I served mostly in the south. and mess hall food was a reflection of local tastes and cooking skills. i.e. Alabama was tilted toward soul food, in Texas it was some of the best Tex-Mex I ever had.
IME the “Bad Army Food” trope was mainly about hot field rations, which were either cooked in the field, or trucked in from a garrison post. It wasn’t always hot, there wasn’t a lot of variety, and some of it was mixed from powdered ingredients in a vat. Most people strongly preferred it to MREs, but personally I don’t mind MREs and didn’t find field rations much of an improvement.
Yeah, I was thinking that too. But that doesn’t mean they tried to do that if saving time was deemed more important. (And lard ain’t bacon, as pointed out above.)
Two anecdotes:
My mom was in WWII stateside – she said the food was good until the very end when it seemed to her they were trying to get rid of excess stuff
A friend was In Operation Desert Storm is Saudi Arabia (mostly filling potholes and other road work – activated Army National Guard) – he said the food was pretty good,
Yeah, I was happy when I found Steve1989’s channel, because I’ve long had a bit of a fascination with MREs, beginning back in the early 90s when I was given a couple after doing some graphic design work for the MRE packaging. I took them on a camping trip and was surprised how not terrible they were, having heard for years how bad field rations were from old movies and TV shows. Those old 90s MREs had cute little bottles of Tabasco sauce, just like a normal size bottle but dollhouse size. I was laughing the first time I saw one of those teeny little Tabasco bottles. Now MREs just put the hot sauce in a packet like a fast-food ketchup packet.
More recently, like 5 or 6 years ago (I know it was before the pandemic when MRE prices shot way up) I got a great Amazon deal on a 24-pack of the entire variety of military MREs. They’re great for camping. I pride myself on being a top-notch camp cook, but during the day, out on a hike or a canoe trip, they’re super convenient.
My Dad has learned to cook in the Air Force back in the 50s during the Korean War. Habits he learned were to drown meat in onion and/or garlic powder because the cuts they got were very low quality or near rotten and he would often make things easier to eat, for example when he made franks and beans he would cut the hot dogs into slices and mix them in with the beans.
Growing up it was always not the best I didn’t know I liked steak until I was a young adult and ordered it in restaurants.
That gruel definitely sounds like something Roman legionaries would have eaten.
The traditional British use of “corn” for any grain is often a source of confusion. I remember when the BBC adaptation of Anna Karenina was shown in the United States, and one of the characters was talking about “corn” as far as the eye can see while clearly standing in the middle of a field of wheat. Many viewers said “WTF???”
From what I’ve heard, Brits nowadays usually mean maize when they say “corn,” due to American influence. Of course, Bell and Hockridge were Brits writing in the '60s and '70s, so they probably thought nothing about the ambiguity.
If we’re to believe the MAS*H episode “Too Many Cooks”, cooking in large batches is a skill that requires some experience that not all military cooks in wartime mastered.
I can’t help thinking about that episode of Seinfeld where Frank Costanza was talked into cooking for a Jewish Singles Night and had flashbacks to his time as an Army cook in Korea. One of the funniest episodes of any series ever!
When I was in the Army from 89-92 the food was generally decent. Sometimes it was better than other times and there was the occasional morale day when decent steaks were cooked for us. There was also salad bars after Basic and a solid variety of different food available for every meal.
By far, the weirdest food item I had was the green hamburgers during Jump School. I was cautioned that they would be green, and my fellow soldiers were right. I have no idea why the burgers at Ft. Benning had the green tinge to them but they were otherwise a decent, cheap-ish meat paddy similar to something you might get at a fast food place.
School lunches often serve “hamburgers” with patties that consist mostly of soy meal. I remember eating these in junior high and actually developed a taste for them, so long as they were smothered in ketchup.
It’s hard to generalize. It can vary quite a bit from installation to installation. What never varies is the Air Force has the best food.
Even going back to 1989 when I joined a lot of chow halls are run by civilian contractors. I do remember my Basic Training chow hall had only civilians and it was quite good. Thank God because we needed it.
While deployed the food was generally pretty good. KBR ran the facilities with TCNs (third country nationals). Kuwait was good. Iraq not as good. Food at the Embassy was great.
My unit in Germany was the opposite. In garrison the NCOs in charge didn’t cook they supervised the younger troops. When we went the field the SFC and SSG both cooked and they were excellent.
As of 2005 the most heard phrase was still “It’s on the barge” but they didn’t seem to be doing a bad job when it came to food.
One thing that I find has been improved on tremendously is the lowly MRE. When I first came on I was given 1st generation MREs. The first one I ever had was the dehydrated beef patty. It was horrific. But now they are constantly updating and improving by listening to suggestions from the troops. Some of them are pretty decent. They come with heaters which greatly improves the taste. No more gnawing on a dog biscuit
Any time we were near an AFB on deployment, we’d try to have our lunches there. Seabee chow was just barely above Marine chow, which was uniformly bad. The AF always had a choice of entrees and an ice cream station for dessert. One place in Japan offered cheeseburgers and the like in the evening, which was nice for taking the edge off of an evening of drinking.
My first tour was in Vietnam, where I was assigned to a Marine base. That stuff barely qualified as food. We were always trading with the Gunny who ran the galley for cases of steak, etc., so we could cook it ourselves. I can’t speak for shipboard food, as I never set foot on one of those floating disease centers, but shoreside Navy galleys weren’t bad.
Perhaps you have heard about the so called “CARE Pakete” (CARE Packages - where the German wikiarticle is longer than the English). I have been told that Germans were quite bemused when they finally received the packages that the ones that included “corn” had maize in them, as “Korn” means rye in general use in German, although technically it means cereal in general. I was told in Germany before the war maize was considered more feed than food.
Which can make life difficult for interpreters: does the speaker mean wheat or maize, is he American or British, and if British, is he thinking old British or US influenced British? Pro-tip: just say “cereal” and hope for the best. Both terms Getreide and Korn will do.
Not all rations - just the “D” bars packed in WWTwice-era rations. The Tropical Chocolate bar was intentionally made as unappetizing as possible so troops wouldn’t think of them as candy bars as opposed to iron rations.
Modern field rations from most countries range from “edible in a pinch” to “better than Mountain House.” I’ve tried a lot of them over the years. Personal faves were Swedish/Danish/Norwegian rations and of all things, British ORPs.
I remember a 1980s episode of Late Night where David Letterman was able to sample some MREs while an Army officer looked on. He couldn’t identify the first one he tried and said “It doesn’t taste bad, but I can’t tell what it is.”
I didn’t know I liked steak until I was a young adult and ordered it in restaurants.