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    Combat-Ready Kitchen: How the U.S. Military Shapes the Way You Eat
    Combat-Ready Kitchen: How the U.S. Military Shapes the Way You Eat
    Combat-Ready Kitchen: How the U.S. Military Shapes the Way You Eat
    Audiobook9 hours

    Combat-Ready Kitchen: How the U.S. Military Shapes the Way You Eat

    Written by Anastacia Marx de Salcedo

    Narrated by C. S. E. Cooney

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    You probably don't realize that your supermarket is filled with foods that have a military origin: canned goods, packaged deli meats, TV dinners, cling wrap, energy bars . . . the list is almost endless. In fact, there's a watered-down combat ration lurking in practically every bag, box, can, bottle, jar, and carton Americans buy.

    Anastacia Marx de Salcedo shows how the Department of Defense Combat Feeding Directorate plans, funds, and spreads the food science that enables it to produce cheap, imperishable rations. It works with an immense network of university, government, and industry collaborators such as ADM, ConAgra, General Mills, Hershey, Hormel, Mars, Nabisco, Reynolds, Smithfield, Swift, Tyson and Unilever. It's a good deal for both sides: the conglomerates get exclusive patents or a headstart on the next breakthrough technology; the Army ensures that it has commercial suppliers if it ever needs to manufacture millions of rations.

    And for us consumers, who eat this food originally designed for soldiers on the battlefield? We're the guinea pigs in a giant public health experiment, one in which science and technology, at the beck of the military, have taken over our kitchens.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateAug 4, 2015
    ISBN9781494583866
    Combat-Ready Kitchen: How the U.S. Military Shapes the Way You Eat
    Author

    Anastacia Marx de Salcedo

    Anastacia Marx de Salcedo is a nonfiction writer whose work has appeared in the Atlantic, Salon, Slate, Vice, and on PBS and NPR blogs. She has worked as a public health consultant, news magazine publisher, and public policy researcher. She is the author of Combat-Ready Kitchen: How the U.S. Military Shapes the Way You Eat, also published in Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese, and lives in Boston, Massachusetts. Visit AnastaciaMarxdeSalcedo.com.

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    Reviews for Combat-Ready Kitchen

    3.5/5

    12 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 2/5
      I really wanted to like this, but it was as dry as hardtack. The author flip flops her stance even within the same chapter. The bits she thought were interesting seem to be pretty common knowledge. The structure of the book is kind of a mess. You'd do better listening to the MRE episode of The Sporkful. NOTE: The audiobook is very low quality and I recommend reading the text over listening. The sound is poor and the narrator over-enunciates to a painful degree. I never want to hear the word patent again in my entire life
    • 3/5
      This book is a treasure trove of anecdotes about the sometimes unexpected provenance of the staples in our pantries. That the tin can was developed as a response to Napoleon's desire to replace his army's plundering with a more stable form of sustenance is well established. But the military's role, if not in the invention, then in the massive implementation of food sterilization techniques, packaging and esoteric preparation techniques did not stop there.Most chapters of this book read well, arranged in chronological order and cleverly prefaced with short tableaus of modern family life to outline the ubiquitousness of the products discussed in the book. Unfortunately, their quality is uneven, alterning between well-researched popular science essays and rather confusing strings of anecdotes. Maybe this book is best enjoyed like a packaged Meal, Ready to Eat (MRE): devour the snacks and the more appetizing bits, but skip the soggy sides. Unless you are really hungry.
    • 3/5
      A provocative thesis, but not completely convincing. It's one thing to show a connection between military research and commercial products, and to reveal the origins of certain food techniques and technologies. It's another thing to claim that the military is acting as a shadowy puppeteer with a hidden agenda, and to assert that all of today's processed foods can be traced back to World War I and World War II. (I'm not a food historian, but I find it hard to believe that Nabisco, Kraft, and other corporations that, like the military, probably prize economy, speed and convenience, weren't already working on such products.) And while it was interesting to learn about the biology behind processes like preservation and sterilization, the story tended to get bogged down in such details. Also unnecessary was De Salcedo's patting herself on the back about her own cooking and her role in nurturing her family, which seems more fitting for a memoir.