Slashdot Mirror
Feeding Through Nutrient Patches
Eric Krout writes: "Thanks to the U.S. Department of Defense,
nutritional patches may be available by 2025 for a soldier in combat who (does not have access to / cannot waste time eating) a traditional meal as we know it today. The patch may consist of a tiny microchip that, after first determining exactly what your body needs, transfers vitamins to your body transdermally. Goodbye Penguin Mints, hello Penguin Patch! "
Personally, I don't think this will work that well. While the soldier may get enough nutrition from the patches, he'll get really hungry. The amount of nutrition a person gets has nothing to do with how hungry they get, which is determined by the amount of substance that's inside the person's stomach. It could work, however, if coupled with something, anything to eat.
just read a post and thought of something i found rather interesting. If you could, in fact, get all the nutrition you needed through a patch (basically) - then this could quite possibly become a cure for obesity. Rather than telling people "watch what you eat." - just tell 'em "don't eat at all." There would obviously be no reaon to eat, and of course your calories would be "naturally" rationed so to speak.
That would seem to me to be a pretty reasonable way to lose weight. Thoughts, comments?
My only other concern would be - do you think the U.S. army would use this as an excuse to over-exert their troops? The act of eating can not just be taken as simply getting food. It also helps comradery, fatigue, and that nagging' desire for little debby snack cakes. I doubt this would happen but it is certainly a possibility.
FluX
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
I've spent weeks on nothing but MRE's.
The constipation they induce is sort of handy in a field environment. They are, however, bulky to anyone who makes their living out of a rucksack. They're also really hard to look at after a couple of days.
The fun part comes when you make little explosives out of the chemical heaters that come with them. 2 liter bottle + 100 mph tape + a little water + whatever the hell it is that boils when you add a little water = loud noise. Toss in some chemlight goop before sealing, and you have instant (and violent) Pollack.
------------
Michael Hall
mphall@cstone.nospam.net
Michael Hall
mph.puddingbowl.org
...coprophagic colorectal nanosites! Woohoo! Bet there won't be a lot of people lining up to beta-test that one.
spawn_of_yog_sothoth
transfers vitamins to your body transdermally
I think you can stop eating vitamins for several days without suffering from any physical problem or performance insufficiency. The thing that you can't live without ingesting on a daily basis are carbohydrates and proteins, right? So, if these patches are meant to be used for one or two days, you wouldn't need to supply vitamins. (I'm no nutriologist, so correct me if I'm wrong).
The article also says that they're experimenting with some sort of patches that will give you the illusion that your stomach is full or your muscles aren't tired, but doesn't everyone with the right amount of motivation has sometime been able to stay 24 or 36 hours without eating or sleeping. And it seems to me that being in a combat situation would make you produce enough adrenaline to stop worrying about you not having a meal yet.
Finally, what about water?? That you gotta have!! Lost of it, everyday, what's the solution for that?? If you don't have access to food or cannot waste time eating you still have to carry water with you or is there gonna be a patch fot this too? Strikes me as unlikely.
"All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams". Elias Canetti
It scares me becasue soldiers are taught to be something other than human during wartime, and the military encourages them to shed any emotion and replace it with dicipline.
If you take away the fundamental psychological and social funciton of eating, you've got troops who are even less human.
I don't like it.
tcd004
I waste 3 or 4 hours a night sleeping! I'd much rather be hacking the kernel source during those hours.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
(I'm not a nutritionist, but I have done the odd long distance sports event, and I know a little about this.)
Already, people involved in extreme athletic events (things like RAAM - the non-stop bicycle race across America) use a totally liquid diet for up to two weeks at a time. One of the main reasons for this is because solid foods are much harder to digest, and for events like these you really, really want to know exactly what is going into your body.
They do use vitamn suplements, though.
In things like the Tour de France they use daily blood testing to see what food you should eat, and it isn't too far fetched to be able to make an educated guess on your nutrition needs from your sweat secretions, using current technology.
Before everyone says "But you'll feel hungry because your stomach will be emtpy" - not true! You'll feel hungry for a while, but liquids and foods with a lot of bulk but low calories (eg, plain salads) will compensate for that, and your stomach will contract.
After a couple of weeks your stomach will feel fine, and a liquid diet, plus these nutrition patches would work really well. You'd still need the liquid for hydration, though.
I'd say 2025 might be pessimistic - at least for the first versions of something like this.
600 milligrams of caffeine
That is equivalent to three bottles of Jolt. What are they trying to do, make them all go on "I am Cornholio, I need TP for my bunghole"-type rampages?
=================================
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Interesting to see that this new technology is brought up in a context of battlefields and soldiers, and nobody seems to care, either. Am I the only one who thinks this could be pretty interesting for the starving population of the 3rd world ? Sounds similar to the invention of powder-milk, but even better : a single plane can carry 'food' for literally hundreds of thousands of people, the expiring date is practically 'forever', it's easy to administer, and requires no extra resources (like the milk which requires water). Technology actually helping people ! No ?
Hmmm. Sounds interesting but, there are some fundamental flaws in the physiology of the model.
Electrolytes are important. Without proper numbers of K and Na and P, your nerves wouldn't work to well at all, hence you would have a hard time running, shooting, etc. (also, shouldn't they be working on developing world peace by 2025, not super-soldiers?)
The other most important performance indicator is the amount of glycogen stored in the muscles. Glycogen is ready-to-go fuel. I forget how much of this a typical person has at any given moment, but after several hours of hard work without refreshment, your blood sugar levels get low, as do glycogen levels, and you (as cyclists say) "bonk", ie. extreme glycogen depletion. You are pretty much useless after that point; severe performance degredation is a phrase that comes to mind.
Their patch is all well and good if it adresses these most basic issues (the article was rather brief and non-technical) or only one of them, ie. vitamins sorta implies electrolytes. However, the most severly performance limiting factor (as proven by trials in publications like Bicycling Magazine (they don't actually have it available online) is water. Performance has been shown to be affected in as little as an hour of physical activity without hydration. As the body's water content drops, blood gets thicker, resulting in poorer flow and consequently poorer delivery of oxygen and other needed chemicals to the muscles and brain.
So, in closing, yes, the patch is a good idea (but 25 years?!), but maybe a transdermal hydration system would be a bit of a better considering hydration is quicker to act and hampers performance certainly more than "vitamin" loss and probably more than electrolyte loss. Moreover, electrolytes could be intergrated into any hydration system, ie. gatorade.
A few years ago, researchers discovered a protein hormone called leptin that is critically involved in regulating the response of the brain to hunger in the body. Essentially the fat storage cells in your body (adipose tissue) produce leptin when they are satiated (have enough fat stored), leptin travels to your brain and induces a feeling of satiety, shutting off hunger signals. The drug companies got really excited by this as it first appeared to be the key to controlling obesity. As it turned out very few extremely fat people respond to additional leptin as their problem lies in the responce of the brain cell to leptin, not the lack of the messenger.
I wonder though, what percentage of normal, soldier types would respond to a quick shot of leptin in not feeling the need to eat for a few days? This could be very useful in war situations where you want to send troops into territories for a few days where you have not set up supply lines yet (can you say covert operations).
Anyway, I can see this sort of technology being useful in special situations ie. military, athletic events, new product rollouts, yuppie camping, Quake marathons etc.
But at the end of the day you just gotta EAT!
no sig.
For all kinds of reasons I became something of an extreme type of vegeterian about 6 years ago. So I only eat raw (fresh hopefully) vegetables, fruits, nuts, honey. Nothing else. I don't drink when I eat, because it is not necessary with all the liquid in my tomatoes. I don't cook, only wash and cut. I eat once a day at noon, this is mostly due to my crazy lifestyle, work, university, girlfriend, rollerblading, ping pong, swimming, writing some code for myself, homework, work, university, girlfriend, rollerblading, ping pong, swimming, writing some code for myself, homework, work, university..... you get the picture
I also fast 2-4 times a year for the sake of getting rid of those chemicals, pesticides etc. that are numerous in our foods and air. I only drink distilled water when I fast and nothing else for 3-10 days in a row. I can tell you, that if you are doing this right, you can go on without any food, without feeling hunger, in fact being extra fast and sort of hyper for at least first 5 days of only drinking distilled water (lots of it, which is absolutely necessary to get rid of all toxins) and you don't loose your strength as fast as most of you think. In fact, over time it seems to get easier and easier to do. (with some exceptions, when there is too much stress from exams or the weather is wrong). Human body can go on without food not without liquid for long periods of time and if you do it for short periods of time (less than 40 days) than it can help your overal health.
You can't handle the truth.
The majority of Americans overeat, not all of them are overweight, and most don't have any more emotional problems than the average european. Not only do they overeat, but they eat poorly and don't get enough exercise. Put simply, the modern American diet is horrible. Overweight people are frequently the result of simply not being able to get away with this type of eating (e.g., propensity to gain weight)...which prompts inactivity, which prompts depression, which CAN lead eating even more.
In other words, it is not emotions that make Americans fat, it is our diets. We eat too much sugar, fat, etc. Our meals are high in carbohydrates. The typical American serving size is gigantic by international standards, which naturally prompts increased eating. When is the last time you've been to McDonalds? The supersize value meal soda's are like a gallon soda, a slight exaggeration, but it is truely disgusting, not to mention very unhealthy.
True, the difference is that in combat the levels of physical and psychological stress are several orders of magnitude greater than anything you will encounter in your civilian life.
So, whereas it is certainly possible to survive for very long periods of time without anything but water (you can go maybe 3 days, tops, under heavy stress without water before you get into very serious trouble and will probably die from dehydration, heat stroke and so on), however the combat effectiveness of a unit diminishes as that unit is forced to go without water and food (in that order). In war, combat effectiveness, not bare minimums, is one of the keys to victory. So, unless you absolutely have no choice, feeding the troops is mandatory to suceeding, no matter how much people can "go without".
There is an old and wise saying in the military, "An army travels on its stomach". When you are buring sometimes upwards of 7000 calories a day (in winter climates, the daily ration is 7000 calories a day for deployments) you can being very cranky and tired if you don't feed those muscles. After a few days of going without, your strength is diminished and your body suffers. And when the body suffers, the mind suffers - and thats a fast path to getting killed.
So look at it this way, when you have 90 pounds of gear in your ruck, another 20 pounds in combat load, an M-60 (another 25 pounds) slung around your neck, your PASGT pulling on your body and neck, coupled with a heavy mission to knock out - food is not a luxury, its FUEL. Without fuel, you're not going anywhere.
As part of Ranger school there is alot of starving involved so that you learn first hand what your body can do in extreme circumstances and you learn you can go without food (amongst other things). However, you do not want to operate in combat like that if you do not have to, and thats what these patches are all about. Some missions move too fast to eat, and that does diminish the combat effectiveness of those units. On the other hand, with something like this nutrional patch (if it works), those units will be that much more likely to succeed in their missions - and thats what its all about.
These patches will do a great job for DRF's, SOG units, Light infantry and other high speed units that have to move fast and may not be able to feed their troops to make mission. Its too bad it will take 25 years before we see it deployed, but it still sounds like a fantastic tool for the War Fighter to have and yet another tool to enhance the combat effectiveness of US fighting forces.
--
Python
Python
(Sorry about replying to myself.. I couldn't find a better place to put it)
Since the article is talking about combat situations, I think I misinterpreted some of the issues here. What I said above is still correct, but not neccessarily relevent.
These patches aren't designed for complete nutritional replacement, but for temporary help during crisies.
Modern Combat situations normally last for maybe 48 hour max - anything more than that and I'd say you have more important thing to worry about than food.
However, in a combat situation you need your reflexes to be quick, your senses to be accurate and your judgement to be at it's best. All these things are effected by bad nutrition (and lack of sleep).
Someone in another post mentioned that they expected that adrenelin would keep you alert - not true, and not what you want, anyway. The actual hormonal/chemical adrenelin reaction only lasts for seconds (during the "fight or flight" reflex action), and while this does improve you reflexes and senses (to some degree) it impares your judgement, and leads to a let down afterwards - when you are highly vulnrable.
Unfortunatly, while it is true that not letting your energy levels (depleated though exercise) get too low will help with these problems, the more severe problem is the lack of sleep. I've read studies that show huge losses in reflex speed after around about 16 hours without sleep, and while this may be delayed in various ways, I don't think you could push it out far beyond the 24 hour barrier without chemical help.....
I suspect that these "combat patches" may contain a little more that just vitamns. I find that a little scary. Remember those tests with Speed & LSD during Vietnam?
I'd like to see how someone pumps dietry fiber through that patch. Of course, I've heard that MERs are specially processed so that fibre content is at a minimum (so that the troops won't be caught literally with their pants down...)
Wonder if HooAh bars are available Military Surplus?
-=- SiKnight
Those are all foo-foo MREs and bear no resemblence whatsoever to the real thing. I know, they are the real thing now, but that doesn't make them good. The newest Johnny Quest can't hold a candle to the old Johnny Quest the same way these new MREs aren't nearly as good as the old MREs.
Oh, gone are the days when you could get real MREs. I'm talking Chicken and Rice, Turkey a la King, and the absolute best MRE ever made (if not only because of the incredible -- and I mean truly majestic smelling -- flatulence it provided) Meatballs, Beef and Rice in Spicy Tom Sauce. I lived on Spicy Tom Sauce for a while. I'd eat that breakfast, lunch and dinner if I could. I'd likely get fired, though.
The worst MRE has to be either the Scrambled Eggs or the Ham Slice (which I've actually seen hungry people refuse to eat, although it was pretty good if you could get your hands on a slice of cheese and then combine it with the MRE bread). I've got a case of 9 year old Ham Slices in my garage. I can't eat them. Anyone wants them, let me know. They're still edible (well, as edible as they ever were), and cheap. Maybe ebay would like them?
Has anyone tried the new MRE-ish things? Those ones in the white plastic trays? My parents bought a pallet of them (like thousands) wholesale before Y2K and I got my hands on some after the hangover settled. Not bad, but not right. First off, they have that weasely plastic tray instead of a pouch and you can't open them without a knife. The taste isn't right either. That cardboard top is a complete nuisance. And the most important factor: they don't bind you up enough.
To me, the best thing about MREs was that when you ate one in the morning (I'm serious: if you're in a position to subsist on MRES, you eat them in the morning and you like them in the morning) you didn't have to dump until exactly 12 hours later. Really, you could set you watch to your bowels after three days of MREs. You eat nothing but MREs and you pinch but one hefty pellet a day. It's very handy, and I even bust out an MRE sometimes when I'm feeling less than regular.
But you can counteract the retaining effects of the main meal packet with the chocolate bar. It's a laxative, and don't let anyone tell you differently. I've eaten the bars alone, and they work extraordinarily well. Too well. I know people say it's a myth, but I'll be happy to prove it to anyone that cares to watch. It only takes about six hours, and I'll buy the beer while you wait. See, I've still got some of those that I haven't eaten.
Now on to the drink packet. The Lemon flavor is best with liquor (works best with rum or vodka, not so well with Slivovitz or Pernot), the cherry is best for normal drinking. But you only have to mix the packet's contents with half the amount of water the instructions say. Then it's good and not too sticky and you get twice as much. Forget that crap about not mixing in your canteen. Do it anyway -- you don't care.
The accessory packet is worthless except for the Tabasco and the matches. You can't even blow your nose with that TP. The utensils suck. Throw everything but the sauce and the matches away. Keep the coffee/cocoa if you like that sort of thing (you can eat the coffee raw if you're desperate).
How to eat a real MRE: Easy, you tear it long ways, not sideways. Ignore those perforations they have near the top. Take your knife and cut the side of the pouch off. Then you can use that same knife to shovel the contents into your mouth. Takes about ten seconds to eat one that way. Using the perforations means you get your hands dirty and it takes forever, even if you get tricky and try to squeeze the stuff out (trust me). Oh yeah, don't forget to put the entire thing of Tabasco into the pouch, no matter what the meal. Eat the whole little bottle. It's important.
Make sure that you save the main meal pouch for holding trash. And don't bother with heaters. MREs are like revenge: best eaten cold. :-)
I miss MREs. Maybe I'll go dig one out of the garage now.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
According to some Unicef data (no URL) I read, during the horrible Ethiopian famine (remember "We are the world"?), Ethiopia actually exported grain to pay for their foreign debt.
I don't know about the current one (you know there are people dying from hunger in Ethiopia now, don't you?), but I heard a CARE man on CNN that the country managed to increase food production and depend less on imports. Thus they stood longer, but not enough.
Food donation and these patches can help in emergencies (Mozambique), but they will not solve the world food problem.
Food produced in the 1st world (powder milk!) makes third world dependent of big companies.
As the worthy anonymous I am answering to says, the Earth produces more than enough to feed mankind. It's the current economical and political organization that makes the distribution so unfair.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Us Canucks will get a kick out of the title. But, that's not what I'm going to rant about.. See, sure, there's enough food to feed everyone 1.5 times over, there's enough bombs to carpet-nuke the planet, too. That's not what the problem is.
The "people of the world" cannot just give away food. We did this here in Canada - we gave massive grain surpluses to India. Do you know what they did with their cost savings? They started a nuclear weapons research program, so that now, they can threaten global stability and Pakistan with nukes. Governments suck.
Food is one thing, resources are another. We in the 1st world consume most of the resources. That's just the way it is. To say that all the people in India, Africa and even Asia are going to live like me here in Canada is just stupid. There aren't enough resources. And I, and I doubt you, are going to go live in a tarpaper project to make sure everyone lives equally. Life sucks, don't it?
Maybe I'm being overly cynical, but there are complex issues. You feed a nation's people, you upset the balance of trade, and that nation can then do things like buy arms to kill people. It isn't cut and dry - obviously the international community needs to help out, but for there to be long-term solutions these nations need their own development and place controls on populations, deal with internal strife & conflict, etc etc.
Kudos
..don't panic
I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
Britain did not take to (and rule) the seas and start an empire for commerce, nor Queen, nor glory, nor God.
Rather, the young men of England would do *anything* to get away from the food.