#头条创作挑战赛#
Military compressed biscuits should be regarded as the most mysterious food in China, don't look at it as just a small piece, it is said that eating a piece can be full for a day, not only has a good sense of satiety, but also is nutritious. Is reality really like the legend?
Compressed biscuits: food made for war
Don't look at compressed biscuits as a modern product, but in fact, it still has a long history. As early as ancient times, people who marched and fought realized the importance of military food, and in order to be able to let the soldiers eat at any time, the ancients also took a lot of effort.
In the Ming Dynasty, the Qi army fought the Japanese along the coast, and carried a very hard pastry as a dry food for the march, which could not only be stored for a long time, but also used as a weapon to smash the enemy at a critical time by virtue of its hard characteristics.
During the Great Voyage of Discovery in Europe, because the fleet had to drift at sea for a long time and could not get supplies from the outside world for a long time, some easy-to-carry and easy-to-preserve foods would also be studied, such as bread and biscuits, which could be regarded as good marching dry food at that time.
In the 17th century, an English merchant ship ran aground on a small island in a storm on its way back to London. There were more than a dozen sailors and crew on board, and the ship's supplies were depleted, so they decided to knead the dough out of the reserves of flour, sugar, salt and water, and then roast it over the fire. Although the scones were unfermented and had a hard texture, they provided a rare amount of heat to the sailors and crews of the time to get through the storm. Later, this scone was called "biscuit" in the English-speaking world, which means biscuit, and this scone is the earliest prototype of compressed biscuits. Later, the biscuit was adopted by the Royal Navy and became one of the fleet's standard rations.
After the industrial age, the production of this biscuit began to be carried out using large machines, and the ingredients for the production of this biscuit were carefully calculated. By the time of World War I, the United States mass-produced compressed biscuits for military use and put them on the battlefield. Later, with the continuous upgrading of production technology, the volume of compressed biscuits became smaller and smaller, but the nutrients contained in them became more and more abundant.
But these achievements are all Western, and China's own compressed biscuits will not appear until much later.
The People's Liberation Army's marching dry food has to start from the period of resisting US aggression and aiding Korea, and we know in film and television dramas that the marching dry food of the volunteers at that time was fried noodles, and when the US military officers ate a bite, they would scold: "If we give our young men this kind of food, they will turn their guns and point them at us!" It can be seen that in fact, fried noodles are really difficult to swallow, and at that time, the volunteers also relied on the quality of hardship and hard work, a mouthful of fried noodles and a mouthful of snow, to recover their strength in the fierce battle.
As for why it's so hard? Why can't you be served with canned beef like the U.S. military, and you can get some biscuits if you don't have it? The main reason was that at that time, New China had just been established, and the whole country was in ruins, and there was simply not enough productive capacity to produce military dry food. From the film and television dramas, we can see that it is good for the volunteers to be able to eat fried noodles, sometimes they are carrying a few boiled potatoes, and they take two bites when they are hungry, North Korea is freezing, and the potatoes are frozen as hard as stones, and even the front teeth can be broken if you are not careful, so you have to put them in the armpit to cover them for a while before eating, and then eat them when they melt and become soft.
Let's go back to fried noodles. Although it is fried noodles, it is not all wheat flour, and it is mixed with some soybean flour and salt, and then it is fried in a large pot. The individual dry food obtained in this way basically contains nutrients such as starch, vitamins, proteins, etc.
Although it is good to be able to eat fried noodles on the battlefield in the ice and snow, the nutritional structure is still too simple after all, and if you don't talk about the taste, the nutrition can't keep up with this, and there will be many problems.
Generally speaking, in addition to common nutrients such as protein, glucose, and vitamins, the human body also needs unsaturated fatty acids like linoleic acid, linolenic acid, and so on. However, at that time, there were basically none of these in the fried noodles, and according to the literature, the soldiers at that time had a great opinion about the fried noodles, saying that after eating the fried noodles, they would get night blindness, mainly because of malnutrition. Therefore, later, the troops attached great importance to the issue of dry rations for the march.
When New China was first founded, our productivity could not keep up, so we could not produce individual dry food in large quantities, but after the first five-year plan, our industrial productivity was greatly improved, and we were finally able to develop our own compressed biscuits. So what about this compressed biscuit?
Why can compressed biscuits eat a full piece for a day?
I believe that although some people have not eaten authentic compressed biscuits, they have also seen the green tin box where compressed biscuits are stored, which can be regarded as a memory of a generation. In the 60s of the last century, the United States launched a war against Vietnam, and in order to support Vietnam, our country sent a large number of supplies to Vietnam, but food was a problem, because Vietnam's climate was hotter and more humid than China's, and ordinary rations were easy to spoil and not easy to preserve. As a result, the mainland set up a research group composed of more than 20 units to specialize in developing a military ration that can be stored in a tropical environment for a long time.
After research, the research team decided to imitate foreign compressed biscuit technology to produce compressed biscuits with small size and rich nutrition. It is said that this biscuit is extremely energy-packed, and one biscuit is equivalent to several bowls of white rice.
Unexpectedly, Vietnam took our advantage later, but turned its head and bit us back, and in the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam, these compressed biscuits also accompanied our army through that difficult time.
Compared with fried noodles, compressed biscuits are very nutritious, mainly wheat flour, vegetable oil, white sugar, milk powder, glucose powder, salt, etc., and some will add some dried fruits or meat floss as accessories. After these ingredients are mixed evenly, and then through the process of dehydration, compression, cutting, packaging and other processes, compressed biscuits are produced.
Generally speaking, compressed biscuits are the most critical technology when they go through the compression process, because it can press these raw materials very tightly, so that the originally loose and crispy biscuits become as hard as bricks.
Someone once tried to boil a few compressed biscuits in a pot. Surprisingly, even though the water in the pot was already boiling, the compressed biscuits showed no signs of swelling and loosening, and it was not until they had been boiling for half an hour that they began to swell and became many times larger.
The reason why these compressed biscuits do not expand easily in boiling water is because of their processing process. During the production process, these biscuits will contain a certain percentage of grain flour and water, and after being treated with high temperature and high pressure, the biscuits will become more stable, even if they come into contact with water, they will not immediately swell and soften.
The reason for this is to reduce the size of the biscuits while maintaining the nutritional content, and on the other hand, to make them easy to carry and store. In order to keep compressed biscuits for a longer period of time, they are usually vacuum-packed, making them less susceptible to spoilage, even when performing tasks in harsh environments.
Therefore, the reason why compressed biscuits can be so full is because it is rich in nutrients and high in calories, and on the other hand, because of its high density, after eating it, drink some water, let it expand in the stomach, and you can feel full. So are these cookies good or not?
What do compressed cookies taste like?
Although compressed biscuits can fill your stomach in an economical time, they don't taste very good. First of all, there is the taste problem, this kind of thing can still be imagined, after all, compressed biscuits are much harder than ordinary biscuits, and it takes some effort to bite into a large piece.
Compressed biscuits have almost zero water content and are extremely hard, so if you eat them as ordinary biscuits, it will be difficult to bite into them, and even if you bite off a small piece, it will not taste good in your mouth. It's like eating a piece of soil directly, and after swallowing it in your stomach, it will absorb a lot of water, and it may cause dehydration of the body, and it is said that if you eat it for a long time, you will also have a risk of stones and constipation. Therefore, in order to make it easier to swallow and maintain the taste, some people will put it in water to soak it until it softens and swells before eating.
However, with the upgrading of technology, the compressed biscuits in our country have also changed, compared with those in Western countries, the compressed biscuits in our country are softer, and the taste is getting better and better after adding various spices.
Although we can't touch military compressed biscuits, but now on the market, there have long been civilian compressed biscuits, compared with other ordinary biscuits of the same quality, the fat and sugar content of compressed biscuits is extremely high, it is said that a hundred grams of ordinary compressed biscuits contain about 350 calories, but a hundred grams of compressed biscuits calories reached about 457 calories. High energy allows the human body to quickly replenish physical strength, but high energy also means that it is easy to gain weight.
After the emergence of civil compressed biscuits, many people will treat it as a small snack, and gnaw two pieces when they have nothing to do, but it is necessary to pay attention to the fact that this thing is easy to gain weight, and it is okay to eat one or two pieces occasionally, but you can't eat it all the time.
If you ignore the various healthy eating concepts now, compressed biscuits are indeed a good food, although the taste is not as good as big fish and meat, but it can always save people in danger. In addition to the task of the troops, compressed biscuits can also be used for emergency disaster relief, at least in times of crisis, to quickly replenish physical strength, which is much more important than taste.
With the development of the times, the individual rations in the army are becoming more and more diversified, in addition to the hard compressed biscuits, the soldiers can also choose more flavorful, more nutritious self-heating food, even if there is no fire in the field, only need to pour a little water into the heating bag, you can eat a mouthful of hot rice.