Military Food

After listening to a recent 99% invisible podcast, I was astonished to find the amount of "regular" food that was "invented by the military" for soldiers on long tours of duty.

As de Salcedo puts it,

although most people don’t realize it, the U.S. military spearheaded the invention of energy bars, restructured meat, extended-life bread, instant coffee, and much more. But there’s been an insidious mission creep: because the military enlisted industry—huge corporations such as ADM, ConAgra, General Mills, Hershey, Hormel, Mars, Nabisco, Reynolds, Smithfield, Swift, Tyson, and Unilever—to help develop and manufacture food for soldiers on the front line, over the years combat rations, or the key technologies used in engineering them, have ended up dominating grocery store shelves and refrigerator cases. TV dinners, the cheese powder in snack foods, cling wrap . . . The list is almost endless

Apparently, 70% of US diet is now composed of processed food.

 The potential list of military inventions in food include salted meat, canning, Goldfish, granola bars, juice pouches, MacNCheese, Cheetos, McRibs, microwave oven, etc.