[HN Gopher] Post World War II Food
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Post World War II Food
Author : paulpauper
Score : 120 points
Date : 2024-10-24 16:54 UTC (6 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (www.nps.gov)
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| A good read. I'm glad Spam got a little mention. Terribly
| underrated IMO.
| cobbzilla wrote:
| 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.
| meowster wrote:
| I think if people try a spam musubi first (a Hawaiian
| staple), they'll be more inclined to try other forms of spam.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I tried one out of a 7-11 in Hawaii and was terribly
| disappointed... to be fair, it was exactly as good as one
| would expect convenience store food to be.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| 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.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > 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)
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Ugh yeah and semolina for pudding. I can barely even say
| the word semolina without gagging.
|
| And no, Miss, the jam splotch on top only makes it worse.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Semolina porridge is great if prepared perfectly, but if
| it has clumps the texture is absolutely awful.
| bloopernova wrote:
| 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 :/
| ksymph wrote:
| 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.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| 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.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Salt, yes, but the fat won't dissolve into water.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| The fats visibly rise to the surface and are easily
| poured/skimmed away.
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's just a substitute for Bologna sausage... just handful of
| cans over few years with odd and specific recipes can be
| enjoyable, otherwise real sausages are simply better.
| airstrike wrote:
| Underrated? It's objectively terrible for you.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Nothing is terrible for you in moderation. It _is_ , however,
| objectively delicious and underrated.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Dimethylmercury is terrible for you even in moderation.
| nkrisc wrote:
| What's a moderate amount of dimethylmercury? A molecule?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'm not volunteering to find out, heh.
| haunter wrote:
| Spam kimbap is godlike, one of my favorite Korean dish
| themadturk wrote:
| About 20 years ago I had a co-worker, transplanted from her
| native Hawaii to the Seattle area. Her cubicle was very nearly
| a shrine to Spam: nothing reminded her of home quite as much as
| Spam ads and such-like.
|
| Me, the occasional fried spam sandwich is a delicious
| indulgence.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| > 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.
| zdw wrote:
| Cheetos popcorn is probably less bad overall, being a whole
| grain.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Perhaps, other than the "ruining perfectly good popcorn"
| part.
| vondur wrote:
| I love the spicy Cheetos popcorn. Tasty, but filled with
| all of the Red #40 dye.
| namdnay wrote:
| 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?
| gnatman wrote:
| 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.
| devilbunny wrote:
| It's not the _whole_ point of cheese in most cultures, but
| it's a very effective method of turning summer grass into
| winter food. Which, especially in Alpine climates, is
| important.
|
| Native Americans, lacking domesticated ruminants, achieved
| similar results with pemmican, which is the same principle:
| protein + fat + dehydration = long-lasting nutritious food
| for survival. Not apparently very tasty, and they would
| certainly supplement it with anything else they could find,
| but it kept you from starving.
| oivey wrote:
| It says in the article. Powdering involves further
| dehydration, reducing weight and size. I'm guessing it also
| improves shelf life.
| ckozlowski wrote:
| 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.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| 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).
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I think there is a real story about a British/Australian
| general at Hamel arranging for hot meals in the trenches
|
| e: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Monash
| kbolino wrote:
| 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.
| tsumnia wrote:
| 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.
| Animats wrote:
| 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-...
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| There's a really good episode of 99% Invisible that
| explains how much of the technology used to produce food in
| grocery stores was developed by the military. One of the
| most surprising, for me, was chewy chocolate chip cookies.
| appletrotter wrote:
| What? What would make you think that dehydrating a food would
| make it go bad quicker?
| triceratops wrote:
| 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.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I believe Zero Mostel is the authority on this.
| willismichael wrote:
| Please tell us more about this. I'm really hoping there is
| a related Zero Mostel video that you can share.
| tekla wrote:
| 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
| appletrotter wrote:
| Because processed foods are associated with many health
| complications.
|
| Sources to back your theorem on the cause of obesity?
| tekla wrote:
| You get obese since you eat too many calories. Humans obey
| thermodynamics.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I think your point on nutritious food being widely
| available for cheap is spot on.
|
| That said going back to entropy to explain how a
| structure of dozens of trillions of cells harvest energy
| from foreign structures following a lifetime of
| heuristics is utterly misleading.
|
| In particular it makes it sound scientific, when we have
| very little practical knowledge on how it works at scale
| and can't reliable do falsifiable experiments to prove
| our theories.
|
| I mean, we're still literally burning stuff[0] as a proxy
| for the digestion process because we have no other way of
| coming up with a stable number. Which gives us
| aberrations like gasoline having higher nutritious value
| than potatoes (which totally makes sense in
| thermodynamics, I concur)
|
| [0] https://www.livescience.com/62808-how-calories-are-
| calculate...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| People are entirely too preoccupied with the quality of food
| instead of the quantity. I think it is an intentional or
| subconscious distraction. It is easy to eat excessive calories
| when you are consuming sugar coated fats. Doubly so if you are
| sedentary.
| mjfl wrote:
| thought this was going to be on the Morganthau plan.
| uxhacker wrote:
| Is this the real start of processed food and the obesity crisis?
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| 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.
| teslabox wrote:
| > 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...
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| 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
| Clubber wrote:
| The tobacco companies bought all the food companies in
| the 80s and 90s and figured out how to make food "hyper-
| palatable (addictive)," by combining sugar (HFCS), salt
| (sodium) and fat.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/09/19/addict
| ion...
| aspenmayer wrote:
| 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.
| paulpauper wrote:
| 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 .
| taeric wrote:
| I thought it was past tense, at this point? I'll try and
| look in my kid's school next chance I get, but I don't
| think anyone pushes the pyramid anymore.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The issue was beef tallow for fries, which they hadn't
| disclosed to the public, and so vegetarians or people who
| don't eat beef were mad. They could've solved the problem
| either by introducing an alternate or simple disclosure.
| But they were hardly "tricked."
| paulpauper wrote:
| _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.
| nailer wrote:
| Why do you think eating fats and oils causes obesity?
| zolbrek wrote:
| Maybe because they make your dinner so damn tasty you end
| up eating more than you should.
| soperj wrote:
| Because Harvard sold out to big sugar back in the 60s.
| excalibur wrote:
| > During the war, Nestle 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 Nestle's otherwise impeccable record. /s
| bell-cot wrote:
| Does anyone know the real backstory here? I'm thinking that
| Nestle HQ (presumably in Switzerland) might have had rather
| limited control over (or even visibility into) their on-paper
| subsidiaries in Nazi-controlled countries.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| See Maggi on this list which is now owned by Nestle:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_.
| ..
|
| Nestle 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.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Looking here -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggi#World_Wars - it sounds
| like Maggi wasn't acquired by Nestle until 1947. Details
| unclear - but that may have been a case of "spoils of war,
| sold at auction". If so, then blaming Nestle for Maggi's
| prior misdeeds sounds pretty dubious.
|
| From the NYT article, I'd say Nestle 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.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| 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?
| tartoran wrote:
| 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.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| If only they had the marketing prowess of Soylent.
| kibwen wrote:
| Not joking, "Life Sustaining Glop" would be a better name
| than Soylent.
| donkdonk wrote:
| 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.
| talldayo wrote:
| "I quit smoking years ago, but an after-meal cigarette from
| 1973 might just tempt me..."
|
| Never gets old :')
| wahern wrote:
| 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.
| beloch wrote:
| I'd appreciate the perspective of an actual smoker on this,
| but I suspect those long-preserved cigarettes aren't that
| special in and of themselves. For Steve, it's a hit of both
| nostalgia and a chemical he's long been deprived of. It's
| probably amazing for him, and that shows in the videos, but
| telling himself that those preserved cigs are special might
| be a way for him to avoid relapsing. He craves more, but he
| can tell himself that the modern junk just wouldn't be the
| same.
|
| If you decided to get addicted to vintage MRE tobacco you'd
| probably have a pretty tough time sourcing enough of it to
| give yourself cancer.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Cigarettes haven't been the same (in the US) for well
| over a decade now, since all 50 States and DC require
| them to be "fire safe" cigarettes (FSC).
|
| This means that there are parts of the paper wrapper that
| have vinyl compounds that are intended to allow them to
| self-extinguish.
|
| Compared to the cigarettes of yore, these taste like
| fried dick cancer.
|
| But _old_ tobacco doesn 't always age well. It can
| survive for centuries if stored at the appropriate
| temperature and humidity and away from things that would
| impact the taste, or it can turn stale and fairly blah in
| weeks or months when stored poorly.
| freedomben wrote:
| Interesting. I rarely smoke, but did do a lot of smoking
| in the mid 00s. I recently indulged and damn, it was
| nowhere near as tasty as I remember. That probably
| explains it!
| mauvehaus wrote:
| As someone who smokes a small single digit number of cigars
| per year, I can attest that the nicotine buzz is
| _incredible_ on the rare occasions that I do.
|
| I've never been a regular smoker, but I bet that for
| someone who was, smoking a single cigarette every few
| months would be an almost religious experience. You'd be
| getting all of the sensory associations, plus the chemical
| stimulation unblunted by accumulated tolerance.
| kleton wrote:
| The canned meats, "tushenka", also became a USSR thing after the
| US sent massive amounts of it as lend-lease food.
| euroderf wrote:
| 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.
| dron57 wrote:
| 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.
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| 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
| bbarnett wrote:
| I agree! No one should be eating human remains, no matter how
| historical!
|
| Is there no point that's too far!? Unbelievable!
| nailer wrote:
| British cuisine has some interesting side effects of World War
| II.
|
| In the UK, today, people specifically desire beans produced by a
| factory, from a tin, with sugary orange-colored tomato sauce.
| Even at high end restaurants, people desire and expect tinned
| beans.
|
| Whereas places outside the UK that share some elements of British
| culture like Australia, Boston and Ireland expect home made means
| - crushed tomatoes, borlotti beans, local additions (like feta
| and mint in Australia).
|
| My best-guess understanding is the British taste for sweet canned
| beans comes from WW2 rationing.
| chris1993 wrote:
| It was one of my grandfather's (WWII veteran) favourite foods,
| a taste acquired in his army days.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| I don't think I have _ever_ seen home-made beans in Australia,
| even at fancy cafes. Beans on a breakfast menu means Heinz, or
| Wattie 's if you're in New Zealand.
|
| I do recall my shock at visiting the staff canteen of a large
| UK corporation and finding out that the most popular menu item
| by far for lunch was chips (fries) and beans.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| Hilarious that feta and mint as "Australian" additions. I seem
| to recall there is or was a sizeable Greek-derived population
| in some areas of Aussieland - that _must_ be where that comes
| from.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This reminds me of the regulation Swiss army cookbook, which has
| many unchanged recipes. Each meal is designed to be easily
| prepared with limited ingredients and a simple barracks kitchen.
| The meals are rated by their digestibility and other factors. I
| have been looking for an English translation for a while
|
| https://vsmk.ch/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/60_006_d.pdf-Koch...
| kibwen wrote:
| I'm struggling to imagine what would happen in the modern day if
| the US government went to war and tried to resort to WWII-style
| rationing. Limited meat, limited sugar, limited gasoline, a
| national speed limit of 35 MPH to save on tires... I legitimately
| think that the country would collapse.
| susiecambria wrote:
| Totally agree.
|
| I think a lot about victory gardens since I moved to rural
| Virginia. Commercial agriculture is big here and some I've
| spoken with assume that because so much of the land is farmed,
| that individuals have gardens or know how to grow fruit and
| vegetables. But this is just not true. There is a huge
| difference between commercial agriculture and home gardens.
|
| I haven't looked into it enough to determine if people don't
| know how to garden, rent so can't create a garden, or what. But
| I'll keep taking about it and maybe someone will do something
| about it.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It is important to note that people in 1939 often did not
| have experience with this either. A lot of WWII rationing and
| planning focused on educating people on how to do these
| things in the first place.
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