During the war, due to transportation problems, fresh food is extremely difficult to preserve, soldiers in most countries are not picky, and Chinese soldiers during the War of Resistance Against Japan do not say meat and fish, and even mouth brown rice is very cherished. At that time, lunch meat was very popular with the Allies as a very easy to preserve food, or meat, but the American soldiers were very disgusted, why?
First, the birth of lunch meat
Lunch meat is a kind of tubular compressed minced meat, the main ingredient is a variety of meat, plus starch and salt, and then mixed with some additives, put into the jar at high temperature steaming after making, the eating method can be eaten or cooked or fried. In 1937, the American Hormel Food Company produced canned meat for the first time, and the production of this kind of canned meat was undoubtedly the highest level in terms of food processing level at that time.
The product was originally called Humel spiced ham, and in the early days of being put on the market, it did not stir up any splash, mainly due to the lack of accurate positioning of its own user base, the rich believe that buying this processed meat is not as good as buying fresh meat, while the poor are difficult to afford. Faced with this situation, Humel renamed the canned meat Asparum luncheon meat, indicating that it was made up of pork shoulder meat and ham.
After the name change, some upper-middle-class Americans will take out this kind of canned food at lunch, and some people choose to use this cheap meat instead of expensive fresh meat, although sales have risen a little, but still there is not much improvement, this situation was not changed until the outbreak of World War II in 1939.
Second, the Hormel Company changed the formula twice, and the American soldiers were very disgusted
In the war years, all kinds of materials were very precious, and soldiers fighting on the front line needed to provide energy with high-calorie food, but transporting fresh meat on the battlefield and cooking was difficult to do with the industrial strength of the time. At this time, the U.S. government found lunch meat, which is both meat, and does not have to worry about the shelf life, but also can be eaten immediately, and it is also very convenient to carry during the march, so it purchased a large amount of lunch meat into the battlefield.
This portable luncheon meat solved the government's problems, but it was disliked by American soldiers. The United States has a strong economic strength, in the cold environment, when Chinese soldiers can only wear a single coat, American soldiers can wear thick cotton clothes, you can imagine how much logistics supplies of the US military are in place, in the diet, the US military food is also very sufficient, backpacks are often prepared with bread and ham to replenish physical strength.
In fact, at the beginning, the taste of Spamm lunch meat is not difficult to eat, and even the taste is quite good, so many American troops have not yet arrived at the battlefield, they have already eaten the canned food brought, the role of the can is to allow the army to maintain physical strength during the battle, not to the soldiers as snacks, the soldiers eat too fast is undoubtedly to increase the cost of buying and transporting canned food, so the government and Humel company negotiated, hoping to change the recipe of the can, in order to improve the shelf life while appropriately reducing the taste, the second version of lunch meat was born.
In this version, in order to improve the shelf life of the can, the company doubled the salt content of the can, and in order to enhance the soldier's satiety, increased the proportion of starch, so that it did meet the requirements of the military, but the soldiers were angry. The new version of the lunch meat starch is very heavy, but also very salty, the taste has been raised by the soldiers can not accept, so choose to eat only canned meat, the remaining starchy part is directly thrown away, very wasteful. In this way, the feeling of fullness brought by a single can to the soldiers is not strengthened, only let them drink a lot of water because they are too salty, and if they want to ensure that the soldiers are full, they can only transport more cans, and the transportation cost will only increase greatly.
So The Homer Company was asked to change the recipe, this time they directly reduced the amount of ham and pork in the can, the canned food became very unpalatable, the taste of meat was gone, and in order to avoid the recurrence of the waste of food, the military stipulated that soldiers could not discard uneaten cans.
In fact, even if the military did not ask for it, Humel could not continue to maintain the original recipe production, because of the perennial war, the supply of raw materials in the United States could not be the same as before, and by the end of World War II, the military even stopped bread and ham, and soldiers could only use energy bars and canned food without any meat smell. In the case of a very single choice of food, even the mountain treasures and seafood will be tired, not to mention this kind of canned food, the US military regards lunch meat as an enemy, and also gives it nicknames such as "sewage meat" and "spirit meat". At a time when American soldiers hated lunch meat, other allies regarded it as a treasure.
Third, the food of the Allies is in short supply, and the US military does not know that they are in fuzhong
At the end of World War II, the supplies of various countries were very tight, and the United States generously relieved the siege at this time, providing various supplies to the allies, including lunch meat. The American soldiers thought that the allies would hate lunch meat as much as they did, but they did not expect that in the Anglo-French-Soviet camp, this kind of cheap canned food, which they regarded as a flood beast, was very popular.
The abundance of luncheon meat helped the Allies solve their immediate needs, and soviet soldiers threw away the black and dry bread as soon as they got the cans and feasted on them. According to the recollection of an American veteran, when he and his comrades complained about how unpalatable lunch meat was, two British soldiers did not say anything, picked up the lunch meat stained with dust and dirt and ate it, and the scene of arsenic and honey brought him great touch.
The most exaggerated thing is that when friends visited in 1943, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opened a jar of Spamm lunch meat to entertain them, and the friends were very satisfied, thinking that this was a very rich meal, even the prime minister, let alone ordinary people. Lunch meat was a lifesaver for the Soviet Red Army at that time. The Chinese soldiers were not much better, a mouthful of white noodles was very luxurious, because of insufficient nutrition, many soldiers fell ill, many troops won a dozen battles, the first question is whether there is canned food in the captured things.
To this day, the English name of Spamm's luncheon meat is still known as spam and garbage advertisements in the United States, which can be seen in their resentment of this kind of canned food, but the residents of Guam, Hawaii and other places still like to eat this kind of food very much, because at that time, the most brutal war broke out in these lands, and it was undoubtedly a gift to be able to eat a bite of canned food, and it was this sentiment that made the restaurants in these places still sell lunch meat burgers.
For the waste and hatred of the US military for lunch meat, it can only be said that it is a manifestation of not knowing the blessing in the blessing, but it also shows that the economic and military strength of the United States at that time far exceeded that of other countries.