Desert dessert - as useful as a chocolate teapot? Photograph: PA
What's brown, runny and stinks? Terrible non-existent joke here I know ... The non-existent punchline would be your standard issue British army 'hot weather' desert ration pack replete with Yorkie chocolate bars. My colleague, film maker and journalist Vaughan Smith, from the Frontline Club, delved through his ration pack in Afghanistan this week. He blogged about his disappointment at what he found inside.
"By the time [the chocolate] gets to Afghanistan, [it] has invariably melted and leaked all over the contents of the ration box. Nobody eats it because licking cardboard isn't fun in the desert."
No fun at all I imagine. And as Vaughan adds in this video: "It's very disappointing ... I like chocolate."
The bigger question is, which minion in which ministry dreamt up this disaster in desert dining? Where's your all-weather food; your dried fruit, dried meat, nuts, oatcakes and wotnot? The Ministry of Defence website tells us:
"Thankfully the selection of dishes on the menu for British troops deployed in Afghanistan tonight is enough to make your mouth water."
And your chocolate too, they should have added. A quick scan through Google tells us the days of bully beef are long gone. The US government might think NATO rations are unfit for human consumption, but to my palate at least some of today's menus even sound good.
Hamburger & beans, soup, chicken with mushrooms & pasta, treacle pudding, snacks, drinks & sundriesBacon & beans for breakfast, curried lamb and rice for dinner, soup, fruit dumplings for pudding, plus all usual snacks & sundries
Meatballs & pasta in tomato sauce, soup, chicken stew with dumplings, chocolate pudding with chocolate sauce, plus all usual snacks & sundries
But, what's the thinking here? Presumably the army still marches on a carb-filled stomach, but what's the science behind an army ration pack?
