Food Bullets

When the Russians rolled them over, some of the dead Germans were seen to have little colored packets that looked like hotel soap. At first the Russians thought they were some kind of ersatz soap, then they were found to be foods--revolutionary tablet foods so long the favorite of popular science prophets. That was last year.

This year the revolution in foodstuffs has reached Connecticut. Where the Boston Post Road sweeps up over a hill into Greenwich, tablet foods are clacking out of packaging machines in what was once a huge, swank automobile salesroom. There are vestpocket portions of carrots, cabbage and coffee hardly bigger than a book of matches. There are blocks of onions smaller than a shoebox which will cook up to serve a hundred men. Maker of these tablets, the first commercial producer of dehydrated compressed foods in the U.S., is Auto Ordnance Co., manufacturer as well of the famed Thompson submachine gun.

Central point about the new products is that the food has not only been dehydrated (TIME, Feb. 16) for the removal of water, but has also been "debulked" (compressed) for the removal of air. The advantages in transportation are enormous--inspiring to Lend-Leasers, Army rationers and those who foresee that, after the war, the U.S. will feed great areas of the world. Compression adds another 30-90% to the great savings in bulk already attained by dehydration (many foods naturally average nine-tenths water). Equally important, the Cellophane-wrapped, dry-pressed foods are less likely to spoil, more amenable to the art of cookery than simply dehydrated foods--tablet mashed potatoes, properly cooked, compare better with the fresh-peeled article than with the pasty grey sogginess of World War I's dried spuds. Most dry-pressed foods need only freshening with hot water to be ready for cooking.

Chief of Auto Ordnance food research is John Cornelius Donnelly, who has been dry-pressing since 1934, when he first applied the principle to coffee, freezing roasted beans while he squeezed them at 1,500-2,000 Ib. per sq. in. to produce a product that yields almost double the number of cups per pound. ("The freezing," says Engineer Donnelly, "functions as an anesthetic to avoid damage to the tissues, fats and cells during the squeeze.") He reports reductions in volume (over and above dehydration reductions) of 90% for sauerkraut, 80% for cabbage, 75% for potatoes, 65% for onions, beets and carrots, 50% for egg powder, prepared desserts, dehydrated soups. Beef for stews in one-inch chunks squeezes down 70%, hamburger bulk is reduced 55%. Puffed rice, voluminous as a pound of feathers, can be compressed 86%. Puffed rice, combined with powdered skim milk and sugar in a lozenge, can, with the addition of warm water, swell into a mess cup full of ready-to-eat breakfast food.

Auto Ordnance production is still only a drop in what seems likely to become a vast dry-pressed bucket. After the last war poorly processed dried foods collapsed like a dehydrated potato. This time, better processing, the economics of more food for less money, and great world need all favor the tablet-food industry.

J. B. Wyckoff of the Agricultural Marketing Administration declares that production of dehydrated vegetables alone is seven times that of two years ago, reached 100,000,000 Ib. in 1942. "Within the next year," says Wyckoff, "we will have to be dehydrating vegetables at the rate of at least 350,000,000 to 400,000,000 Ib., a development in the food industry that probably cannot be paralleled in any other industry." For dehydrated meats, practically nonexistent here a year back, requirements approached 60,000,000 Ib. in 1942. "To meet the 1943-44 dehydrated food requirements as presently known," Wyckoff adds, will call for "three-fourths to four-fifths of the vegetables required by the entire canning industry this year. This increase will require every third egg, every twelfth pound of whole milk."

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