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posted by on Sunday May 21 2017, @04:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the making-it-tastier-by-comparison dept.

When soldiers go into the field, they carry with them tiny miracles of engineering. And we're not just talking about weaponry: some very technical and forward-thinking research has gone into military meals. They must be light and easy to carry, capable of staying edible even after weeks in the hot sun, supply the surprisingly high number of calories that soldiers in the field need (more than 4,000 a day), and, of course, not cost the taxpayer an inordinate amount. That has led to some clever tricks of science that have even made their way into the goods you may find on your shopping list.

One of the most interesting items in army rations, from an innovation perspective, is the bread, says writer Anastacia Marx de Salcedo, author of the book Combat-Ready Kitchen. Freshly baked bread begins going stale the moment it comes out of the oven, as strands of a starch called amylose spread all throughout its structure and start to harden. Amylose can be snipped up by enzymes called amylases, but these are denatured by heat as the bread cooks – hence the generally unappealing, razor-to-the-gums qualities of a baguette after a few days.

In the mid-20th Century, however, food scientists at Kansas State College with connections to the US military discovered that adding amylases that stand up to heat changed the equation. These enzymes, which come from heat-tolerant bacteria, kept right on snipping after baking, keeping bread almost eerily soft and flexible and giving it a long shelf-life.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Sunday May 21 2017, @07:34PM (3 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Sunday May 21 2017, @07:34PM (#513125) Journal
    The ancients were extremely good at organization. Look at the enormous stone monuments they left everywhere. Modern hubris leads us to continually underestimate them.

    The logistics of feeding a large mass of men can be very difficult, of course. Foraging, and looting the locals, only produces so much food. Most big battles even into relatively modern times (this has been shown to be true for the war betwixt the states for instance) were characterized by one or both sides arriving at the battlefield suffering from nutritional deficiencies and quite simply underfed, and performing poorly as a result. Often both sides were practically starving by the time they fought.

    And yes, the Mongolians excelled at logistics and that was one of the keys to their success. But not the only one, certainly not. In fact they often fielded significantly *smaller* armies than their opponents, which reduced the strain on their supply lines a bit. They got a ton of mileage out of completely dominating what we might call 'the scout range' - the area between the two armies as they move closer together. Their scouts ruled which meant they could see clearly while their opponents were practically blind. This allowed the mongols to split very large powerful armies into bite-sized pieces and devour them in detail.

    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @11:20PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @11:20PM (#513195)

    Yeah, but they left us behind in this crappy galaxy with next to none of their cool tech

  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday May 22 2017, @01:34AM (1 child)

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Monday May 22 2017, @01:34AM (#513250) Journal

    Yep -- absolutely true. I didn't mean to imply that the Mongol armies only succeeded because of better food supplies. There's a lot of other reasons, as you note. But I was trying to think of other historical examples that might see an intersection between food preservation innovations and unusual military prowess -- and the Mongols immediately came to mind.

    • (Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:52AM

      by Arik (4543) on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:52AM (#513868) Journal
      They do, and I was only trying to add a bit.

      Specific adaptions? Horse milk is interesting, mares don't produce a lot but if you have a half-dozen mares for each man I guess it adds up to substantial amounts. I seem to recall some other details but not being sure where I recall them from they may be wrong. Cheese curds, mix with water in a bag, set under saddle at start of day, pull out later for liquid rations? Also opening the veins of their horses and taking a few sips. Kind of grim stuff really, but then... Mongols.
      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?