"Marching on our Stomachs: The Science and History of" Topic

…Feeding the Troops

"In her book, Combat-Ready Kitchen, Anastacia Marx de Salcedo credits the ancient Egyptians with some of the first real military rations: little cakes made from barley, onions, and some dried, salted fish. For millennia, food on the battlefield remained more or less the same, because preservation methods barely changed. Napoleon's Europe-conquering ambitions inspired the first big leap forward in rations in thousands of years: canning. But, although it was invented in the early 1800s, canned food remained so expensive and slow to produce that fifty years later, during the American Civil War, cans were still only found in the officers' rations.

In the twentieth century, civilians moved on, embracing refrigerated and frozen food. In the military, however, where packages of food have to last for months—even years—at ambient temperature, the can remained king until 1980. Its replacement was the MRE, a flexible foil pouch filled with pre-cooked, ready-to-eat meals that was the outcome of decades of R&D by the food scientists at the U.S. Army Soldier Research, Development & Engineering Center in Natick, Massachusetts. Today, that pouch can be found in pantries across America, holding everything from juice to tuna. But even the pouch couldn't solve the Army's egg problem—indeed, the soldiers' nickname for the veggie omelet in a pouch was the "vomlet." This episode, we try the military's next-gen eggs—so cutting-edge they haven't made it into the ration rotation yet—while we explore the high-tech science required to make lightweight, long-lasting, and at least somewhat tasty food. And we find out why military food matters—both on the battlefield and on the home front. Listen in now for more…"
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Amicalement
Armand

I've eaten the McDonald's scrambled eggs, and supposedly they aren't "fresh". I get the impression they are made from powdered eggs but don't really know for sure – scrambled, they taste decent enough.

Apparently, only one sandwich is actually made with fresh eggs by McD's – sorry, can't recall which, but I imagine someone else will know.

Were the WWII eggs served to the troops any good?

I seem to recall a lot of those being served to our bomber crews in both the USAAC, as well as to the RAF too. I suspect the fighter crews also got the same when they returned from their missions, or before they departed, depending upon the time of day/night for their sorties.

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand