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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2015
This is a fun book. I also explains in clear detail why all our supermarket food is packaged, processed crap. It was designed to last forever as the army shipped it to soldiers. This book could have been called "Why you eat like a grunt."
Here’s the premise: The armed forces need food. After a fascinating historical romp through feeding soldiers throughout history, we learn that there’s a massive military-nutritional complex. America’s soldiers need to eat, but food doesn’t travel well. So the nation’s food labs (and the Army’s own, in Natick, Massachusetts) gear up to find ways to prepare and package food that can get to the soldiers in massive quantities without tasting too horrible.
There's fun prose in here that reminded me of Michael Pollan. Here's a sample:
Cheese purists the world over exalt their mummified milk. Their silken Goudas and savory Emmentalers. Their fetid fetas and squeaky queso frescos. Their moldy Roqueforts and runny Camemberts. These disks of rotted dairy are the pinnacle of thousands of years of experimentation that began when a herdsman carrying a ruminant’s stomach brimming with milk found that by journey’s end, he had a bag full of curds and whey.
There's a lot of cool trivia in here, like how we all ended up eating "nutrition bars" instead of actual nutrition, and why bread never really gets stale any more. Blame the scientists who feed the US Armed Forces. They were just doing their jobs, but the food industry follows their lead and we all end up eating "meals ready-to-eat."
My full review is on my site bernoff.com
Here’s the premise: The armed forces need food. After a fascinating historical romp through feeding soldiers throughout history, we learn that there’s a massive military-nutritional complex. America’s soldiers need to eat, but food doesn’t travel well. So the nation’s food labs (and the Army’s own, in Natick, Massachusetts) gear up to find ways to prepare and package food that can get to the soldiers in massive quantities without tasting too horrible.
There's fun prose in here that reminded me of Michael Pollan. Here's a sample:
Cheese purists the world over exalt their mummified milk. Their silken Goudas and savory Emmentalers. Their fetid fetas and squeaky queso frescos. Their moldy Roqueforts and runny Camemberts. These disks of rotted dairy are the pinnacle of thousands of years of experimentation that began when a herdsman carrying a ruminant’s stomach brimming with milk found that by journey’s end, he had a bag full of curds and whey.
There's a lot of cool trivia in here, like how we all ended up eating "nutrition bars" instead of actual nutrition, and why bread never really gets stale any more. Blame the scientists who feed the US Armed Forces. They were just doing their jobs, but the food industry follows their lead and we all end up eating "meals ready-to-eat."
My full review is on my site bernoff.com
