7 Popular Foods Invented by the US Military

The origins of bagged salads begin in the 1950s, when the U.S. Navy was experimenting with ways to maintain the freshness of fruits and vegetables. The Navy was among the industry leaders who used polyethylene bags with controlled oxygen and carbon dioxide levels to delay spoilage. In the 1960s, the Quartermaster Corps, the Army’s oldest logistical branch that plays the primary role ensuring soldiers have adequate nutrition, worked with appliance maker Whirlpool to create modified atmospheric containers for bulk shipments of celery and lettuce that were sent to Vietnam. Their successors would one day be in single bags.

These products made it to the consumer market by the 1980s and have been incredibly lucrative. In 2005, Chiquita Brands International Inc. purchased Fresh Express, then the leading packaged salad company that originated from Whirlpool’s modified atmospheric container efforts with the military, for the tidy sum of $855 million.

The Army’s longtime love affair with processed cheese dates back to World War I when the military placed an order for 6.25 million pounds of white cheese from Kraft. By the next world war, the Quartermaster Corps purchased more than 100 million pounds of cheese and 500,000 pounds of cheese spread for combat rations in a single year. Desiring to cut weight and volume costs, the Quartermaster Corps Subsistence Research Laboratory and Kraft experimented with cheese dehydration techniques through partnerships with the U.S. Agriculture Department and academic institutions like the University of California, Davis.

In 1943, USDA scientist George Sanders created the first cheese powder by grating cheese that was then dried, ground, dehydrated and formed into cakes. When World War II ended in 1945, grocery manufacturers had a lot of leftover dehydrated cheese. Three years later, the Frito Company (now Frito-Lay) used it to supply consumers with cheesy cornmeal puffs called Chee-tos (the hyphen was dropped in 1998). Dehydrated cheese powders also appear in boxed macaroni and cheese, Goldfish and other cheesy snacks.

In a 1991 Quartermaster report on rations in Operations Desert Shield and Storm, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Peter Motrynczuk asserted “Bread on the battlefield is a must.” Yet, it wasn’t always possible nor efficient. The military-sponsored invention of an improved active dry yeast during World War II helped, but garrisons across combat zones still had to make the bread after receiving the yeast-filled foil packets you can still buy at grocery stores.

Then, in the 1950s, the military contracted the Department of Grain Industry at Kansas State College (now Kansas State University) to help break its stale-bread barriers. Utilizing fatty acids and bacterial enzymes, the Kansas State scientists developed a shelf-stable, softer bread that finally made it to soldiers. The process is still used for supermarket bread products on shelves today.

Meat is the single most expensive food item for the military. In 1918, the Army established its first meat-processing plant to debone and box frozen beef. With bones removed, a quarter carcass weighed 25 percent less and, when boxed, took up 60 percent less space. However, frozen meat that had been thrown together created an inconsistent mess.

Meat-boxing and freezing techniques improved over the years, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that Army scientists at the Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center made a palatable and cost-effective fabricated beefsteak. An advisory subcommittee focused on the military’s meat products stated, “The future of fabricated modules of meat [is] excellent.”

McDonald’s certainly saw potential. Its Chicken McNuggets and McRib sandwich, both appearing for the first time in 1981, use the same restructured meat process developed by the military.

In 1942, to prevent soldiers from suffering a lack of vitamin C, the U.S. Army sought a contractor to create and package frozen orange juice concentrate. Many tried, but it wasn’t until 1945 that a team of USDA scientists developed the right process and Florida Foods Corp. secured the manufacturing contract. The Army ordered half a million pounds of frozen orange juice concentrate, but the end of World War II that same year meant soldiers wouldn’t be the first to enjoy the invention.

Florida Foods, which remained intent on being in the frozen orange juice business, changed its name to Vacuum Foods Corp. and pushed its new product as Minute Maid. With the help of a commercial campaign featuring Bing Crosby, the new frozen orange juice product became popular across the country.

In the late 1930s, the U.S. Army worked with the Hershey Co. to create the Logan bar, a D ration designed for emergency consumption that tasted awful. Even so, about a quarter billion fortified chocolate bars were shipped overseas between 1941 and 1944. The bar was tweaked, spawning 1943’s Tropical Chocolate Bar, which endured for the next several decades.

“My God, those chocolate bars were horrible,” says Army Sergeant David Halcrow, a Special Forces soldier who served in Vietnam between 1969 and 1981. “They tasted really bitter. They came in a small cardboard box along with my other rations like sugar cookies and pork. We hated those bars, but the little Vietnamese kids loved them.”

As the chocolate bars were shipped to soldiers worldwide, the Army was working to create a more nutritious fortified food bar. A freeze-dried version failed, but further research in conjunction with NASA resulted in a moisture-controlled apricot bar that Pillsbury manufactured and Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott enjoyed. The technology was soon picked up by food manufacturers to make moist, chewy energy bars that first became available to consumers in the mid-1970s. The military created its own version, the Hooah! bar, in 1996 and began selling it to the public in 2004.

Although M&M’s weren’t invented by the military, they were first made specifically for American soldiers. In 1941, food and candy entrepreneur Forrest Mars Sr. partnered with the Hershey Co.’s Bruce Murrie to create bite-size chocolates encased in candy shells. The new candy got its name from its inventors’ last names: Mars and Murrie.

The confectioners’ first customer was none other than the U.S. military, which included the non-melt chocolate candies in soldier rations during World War II. In 1947, after the strict wartime sugar rations ended for the general public, M&M’s were sold to the masses with incredible success, setting the stage to become the icon they are today.