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What Soldiers Eat, By Country

nytimes.com

51–56 of 56 posts

Re: What Soldiers Eat, By Country

#51
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vegan/vegetarian diet problem is very real, and it is not just protein. You can very easily miss out pretty severely on a lot of things just by cutting meat out of your diet (iron, for example), and you do have to work hard to make sure you maintain a balanced diet. I don't see this as a problem for MREs, as composition has been pretty well solved, and I doubt it makes it any harder to solve the perishable proble…

Eating a balanced diet isn't hard as long as you don't eat the same thing basically every day (i.e. fast food). I think it's probably a non-issue, except for (say) naive teenage vegetarians - it's only a problem if you cut out meat but don't replace it with anything. I've done my research - if you have specific examples to the contrary, I'm all ears. I ate a vegetarian diet for seven or eight years, a vegan diet for…

A vegetarian who eats fish is no problem at all. Impossible for the army, because fish is so finicky, but in terms of nutrition ANYBODY could rock a vegetarian + fish diet.

This is, of course, because fish is just a specific kind of meat, so nutritionally it's not vegetarian in the slightest.

For years I was a vegetarian + fish guy. I hate pork, my family boycotts lamb, and I didn't have a taste for beef. Nowadays I eat the token hamburger every few weeks, because I've noticed I feel a lot better for it.

Re: What Soldiers Eat, By Country

#52
post #5
post #2

the accompanying article is much better, "A Taste of Home in Foil Packets and Powder" ~ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/weekinreview/05gilbertson.... The bit that caught my eye, "Australians get a dark-brown spreadable yeast-paste treat called Vegemite, for example" . I have a picture of the item being described here ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/4961948487/ which came from a PR1M (Patrol Ration One Man)…

Vegemite is similar to Marmite that's common in Britain and former colonies. It's loaded with vitamins that can be hard to get in certain situations (like when meat is short). It tastes like a combination of steak, Guinness and soy sauce.

> It tastes like a combination of steak, Guinness and soy sauce.

That's amazingly accurate except its like a thousand steaks, 1000 pints of Guinness and 1000 litres of soy sauce in a 200ml jar.

It's impossible to get over how intense the taste is. Even a wafer thin coating of it is too much on toast.

Re: What Soldiers Eat, By Country

#53
post #8
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are those ingredients organized inside the main plastic bag?

This has a good layout. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meal,_Ready-to-Eat And the changing menus http://www.mreinfo.com/us/mre/mre-menus.html The whole thing comes in thick plastic bag. When you cut it open you get several plastic bags and small cardboard boxes. The flameless heater is just another empty looking plastic bag (lower left in the picture). Inside the boxes are the main parts of the meal inside of sealed ti…

Thanks for all the info.

Also, they seem to include the heater these days: http://www.mreinfo.com/civilian/mre/civilian-mre-comparison....

Re: What Soldiers Eat, By Country

#55
post #11

I feel like applying for a job at the New York Times just so I can fix their terrible Flash-based gallery software which is used in this article and many others recently. Totally kills the otherwise-interesting browsing experience for me. HTML5 would be more than sufficient for this.

I'm curious, but how does flash detract from the browsing experience/ or how would html5 add to the browsing experience? To me it just seems like choosing one programming language over another...

The Flash is buggy; when I mouse over the items, the little label doesn't "unfold" until about 10 seconds after I move my mouse out of the photo. I can see what it's trying to do -- it unfolds for an excruciating split second -- but I can't interact with the movie.

HTML works on more devices, requires fewer resources for an application like this, and usually works more reliably in my recent experience. Why use Flash for this interface?

Re: What Soldiers Eat, By Country

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating a balanced diet isn't hard as long as you don't eat the same thing basically every day (i.e. fast food). I think it's probably a non-issue, except for (say) naive teenage vegetarians - it's only a problem if you cut out meat but don't replace it with anything. I've done my research - if you have specific examples to the contrary, I'm all ears. I ate a vegetarian diet for seven or eight years, a vegan diet for…

A vegetarian who eats fish is no problem at all. Impossible for the army, because fish is so finicky, but in terms of nutrition ANYBODY could rock a vegetarian + fish diet. This is, of course, because fish is just a specific kind of meat, so nutritionally it's not vegetarian in the slightest. For years I was a vegetarian + fish guy. I hate pork, my family boycotts lamb, and I didn't have a taste for beef. Nowadays I…

We call you a "pescatarian".
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