There are two main types of lunch boxes currently in our army
One is the "single soldier picnic tableware" developed around 2005-07, which is a British-style square lunch box + folding stove system, which was used in small quantities in the 10s, such as the first South Sudanese peacekeeping infantry battalion equipped with this lunch box
The other is the "single soldier tableware" that has appeared in recent years, which is a German-style waist-shaped lunch box
In fact, the form of military lunch boxes is diverse, and the reason why most of them are waist-shaped is mainly because the popularity of modern hard lunch boxes is the era of field buried pots and pans represented by barrel lunch boxes. The structure of the lunch box is closely related to the diet of the army. Various types of barrel lunch boxes, represented by waist-shaped lunch boxes, were very popular between the mid-19th century and the mid-20th century.
The main reason for this is that the army's diet at that time was mainly: chaotic stew soup + various types of dry food.
Because the ingredients of the stew may be worse in addition to the taste, the ingredients are more flexible and the calories are sufficient, and it is not easy to spoil the stomach. It's also a bit simpler to make.
The field ration mode of "all kinds of hard cooked food cans + simple open fire heating stove" is not very popular, and the integrated mechanized rapid collective cooking mode is still out of reach, so it is necessary to fill the liquid food in barrel lunch boxes.
On the other hand, the barrel lunch box is also conducive to burying pots and pans in field conditions, as well as solving the transportation problem of the "last kilometer" of cooking soldiers.
At that time, the lunch box materials were mainly tin iron, zinc iron, and enamel, and some high-end aluminum materials were used, and steel was also used in the late World War II. The first three are relatively light, but the strength is limited. In addition, the round rice bucket has a large capacity but is inconvenient to carry, and the square lunch box is convenient to carry but easy to deform.
Therefore, the waist-shaped lunch box is more moderate in terms of capacity, structural strength, portability, and grip, so it is used in large quantities.
After the 1920s and 1930s, the situation has quietly changed, first of all, with the advancement of technology, the regular army can already provide integrated rations or individual emergency rations to the front in the form of various types of canned and paper-wrapped cooked food, and the army no longer always needs to collect raw ingredients on the front line to bury the pot and make rice. Such an advantage is to ensure the basic hygiene and taste of front-line rations, improve the efficiency of food, simplify logistics and maintain combat effectiveness.
Taking the US military as an example, in 1925, the US military initially established four kinds of rations: A, B, C and D
Among them, the A ration is the fresh food ration of the camp, the B ration is the semi-finished ration, the C ration is the canned cooked ration, and the D ration is the emergency ration (later there is also the portable and ready-to-eat K ration). (Of course, the conditions in the war zone are always bad)
This was true of the C rations of the U.S. army and the "iron rations" of the Germans
On the other hand, as the proportion of cooked food increases, the rapid heating mode represented by solid alcohol blocks and the "Esbert" folding furnace (or digging a pit directly without a furnace) is also widely used
In the above case, the shallow plate lunch box represented by the US military and the British army began to replace the barrel lunch box because of its large bottom area and fast heating, convenient size and easy to carry, and convenient deep shallow feeding and cleaning
In fact, at this time, hard lunch boxes are no longer always necessary, and it is already very common to discard cans that are directly and quickly heated (or not heated), and lunch boxes are only used when necessary, such as when eating group rations. Some canned emergency rations will also have their own heating device, which can be eaten directly after heating.
During the Cold War, although the armies of various countries generally retained various forms of aluminum and stainless steel lunch boxes, in fact, they were basically no longer developed, and gradually they were no longer carried as necessary equipment for individual soldiers. The few armies still cooking in the field use either communal cutlery or lunch boxes. In fact, with the popularity of disposable tableware, metal tableware has also begun to be eliminated.
The utensils for collective dining in the wild have also become very casual, but the basic mode of collective dining has not changed much, but it is said that the Western army is more meticulous in the classification of ingredients and meals, and people have more money.
Since the 1980s, with the popularization of shallow rations represented by T rations, collective rations have achieved closed heating in war zones and eaten immediately after opening bags. Mre or hard canned open flame-heated rations for individual soldiers have also made great strides, and soldiers no longer need lunch boxes when they eat on the battlefield.