The Vietnam War, a laboratory for junk food

At the end of the Vietnam War, in the mid-1970s, and until the Gulf War, in the early 1990s, the armed forces of the United States – which then numbered around 2 million active members – remained engaged on many areas of military intervention. At the same time, in Natick, in the suburbs of Boston (Massachusetts), a special research and development unit is given a mission of high strategic value. Within the Combat Capabilities Development Command (CCDC), in a large military-industrial complex of 320,000 square meters, nearly 2,000 civil and military engineers work every day to improve the food and the daily diet of American soldiers.

In the space of twenty years, the center secretly developed prototype meals for garrisons and developed optimized combat rations for soldiers deployed in hostile environments. From this military laboratory, a veritable antechamber to experimental junk food, a large number of technological advances in freeze-drying, food irradiation and thermal stabilization were born. These same processes which will be, later and until today, widely reused and exploited by the main players in the food industry.

Raw material

To document and stage its findings, the CCDC employs professional photographers. In total, the latter will capture tens of thousands of shots, sometimes utilitarian (medium format shots), sometimes documentary (photo reports in 24 × 36 format).

Long classified as a defense secret, these images have recently fallen into the public domain. One evening, while exploring the intricacies of a computer server, Matthieu Nicol accidentally discovered this treasure of archives. Among the photos that most arouse his curiosity: a portion of orange juice bar (on the menu of an emergency package), prototypes of alternatives to bread (but also cheese, coconut, with pizza) or even these portraits of soldiers with a jovial and supercharged mine.

The iconographer, cookbook collector and passionate about culinary imagery, was fascinated by the richness of the collection and immediately decided to publish a selection of 92 photos in a small book in the format handbook. All without any text, apart from a glossary, he explains, in order to preserve the raw material of the images – and their suggestive force. Its title, like a bittersweet review: Better Food for our Fighting Men, literally “better food for our fighters”. Leo Bourdin