Combat-Ready Kitchen: How the U.S. Military Shapes the Way You Eat (2015)

AMERICAN FOOD SYSTEM, CENTRAL COMMAND, PART ONE

I’m not at liberty to divulge the top secret way I got my embarrassingly old and dented Camry to the Natick Soldier Center gatehouse, but suffice it to say there are various uniformed men and a lot of concrete barriers involved. Once inside, my car is checked for improvised explosive devices and I’m met by Lieutenant Colonel David Accetta, a creased-pants, crushing-handshake kind of guy who signs his e-mails “All the Way! David.” He opens the passenger-side door and slides in.

“Buckle up,” he commands, swiveling so I can see the two scars crisscrossing his face as if he’d been run over by an M1 Abrams tank. “This is a federal facility, and we’re strict.” I’m barely going five miles per hour and it’s a parking lot, but I do what he says.

The U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, a handful of low buildings scattered over seventy-eight acres in a nondescript Boston suburb, could be just another second-tier office park. The Combat Feeding Directorate, one of seven research centers on the site, is toward the back, in an H-shaped, teal-and-aqua-striped building surrounded—like that drive-you-crazy neighbor’s house—by slightly rusting vehicles, except in this case there’s a Humvee, a camouflage-tarped assault kitchen, a shower/laundry unit, and a ten-by-twenty-foot steel box with a containerized chapel.

As Hollywood is to movies, as Nashville is to country music, and as New York City is to the publishing industry, the Natick Center is to the processed foods that form the bedrock of the American diet. It’s where they invented energy bars, restructured meat, nonstaling bread, and instant coffee. And today, in a marathon eight-hour visit, I’ll witness how the U.S. Army designs the rations that—reformulated and repackaged—line our pantry shelves and fill our refrigerators. I’ve breached the secret beating heart of the industrial food system.

The American soldier stationed abroad eats a diet almost as varied as we do here at home. Sparing no expense, the Department of Defense (DOD), via a multibillion-dollar, sole-source “prime vendor” contract (the companies are often owned, at least in part, by former military members and headquartered abroad),¹ ships in fresh meat, dairy, and produce from nearby allies. The cost of these perishables is almost double their stateside price tag due to the difficulty of transport over ambush-prone roads and to remote areas with little infrastructure. The fresh supplies are combined with stockpiled staples and preserved items purchased directly from American food conglomerates such as ConAgra, Sara Lee, and Perdue for made-from-scratch meals in the garrison mess halls. (Well, as from-scratch as a modern American meal ever is, that is to say, prepared by opening bags, boxes, bottles, and cans.) And should our warrior ever crave an Ultimate Cheese Lover’s Pizza, a Triple Whopper, or the Colonel’s Crispy Strips, she can visit the fast-food stands that are now a fixture on foreign military bases.

But what about on the front line, when the soldier is engaged in activities that are, of course, the real reason he’s stationed thousands of miles from home, sleeping fitfully in a tent, alternately bored or adrenaline-charged and fearful? Performing a function check on his M16. Searching civilian vehicles at a checkpoint. Digging foxholes. Guiding down a “bird” to an improvised landing strip. Warriors in the field may be there for days on end, their souped-up metabolisms burning up to 4,200 calories over twenty-four hours, but the brutal business of kill or be killed hardly lends itself to sit-down meals. Enter the Natick Center. Their contribution to the army’s feeding strategy is reserved for a single occasion: combat. The graze-’n’-raze product line includes the Meal, Ready-to-Eat (MRE); First Strike Ration; Unitized Group Ration (UGR); Meal, Cold Weather, and Food Packet, Long Range Patrol; and the Modular Operational Ration Enhancement (MORE). Each has been laboriously engineered and manufactured on American soil to deliver an optimal nutritional payload to soldiers half a world and several years away.

Lieutenant Colonel Accetta escorts me into the Combat Feeding Directorate building. Immediately to the left is the Warrior Café, a small meeting room stuffed with rations memorabilia—Civil War hardtack, a jaw-breaking square cracker poked full of holes to ensure even baking; World War II C-rats in gold-lacquered cans with their inevitable companion, the P-38 can opener; the similar Korean and Vietnam War-era canned Meal, Combat, Individuals; tiny vials of synthetic smells; and a wall case full of elderly bakery products. Kathy-Lynn Evangelos, second in charge at the directorate; Lauren Oleksyk, a food scientist; and two Iraq War vets, tall and lanky Corporal Evan Bick and short and broad Jeff Sisto, await us. Introductions are made all around and then eyes snap back to Evangelos, the power center. She flashes the tight smile of someone due elsewhere five minutes ago and launches into her boilerplate overview of the Combat Feeding Program.

“Our shelf life is three years at eighty degrees because combat rations are a war-stopper and protected by Congress. When you go to war, you’ve got to bring your beans and your bullets. And those beans have to be shelf stable, high quality, and ready to go. When you talk to food technologists in the commercial sector, they’ll ask us what our shelf life is and we’ll tell them and they’ll be in shock,” she says, rattling off a list of the typical research activities at a private company: an umpteenth flavor for a product line; a new, giant cookie sandwich; fanciful cracker shapes. But when it comes down to the nitty-gritty—getting those things to last for three, six, or nine months without spoiling or going stale: “Shelf life is the challenge—and the experts are here at Natick.”

Evangelos is already eyeing her watch—her five minutes are up. But I have to ask a question, the one that, although they don’t know it, is the real reason for my visit: How often do the Natick Center’s inventions get adapted by the private sector? “We don’t necessarily want to develop things that are militarily unique, so we’re really anxious when it comes to technology transfer,” she explains. “If it’s something new and innovative, we’re not going to develop it here, use it here, and that’s the end of it. We need to have the commercial sector embrace anything new that comes out of this program.” (Later I ask the eminent food scientist and former Journal of Food Science editor Daryl Lund the same thing. His answer is more explicit: “If an emergency arises, they need to be able to go to those companies and say, ‘Hey, you have a processing line that produces these kinds of foods for the consumer, but now we need you to convert it to produce these same kinds of foods for the military.’”) Spiel done, Evangelos excuses herself, bustles down the hall, and disappears through two swinging doors that lead to another wing of the building.

Immediately, the two vets, corporals Bick and Sisto, heave a cardboard box full of rations onto the table. “Ready to taste?”

The rations, tan bundles made of heavy-grade thermoplastic polyolefin, are easy to toss in a rucksack. They weigh 1⅝ pounds and are just about the size of a brick. Inside each shrink-wrapped package are close to twenty separate items: two transparent plastic bags, one for beverages and the other for the flameless heater; several three- or four-layer pouches made of foil, polyethylene, nylon, and polyester that encase an entrée, pastry items, crackers, breads, cereals, and spreads; cylindrical plastic packets of coffee and a Kool-Aid-like beverage; paper packets of salt and sugar; a plastic spoon; a packet of nondairy creamer; a matchbook; two Chiclets in white-and-red cellophane; and a tightly folded square of toilet paper. (After their meal, soldiers burn or bury all trash.)

The guys are nudging toward me what I’m guessing they think I’ll like, Menu 14, Spicy Penne with Vegetarian Sausage, and Menu 23, Chicken Pesto Pasta, but as an MRE neophyte, I’m going for the gusto. I choose an American classic: Menu 18, Beef Patty, which at 1,200 calories and chock-full of glucose is calibrated to the metabolism of an Ironman triathlete. It’s also been sitting at room temperature for two years. I resolutely rip open the package and start with the most familiar item, Combos, or rather crispy tubes of dough filled with gooey processed cheese. They’re very tasty, and I finish the bag. The whole wheat bread “snack,” on the other hand, can’t be much of an improvement on the aforementioned hardtack. And the pièce de résistance, a hamburger heated in one of the transparent bags by a magnesium, salt, iron, and water chemical reaction, veers alarmingly toward not being fit for human consumption.

“Delicious,” I say.

Next on the tasting menu is the First Strike Ration, which, as Corporal Bick explains, is “designed for a grazing mentality.” It was formally introduced in 2007, after it was found that soldiers were stripping MREs of their snackier elements to make them easier to carry into battle, which, unfortunately, also stripped the meals of their nutritional value. The package, which contains 3,900 calories, enough for an entire day, includes, among other things, a three-year shelf-stable sandwich; an energy bar, originally called the HooAH! bar, in honor of the army call used to affirm or motivate soldiers; and, my personal favorite, caffeinated gum. I pop two pieces into my mouth.

“Careful,” says Lieutenant Colonel Accetta. “Those will give you a stomachache.” Then he gives a half wave. “Excuse me. I have some work to do. I’ll check in on you later.” He strides off toward the back of the building and through the swinging doors.

“Would you like to see the food lab?” asks Lauren Oleksyk, the leader of the Food Processing, Engineering and Technology Team. She’s your archetypical girl-nerd: slight, medium height, dressed to deflect attention. A career food scientist, she doesn’t bother to provide synonyms for words like exothermic reaction or thermal stabilization.

The food lab is the size of a small airplane hangar—spotless stainless steel counters and sinks, gleaming gauges and valves—and practically lifeless, except for three women standing off to the left, talking and laughing as they flatten out rounds of dough, stuff them, and crimp the edges closed. It could be the annual empanada blowout at Tía Elena’s, except instead of rolling pins, they wield steel rods encased in silicone padding. And instead of aprons, they’re wearing lab coats and hairnets. They are food technologists Jacqueline LeBlanc, Danielle Anderson, and Sydney Walker. Today they’re working on the shelf-stable sandwich, perfecting a new sausage-and-cheese flavor to add to the existing lineup of pepperoni and chicken barbecue.

“The secret is the marinade,” says LeBlanc in that conspiratorial tone cooks get when they’re about to share a treasured recipe. I lean forward, expecting some piquant cousin of a traditional barbecue sauce. “Rice syrup and glycerol to bring down the water activity of the sausage. Artificial sausage flavor because anything that’s supposed to last such a long time will lose a little flavor. And we’re trying two different acidulants in the meat. I’m just hoping it doesn’t affect the flavor too much.” Increasing its acidity helps to preserve the meat, because most pathogenic bacteria can’t reproduce at a pH lower than 4.6.

Recipes published in cookbooks and magazines and on Web sites are usually developed and tested over a period of days or weeks. Formulations, their industrial counterparts, can take years. Both start by focusing on flavor, which is achieved by adjusting ingredients, proportions, techniques, and cooking times. But while the recipes created for home or restaurant use may also consider ease of preparation and cost of ingredients, once the desired taste is achieved, the work is pretty much done. With formulations, it’s just beginning. Now the food technologist has to figure out how to maintain the same flavor and texture over many months or years, and to ensure that no spoilage or bacterial contamination occurs.

This balancing act is what makes the shelves of ingredients in Natick’s small “traditional” kitchen—an alcove with a stove, a sink, pots, pans, and ladles off the western side of the industrial-equipment-jammed pilot lab—so jarring. Tins of oregano, thyme, nutmeg, and cinnamon are interspersed with big silver cans of cheddar flakes, banana flakes, and dehydrated peppers. Plastic tubs of Maltrin, a combination of cellulose and guar gum, and carrageenan are mixed in with the flour and sugar. Calcium sulfate, ascorbic acid, and sodium lactate are lined up like bottles of vitamins. Today the Natick Center food scientists are comparing how glucono delta-lactone and pHase, both of which lower the meat’s natural pH level, affect the taste, stability, and safety of the sandwich. They won’t know the answer for two more months—and then, depending on the results, may have to make more tweaks to the formulation. No wonder this item has been in development for almost twenty years.

LeBlanc and Anderson roll the loaded baking rack of sandwiches across the pilot plant. On our way, we pass oversize Hobart and Blodgett mixers, kettles, combination ovens, conveyors, and compactors. The meat-filled rolls are proofed—allowed to rise for an hour in a humid chamber—and then “baked off” for thirteen minutes in a walk-in industrial oven. (And, yes, there’s a handle inside just in case.) After the sandwiches have cooled, we bring them over to the packing area. A young technician, Lauren Pecukonis, holds open small plastic pouches, each labeled with their storage times (T-0, starting time; 2 weeks; 4 weeks) and whether they are a control or one of the two variables. LeBlanc waits until the last minute to cut open a package of oxygen scavengers—there’s a small hiss as they awaken and begin to feed on the air around them, then quickly drops them into each bag. She hands the packet to Pecukonis. “Vacuum-seal it! Quickly!” A loud whoosh. “Oops!” Pecukonis looks sheepish. She’s accidentally vacuum-sealed shut the vacuum sealer.

The easiest way to understand the importance of this packaging to the food it contains is to imagine skinning yourself. (If the thought is too macabre, I’ll allow you to substitute a banana.) The consequences are dire. First, the physical barrier between your insides and the rest of the world is destroyed, causing a big disgusting puddle of blood and guts to leak out. Second, a host of microbial invaders rush in, consuming your vitals and spreading disease. Finally, air, water, light, and temperatures that are either too cold or too hot bring about changes to cells and substances. Let’s be frank: you’re not long for this world. Similarly, without its wrapper, that chicken fajita entrée or giant soft chocolate chip cookie isn’t either. (Although an unstinting hand with the chemical preservatives can do a lot to hold these forces in check.)

The food technologists admit as much. “I’d like to be able to say that formulation is everything,” says LeBlanc. “But to be honest, the reason we get the stability we get is the packaging.”

The Polymer Film Center of Excellence, run by Jeanne Lucciarini, a neatly dressed blonde in a sweater set, is where designing this vital packaging takes place. The room, which is no larger than forty by sixty feet, is crammed with equipment, including five laboratory-size extruders that, with their long barrels and squat, vertical hoppers, look sort of like giant staplers. The machines melt plastic pellets, called resin, and then push the softened material through a specially cut hole. The Natick Center’s equipment produces films, either cast (rolled) or blown, and often in two or more layers simultaneously (the Collin Teach-Line Multilayer Co-Extrusion System can do a whopping nine). These multi-ply wrappings, which may include foil and paper as well, allow rations to last so long, go anywhere, and endure all sorts of physical abuse. Their latest projects, Lucciarini says, focus on nanocomposites, microspheres (which puff up in the film, decreasing the weight and the amount of plastic needed), and biodegradable packaging (the army estimates that each soldier generates eight pounds of waste per day in camp, the bulk of which is plastic and paper).

Once all the sandwiches are sealed into pouches and put into two cardboard containers, we’re ready for the penultimate step: a visit to the warehouse that runs along the back of the main building, where the Natick Center operates what amounts to an amusement park for boxes. Here rations are tested for durability and longevity with rides full of the careening, spinning, jostling, and sloshing that children find so inexplicably pleasurable. There is a drop tester, which hauls packed rations up to the height of a hovering helicopter and then lets them free-fall to the ground below. A compression tester squishes packages between two heavy metal plates, sort of like a giant horizontal mammogram. Over in the corner jiggling merrily away sits a vibration table, which simulates the effect of three hundred miles of bad road in a flatbed truck. We deposit the boxes in the environmental chambers, one of which is set to Bangkok (120°F, 90 percent relative humidity [RH]) and the other to Baghdad (120°F, 5-10 percent RH). I step into each. The dry heat is fine; the moist wilts me like boiled lettuce. Our samples will enjoy a four-week vacation before being opened and checked for spoilage and flavor deterioration.

I won’t be here to enjoy the results, but the Natick Center has arranged for the next best thing: I’m going to act as an evaluator for some sandwiches prepared eight months ago. “I’m going to have to lower my standards,” jokes Sensory Evaluation Coordinator Jill Bates. Usually panelists undergo a rigorous three-month training program before they are let loose on the two thousand consumer-market and one thousand in-house development food items that must be tested every year, which they can then describe with professional terms such as “interfaces,” “cell structure,” and “flavor migration.” Bates hands me a paper plate with half a sandwich, a plastic fork and knife, and a napkin and guides me to one of the dozens of computer stations that line the walls. I sit down, and when prompted by the instructions on the screen, bite, taste, and swallow. Overall, my ratings fall short of positive: The “sausage looks a little congealed,” the “smell [is] overwhelming and slightly repellent,” although I relent and concede the snack as a whole is “surprisingly tasty!” (I am not, however, the harshest in my panel of tasters: Tester 07788 calls the bread spongy, and Tester 02327 slams the conglomeration of meat, cheese, and bun as “soapy/almost moldy.”)

For dessert, a technician has laid out what appear to be several tubes of toothpaste. Tube foods, developed for fighter pilots decades ago, can be hooked up under your oxygen mask and require absolutely no chewing—solids can be so troublesome at 5g! I squirt some into a plastic spoon and taste. They are to real food what a book review is to a book: the simultaneous presentation of an idea—the browned meat and onions, simmered tomato, and a pleasant cheesy top note: easily identifiable as sloppy joe—without all the work of plowing through and assembling everything yourself. The apple pie is just as good, a full-frontal assault of apples with a hint of cinnamon, suspended in a buttery crust. For one wonderful moment, I feel like Violet in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

THE DAY IS DRAWING TO A CLOSE. I’ve seen dozens of technicians in lab coats. I’ve seen hundreds of shiny machines. I’ve been suitably impressed by the long list of food-processing firsts and amused by some of the wackier-seeming inventions. But there’s something important missing.

It’s the suite of offices off toward the left end of the building, where figures occasionally emerge and disappear, a pair of black doors flapping behind them. I don’t ask to be taken in, because what would there be to see, anyway? People hunched over their computers. Someone talking on the phone. A group huddled around a conference table. It wouldn’t look like much. But it’s there that the real work of steering America’s processed-food industry takes place. The labs I’ve been visiting all day are a smoke screen.