The ancients said, "The grain and grass have not moved, the soldiers and horses have gone first", and it is precisely such a sentence that makes us know the importance of army rations for an army. Although in the war, the soldier is the main body, but the soldier is a person, they will consume a certain amount of energy every day, in order to win a battle, in order to achieve a strategic and tactical double victory, to ensure that the army soldiers of the individual rations is a very important thing. If soldiers cannot eat, do not eat enough, and do not eat well in wartime, it is equivalent to an important machine without oil, even if it is powerful, it is useless.
The role of the diversity of military food for individual soldiers
In ancient times, when science and technology were not yet developed, soldiers mostly ate dry food when fighting, and the meat they ate was also dried bacon. In the case of Genghis Khan's Mongol army, a large part of the reason why their army was invincible was because the Rations of the Mongol Army were supplied in a timely manner. As we all know, the Mongols, in addition to being a people on horseback, are also a meatless people, they like to eat beef and mutton from an early age, this is because of the geographical location and ecological conditions, they can rarely eat vegetables, and the grassland is not suitable for growing crops, so they have a great demand for meat. Friends who have been to Mongolia know that beef jerky in Inner Mongolia is called "military food on horseback", because the Mongol cavalry is fighting outside, if they carry fresh beef and mutton, they will quickly deteriorate, so in order for the army personnel to have enough meat intake, the Mongolian people slowly learn to dry beef and mutton.
During World War II, because of the fierceness of the war, the status of military food was slowly valued.
Lunch meat
In the late 1930s, an American named Homer invented a food that was mixed with spices and ham and then put in canned meat, thus making it a canned food that became popular later.
Because the production cost is large, the price of this type of canned food is quite high, so that in the United States at that time, most of the families and groups that could eat canned ham were families and people above the middle economic level and the high economic level. Later, because the top level in the United States liked to set up a luncheon at noon, and in such a luncheon, such canned ham was loved by everyone, so some people called such canned ham food "lunch meat".
Later, because the United States declared war on the Axis powers, the soldiers needed supplies, so the rich and powerful U.S. government included the lunch meat that was originally for the middle and upper class personnel into the rations of the individual soldiers of the US army. It is worth mentioning that such military food lunch meat uses pork front leg meat, plus spices, the taste is even more delicious. The U.S. military's usual luncheon meat, called "Spamm Lunch Meat Canned Meat," was introduced on June 5, 1937.
Why is lunch meat the highest level of logistics in World War II?
In fact, this statement is not very accurate, because the United States accumulated a large amount of wealth and resources in the early period of World War I and World War II, which made its national strength increase rapidly, even if it was affected by the economic crisis on the eve of World War II, but it was also quickly governed under the good control of the Roosevelt administration. At the end of World War II, the U.S. government was already very rich, so a simple box of lunch meat was not representative of the highest level of U.S. World War II logistics. If you have seen this history, or a documentary, you will know that the US army eating a box of canned lunch meat during World War II is actually a "sprinkling" thing, because in addition to lunch meat, they can also eat roast chicken, beef, chocolate, cigarettes and alcohol in the army, so from this point of view, the logistics supply of the US military during World War II is not the best, only better.
brief summary
In the logistics of the US military in World War II, lunch meat is actually not a strange thing, if you know the origin of south Korea's "army hot pot", you will understand. Because of the lack of materials for the Rok army at that time, in order to let the troops eat hot meals, they picked up a large amount of lunch meat abandoned by the US army and boiled them with kimchi, instant noodles, rice cakes and other things.