A co-worker just showed me the list of Approved Care Package Items that she is permitted to send overseas to a relative serving in an unnamed Muslim country. Among the banned items are alcohol and alcohol-making items, chocolate (because it melts), bags of chips (because they get smooshed), and coffee.
Why not coffee? Based on the list it was in—the same list that prohibits alcohol and R-rated movies and underwear catalogs—I assume the short answer is “because we do not wish to offend our Muslim hosts” or something. But what is it about coffee, in particular? The caffeine?
IANA Muslim, but AFAIK, the general concensus was that coffee and caffiene were not ‘intoxicants’ and not prohibited by the Quran.
Heck, according to many sources Muslims were the first to brew the stuff.
Hmmm
WAG #1 Islam has no central authority. It could be that the imams of one of the countries our troops are deployed in do hold that coffee is an intoxicant and forbidden.
WAG#2 It may be that the manufacturing process involves alcohol in some fashion. As a Jew, I know of numerous products which list no non-kosher ingredient, but use one in the manufacturing process. A friend working at Gatorade was researching whether their products were halal(acceptable under Islamic law). He discovered that alcohol was indeed used in their making. Though the trace amount remaining in the finished product was so neglible as to not require listing on the label, it is too much for Gatorade to be halal.
That’s nuts. Arabs drink coffee like fiends. STRONG coffee. The only thing I can imagine is that the unnamed country has import regulations that include personal supplies, not unlike shipping alcohol into most U.S. states.
Hm. Maybe this is just one of those things that we are not meant to know. Could there possibly be any reason why the military wouldn’t want their troops to have coffee?
I swear some MREs come with coffee, so maybe they don’t want some people to have good coffee and others have MRE coffee? Though I can’t see why that’d matter.
Now, a little sleuthing will give you some APO ZIPs for Iraq-stationed soldiers. For instance, Mosul is 09334, which notably does not have restriction D. It does have A-A1-B-B1-C1-E2-F- H1-I-M-R-R1-V-Z-Z1. H1 is pork and E2 is porn (with a little note about Islam). That implies that the coffee restriction isn’t a general one due to Islam, as others here have pointed out. In fact, the only zip listed in that list that prohibits coffee as well as the other standards for the Middle East is 09349, and I can’t figure out where that is.
Now my guess is that that one particular place prohibits coffee, and so the general list says you can’t send it. If you know the particular zip for your soldier, you can find the actual restrictions, which probably do not prohibit coffee.
Thanks for all of the replies. She still isn’t certain where her relative is going to be posted yet (except she knows it’s not called Camp Fluffy). When she finds out the proper mailing code I’m sure she’ll look it up on the proper website. Maybe then I’ll know enough to provide more fuel for some intelligent guesses—but maybe not. Something tells me his specific location, like so many others, is classified.
One reason is that drug smugglers sometimes ship drugs in crates filled with coffee to throw off security K-9 units. Maybe the govt is afraid that terrorist may try and place explosives on board buried in coffee grinds to get them past security, then blow the plane up
I don’t know, Gorilla Man. (And I am the OP, by the way.) Those individual packs of restaurant coffee, pre-portioned in foil bags for one pot of fresh-brewed, those’d probably break open; there’s a certain amount of air in those packs and they’d likely pop. But I think coffee packed in, y’know, a coffee can probably wouldn’t get smooshed or accidentally fall open during transport. Instant coffee could also be sent in jars. I’ve even seen coffee in bags (though I don’t know if it’s any good).
Of course, coffee in a can or tin can’t really be X-rayed for security, can it? Not to mention you’d need an opener… and coffee filters… and glass jars can break.
Maybe they don’t want you to send coffee because there’s nothing to brew it in. Chips and cookies and M&Ms are finger food and brewed coffee requires a machine or a pot or a percolator.
Not to be too pedantic but you really don’t need specialized equipment to brew coffee. You can boil water in a regular old pot over a campfire or camp stove, throw the coffee in to steep and carefully pour the liquid coffee off the top when it is ready. I have done it myself camping, soldiers no doubt have done it this way for centuries.
I think the real reason must be one of the other ones already mentioned. I notice that the list of restrictions linked to by SmackFu seems to be compiled by the United States Postal Service, not the military. That implies to me that the “potentially throwing off bomb and drug-sniffing K9 units” is a more likely angle.
I’m with Laughing Lagomorph on this one… as a marine in the field I brewed coffee in many improvised setups (Anyone got a clean sock?)
It must be a bit harder without C-ration cans.
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Hmmm, now that I think of it, perhaps it is undesirable to have men in the field improvising cooking setups due to fire hazards. Didn’t bother my skipper, though, so long as he got his hot fresh coffee in the morning.
My first inclination was the same as that espoused by Starguard.
Coffee’s strong scent can hide the presence of many contraband items, particularly from canine inquisition. If I wanted to cut down on the immense job of keeping said contraband out of the mail sent to our troops without having to open every single freakin’ package for a visual search, the first thing I’d do is to ban coffee. It’s a no brainer** if** that’s the objective.
Oh, sure. Laughing Lagomorph. And I did say a pot would work. I’m just not positive the other angles are right, either.
After all, from what Smack Fu says, there’s only one postal code that actually prohibits coffee; it’s okay to send coffee to the other stations overseas. So the anti-drug-sniffing angle is a good one but it doesn’t explain why most of the stations let in coffee—do they not care if drugs get smuggled in using coffee as a scent masker? Are drugs not illegal at the other encampments?
Maybe this is just one of those weird bureaucracy things that doesn’t have a good answer.
