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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! "
...coprophagic colorectal nanosites! Woohoo! Bet there won't be a lot of people lining up to beta-test that one.
spawn_of_yog_sothoth
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?
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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.
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.
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Python
Python
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.