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
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.
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.
Related to Combat-Ready Kitchen
Related audiobooks
Meat Me Halfway: How Changing the Way We Eat Can Improve Our Lives and Save Our Planet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dusty Booze: In Search of Vintage Spirits Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEvolution Gone Wrong: The Curious Reasons Why Our Bodies Work (Or Don't) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sediments Of Time: My Lifelong Search for the Past Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVictimhood, Memory, and Consumerism: Profiting from Pablo Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Balance: A Dizzying Journey Through the Science of Our Most Delicate Sense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Extinctions: How Life Survives, Adapts and Evolves Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSex in the Museum: My Unlikely Career at New York's Most Provocative Museum Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flight of the Reindeer: The True Story of Santa Claus and His Christmas Mission Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention that Launched the Military-Industrial Complex Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Meathooked: The History and Science of Our 2.5-Million-Year Obsession with Meat Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The da Vinci Legacy: How an Elusive 16th-Century Artist Became a Global Pop Icon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'll Take That One - An evacuee's childhood (Unabridged) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Microbes: The Life-Changing Story of Germs Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Everything You Know About Dinosaurs Might Be Wrong Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Forged in War: How a Century of War Created Today's Information Society Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to Save the World One Animal Species at a Time Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cod's Tale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Searching for Family and Traditions at the French Table: Champagne, Lorraine, Alsace, Ile de France Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Perfect Culture: The Search for Paradise from a Monty Python Perspective Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing Strangers: How Political Violence Became Modern Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBetter than Homemade: Amazing Food That Changed the Way We Eat Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anything That Moves: Renegade Chefs, Fearless Eaters, and the Making of a New American Food Culture Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fermented Man: A Year on the Front Lines of a Food Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kitchen Yarns: Notes on Life, Love, and Food Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Politics For You
All the Sinners Bleed: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Behold a Pale Horse Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The 48 Laws of Power Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Can't Joke About That: Why Everything Is Funny, Nothing Is Sacred, and We’re All in This Together Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Vision of the Anointed: Self-congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Razorblade Tears: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5While Time Remains: A North Korean Girl's Search for Freedom in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elon Musk Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of September 11, 2001 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Small Mercies: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Combat-Ready Kitchen
12 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I 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
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This 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.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A 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.