Soft food as violence cover-up: militarised foods as foods of the everyday

ABSTRACT

In this essay, the food texture of softness is analysed through the lens of food and culture studies as a boundary crossing and connecting texture that conjoins the US military and civilian realms. The consistent back-and-forth circulation of foods between the two spaces results in a pervasive, engrained military presence with food unsuspectingly carrying militarism beyond the sphere of explicit conflict or the military food development lab. The foods that circulate between the homefront and the warfront can be defined by their textural softness, a pleasurable consistency that is familiar and expected. When the food softness loses its expected quality in either realm, with softness as a camouflage for the militarism in the circulated foods, then the militarism is exposed. These are the points of rupture, of the unmasking of militarism that reveals glimpses of violence in the break of anticipated food textures. Food texture fissures will be examined through studies of various foods including chocolate, pizza, boneless meats, the Meal, Ready-to-Eat (MRE) and related civilian focused compartmentalised food products, including the doorstep delivered meal kit.

KEYWORDS:

• American militarism
• meal ready-to-eat
• processed food
• food culture
• meal kit

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 As observed by neuroscientist Nicole Avena, ‘Many modern foods are not grown or produced so much as they are “designed”, and this process is aimed at maximizing inherent palatability’ (2015, 24).

2 I here consider military spaces narrowly, as those where military people have been ‘deployed,’ where they go when they are ‘active-duty’ activated. A broader view could, for example, consider militarised, occupied streets, and/or schools, and/or neighborhoods, and/or cities (Fischer 2022; Rios 2020).

3 For discussions of foods and related elements of American culture that have been unidirectionally influenced by American-involved war, see: Bentley 1998; Bobrow-Strain 2011; Buchanan 2005; Cooke 2009; Dickson 2020; Enloe 2000; Hamilton 2018; Kingsbury 2008; Lutz 2019; Moody 2020; Wansink 2002; Salcedo 2015; Shapiro 2004; Tunc and Babic 2017b; Veit 2013.

4 The notion of ‘American’ food is wide-ranging and recognizes that the idea has no clear bounds as, of course, many cultures and many contexts compose the corpus of food trends, tastes, and traditions within the national food spectrum. See for example: Arellano 2012; Counihan 2002; Ferris 2014; Salmón 2012; Zafar 2019, and many more for discussions of ‘American’ food.

5 Contents can also include: utensils, a bag for mixing beverages, a flameless ration heat bag for warming meal components, an accessory pack with salt, sugar, gum, hand wipes, and toilet paper and related supplies.

6 The conception, intention and production of the MRE has been focused on making ‘a tasty, well-balanced meal in a compact, vacuum-sealed, airtight package impervious to moisture, extreme temperatures, bacteria and the shock of a 10,000-foot airdrop’ that additionally has to ‘remain as fresh as the day it was prepared three years later’ (McKenna 1998). See also: (de Graaf et al. 2005, 25; Moran 1998; Weaver et al. 2014, 1534). The soft processed food of MREs or related ration packs are designed to be eaten under stress, within wartime violence, or under mission deprivation. They are a taste of the familiar, of salt and fat and sweet and fullness. It is industrial eating, soft food that is tough food, as in it is portioned packaged food that survives and aids survival as the MRE and its many variations.

7 There are also variations of the US military MRE, including the Humanitarian Daily Rations (HDR), a day’s supply of soft vegetarian food distributed or dropped into emergency situations to feed displaced people and refugees. Menus have included bean salad, lentil stew, peas in tomato sauce, pasta in tomato sauce, biscuits, crackers, and flatbread, raisins, fruit pastries and shortbread – all generally soft, all separately packaged. They’ve been delivered in areas of US war like Afghanistan for local populations, in spaces where US soldiers have been deployed for ‘peacekeeping’ missions like Bosnia, and elsewhere in conflict situations, including Rwanda (Block and McDonald 1994) and Cambodia (Sklaver 2003, ‘US Donates’ 1995). MREs for soldiers and their HDR variations are delivered and eaten in the same spaces.

8 Government formalized are the School Breakfast Program (SBP) and the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) as mildly regulated and not infrequently stripped down from the influencing Black Panther Party created Free Breakfast for School Children Program (Hilliard 2008).

9 SNAP is a programme that is disproportionately composed of those with a military background, with a high rate of food insecurity reported amongst US military recruits and military veterans (Bowman 2021).

10 Of note is that Native Americans also disproportionately serve in the US military (NICOA 2019).

11 The Harvest Box and FDPIR as government ration boxes are part of a long timeline of failed attempts at creating ration boxes with federal funding for the food insecure. During the Great Depression, the Federal Emergency Relief Agency distributed funds for cities and states to address issues of food insecurity. A solution in the Chicago area as reported by historian Tracey Deutsch was the distribution of food ration boxes, a service that recipients rejected for its prescription and lack of cultural specificity, in addition to the contents being rotten, moldy, or full of maggots. There was a demand for cash aid in the boxes’ place (2010, 85). Additionally, the Federal Commodities Food Program (CCFP) ‘supplied cheap and highly processed provisions’ to Southern Black sharecroppers on plantation systems through the mid-1900s (Smith 2017; see Payne 2007). Related food ration programmes existed before and continued after the attempt to federalize the Harvest Box. For example, the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP) provides shelf-stable commodities to low-income elderly people, as does The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), which broadly supports low-income emergency food access.

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Kayci Merritte

Kayci Merritte is a PhD candidate in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. Her dissertation analyzes fundamental life-giving and life-taking interactions within everyday environments and ecologies, focusing on elements of ingestion, absorption, accumulation and corporeal change.