The History of Rations - Pt. 3 “Stealing Fire”

"Prometheus stole fire from the gods. We are each the heirs of that divine spark. Used wisely the spark fuel's ones journey and lights the way. Treated carelessly, the spark consumes the owner and everything in its path."

In the final post of this series we’ll get into the future of rations and outline the key elements of a nutrition system for soldiers and elite performers.

The 21st century has seen tremendous advances in military hardware, from protective equipment and communications to lighter, more modular rifles, now referred to as “weapons systems” for their versatility and multifunctionality.

The art of war has been increasingly delegated to high-speed, special operations units made up of operators who are as much athletes as they are soldiers. We equip these units with the best gear and training, so why not the best food? In the area of tactical nutrition, the last great innovation was the self-heating MRE. And that was an improvement in packaging and preparation, not in nutritional content.?

Based on our experience at Resilient Nutrition, and in light of the release of the Operational Ration Pack tender from the UK’s Ministry of Defence, we believe there is major room for improvement. It is our belief that an operational “nutrition system” should not only deliver sufficient energy, but critically enhance cognitive and physical performance, around the clock, across a range of operational environments whilst also supporting long term health.

Photo credit: LPhot Dan Rosenbaum

Lessons from the edge

Some important advancements in ration technology came from the austere, physically taxing conditions of polar exploration – journeys that might not have been possible without food preservation and packaging. Over a century later, in a world with no more blank spots on the map, the explorers of today chart the human terrain within themselves as they take on feats like ocean rowing and ultramarathon running. As these extraordinary performers redefine the limits of human endurance, we’ve made it our mission to fuel their endeavours and glean lessons that can help us develop the nutrition systems of the future.

In 2019 we trialled the essence of such a system with a pair of athletes who wanted to break the world record for rowing across the Atlantic.?

Video Credit: James May, Dustoff Films

Essentially, we designed an “optimised” nutrition system for maximizing physical and cognitive performance in readiness for weeks of pretty much continuous activity. These guys were looking down the barrel of 40-50 days of continuous shifts on the oars, day and night, fighting their way across the North Atlantic.?For an insight into what they were up against, emotionally and physically, hear it direct from Chris Williams, Max Thorpe and Dave Spelman .?

We had to come up with a solution that not only delivered 6,000+ calories per day but more importantly, minimised the impact of the damage the guys were doing to themselves, as well as maintaining their ability to make clear decisions when they were absolutely exhausted.?

Understanding chrononutrition

As we discussed in our last post , the centuries-old struggle to maintain alertness on the battlefield has historically led to the use of drugs like amphetamines that allow a soldier to “fight through” sleep and exhaustion – at least while under the influence. Recent sleep and nutrition science has exposed the harm of such a strategy and the value of working with the body’s natural sleep rhythm rather than trying to blot it out.?

One of our specific areas of research is chrononutrition, essentially the science of what and when you eat relative to the time of day, the dark light cycle and your movement through time zones.?

So, we used that knowledge to prescribe different foods and formats to match what they needed and could digest at different times of day. Higher carbs in the morning and higher protein in the evening, more liquids and pastes during the night than solids, hot food and drinks when body temperature is at its lowest (around 4am) and so on.?

Max & Dave went on to break the world record with a time of 35 days, 7 hours and 54 minutes (beating the previous world record by 11 minutes after a grueling 21-hour final push on the oars).

Photo Credit: Atlantic Campaigns

So, what will the rations systems of tomorrow look like?

Personalised: rations systems are going to be more personalised based on factors such as gender, age, weight, dietary preference, allergies etc and in time cater for individual biology.?

Functional: rations need to be ergogenic (performance enhancing), adaptogenic (stress reducing) and nootropic (cognition enhancing).

Integrated: the US Navy has already trialled nutrition systems built into clothing and kit. We have focused on designing packs that are compatible in terms of dimensions with load carriage systems, minimise bulk and weight and fit alongside all the other kit and equipment the modern operator is carrying.?

Visual & tactile: the will use visual language and iconography to make it easy to know what, how and when to take certain items in all environments, especially at night.?

Theatre specific: nutritional and functional requirements are heavily dependent on operational environment - hot wet, hot dry, extreme cold, altitude etc. Adapting nutrition strategies to operational environments positively impacts mission outcome. ?

Adaptable & configurable: rations systems are going to much more adaptable and controllable in terms of what gets delivered to units and to individuals - with shorter cycles between demand and supply and much more modularity.

Sustainable: this is a real issue and not just because we have a critical and non-negotiable need to protect the planet. We have to build sustainability into the whole system - local sourcing of raw materials, supply chains designed to optimise energy consumption, packaging materials that maintain the long shelf life but also be biodegradable, reducing the number of items in the pack, making more items multipurpose or reusable, increasing the use of refillables both in camp and in the field.?

Lighter and more modular: with a shift to using drones and autonomous vehicles there are huge opportunities to shift more stuff around the battlespace on a more just in time basis but it has to be light and easy to pack in formats that work with existing conventions and systems. A lot of our focus at the moment is on that operational integration.?

Education and training: troops are more informed (although generally the quality of?nutrition advice available to the public is poor ). So, training and education is actually a massive part of the required change. You can already see this in the US with a big focus on streaming soldiers into nutrition channels based on profile, but we are also doing things over here - the Royal Marines are leading the way with Op Endurance and all Tier 1 units have active Human Performance programmes covering multiple dimensions like purpose, mindset, team, effect, environment and sleep as well as exercise and nutrition.?

Optimising human performance

They say that war and conflict often accelerate innovation and it certainly seems like that at the moment. In the last year we have responded to multiple urgent operational requirements from disaster response, to medical to military organisations responding to the war in Ukraine. I hope we have proven that change is possible; that it doesn’t need to take decades; that an interdisciplinary, human centric design approach coupled with rapid prototyping and trials with front line units and SME’s working alongside defence primes can deliver impact and value at speed.?

In a defence and security industry obsessed by information and technology, that introduces even more volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity for the modern operator to deal with, improving rations to keep the human being in the middle as effective as possible should be on the menu.?