant that every individual parcel had to be loaded/unloaded by hand every time it changed transportation mode. Also, the ships that carried these goods were tiny by modern standards. Every bit of extra volume and weight mattered much more than it does today.
There's a probably apocryphal story that a Japanese higher-up realized the war was lost when they found out the US had enough spare capacity to build ice cream ships for in-theater cold treats (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream_barge).
First of all I don't think that's the whole point of cheese. Secondly, dehydrating and powdering dramatically extends shelf life and makes shipping cheaper.
What? What would make you think that dehydrating a food would make it go bad quicker?
I always wonder why people belittle cheap food and abundance that helped solve famine and operational logistics.
Obesity exists because food is insanely abundant and cheap because people wanted to solve the problem of people starving to death
Because processed foods are associated with many health complications.
Sources to back your theorem on the cause of obesity?
You get obese since you eat too many calories. Humans obey thermodynamics.
Cheetos popcorn is probably less bad overall, being a whole grain.
Perhaps, other than the "ruining perfectly good popcorn" part.
I love the spicy Cheetos popcorn. Tasty, but filled with all of the Red #40 dye.
> During the war, Nestlé companies supplied both the Axis and the Allies. In 2000, the company agreed to pay millions of dollars to settle claims that a German company they purchased used forced labor during the war.
The sole blemish on Nestlé's otherwise impeccable record. /s
Does anyone know the real backstory here? I'm thinking that Nestlé HQ (presumably in Switzerland) might have had rather limited control over (or even visibility into) their on-paper subsidiaries in Nazi-controlled countries.
See Maggi on this list which is now owned by Nestlé:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...
Nestlé also participated directly:
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/31/news/new-studies-detail-s...
https://archive.is/4ZLSN
> Nestle and the former Brown Boveri & Co., now called ABB, earlier admitted slave labor had been used at their German sites and have paid compensation. Novartis, Nestle and Roche contributed to the $1.25 billion settlement in 1998 that banks organized to settle the Holocaust account claims.
Looking here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggi#World_Wars - it sounds like Maggi wasn't acquired by Nestlé until 1947. Details unclear - but that may have been a case of "spoils of war, sold at auction". If so, then blaming Nestlé for Maggi's prior misdeeds sounds pretty dubious.
From the NYT article, I'd say Nestlé itself has at least some dirt on their hands. OTOH, that article makes no mention whatever of Switzerland's location - landlocked and totally surrounded by the seemed-to-be-winning Axis powers for almost all of WWII. Considering how <cough/> nicely the Axis occupation forces were treating most of the countries which they'd already conquered - the Swiss might have felt that making much of a fuss (over Axis misdeeds) could result their own conquest and occupation.