War is full of logistical challenges, one of the major concerns — in conflicts both ancient and modern — being how to feed the armies doing the fighting. Whether it’s Roman legionaries, British Redcoats, or modern infantry, soldiers have always needed a reliable supply of food to maintain both their energy levels and morale. As the old saying goes, “An army marches on its stomach.”
Military rations have existed since at least the time of ancient Rome, when soldiers received 2 pounds of bread a day, sometimes with meat, olive oil, and wine. Today, U.S. troops are provided with MREs — “Meals, Ready-to-Eat” — which are carefully tested, formulated, and packaged rations designed to sustain soldiers during training and military operations. These MREs have a shelf life of three years and can survive being dropped from an aircraft. But not every soldier is a fan of these pouches of food, which they sometimes refer to as “Meals, Rarely Edible” or “Meals Rejected by the Enemy.”
While modern MREs don’t often come with glowing reviews, some foods created specifically for soldiers — or adopted and popularized by the military — have become beloved by the civilian population. Here are six foods that managed to find their way from the ration pack to supermarket shelves across America.
M&Ms
In the 1930s, Forrest Mars Sr. (the son of Mars founder Franklin Clarence Mars) was traveling in Europe. According to confectionary legend, it was during this time that Forrest Mars observed soldiers eating chocolate pellets surrounded by a sugar shell during the Spanish Civil War. Inspired, he took the concept back to the United States where, in 1941, M&Ms were born.
With World War II already underway, M&Ms were initially made specifically for the U.S. military, providing an ideal way for soldiers to carry energy-rich chocolate in tropical climates without it melting. In 1947, the candy was made available to the public, and its popularity has never waned since.
Cheetos
Cheesy puff snacks and the chaos of warfare may seem diametrically opposed, but it’s the military we must thank for the former’s existence — including the top-selling brand, Cheetos. Their origin can be traced back to the Natick Soldier Systems Center, a U.S. Army research complex responsible for the development of the U.S. military’s food, clothing, and shelters.
One of the items to come out of the research complex was processed and powdered cheese, which was created for military use in World War II. According to Anastacia Marx de Salcedo, author of Combat-Ready Kitchen: How the U.S. Military Shapes the Way You Eat, by the end of the war “a whole little industry had sprung up to support this dehydrated cheese.” And one of the very first products to use the cheesy powder was the now-ubiquitous Cheetos.
Instant Coffee
Instant coffee isn’t a modern invention — it was created and patented as a “coffee compound” by an Englishman named John Dring in 1771. It later appeared in cake form during the American Civil War, before being refined by Japanese chemist Satori Kato, whose soluble coffee was introduced to the public at the Pan-American Exposition of 1901.
Instant coffee as we know it today became commonplace during World War I, providing a quick and easy taste of home for soldiers on the front lines. The Department of Defense began buying as much as 37,000 pounds of coffee powder each day, at which point the instant coffee industry skyrocketed. Then, in 1938, Nestlé introduced its new product, Nescafé. With the outbreak of World War II, Nescafé was included in the emergency rations of every U.S. soldier, further cementing the popularity of the instant brew.
Minute Maid
In 1942, the U.S. Army offered a lucrative contract to any company that could figure out a process for producing palatable frozen orange juice — deemed necessary for keeping vitamin C levels at acceptable levels among the troops. It wasn’t until 1945 that a viable process was created, at which point the Florida Foods Corporation won the contract to produce 500,000 pounds of orange juice concentrate.
However, the war ended before the product was shipped. Finding itself sitting on a giant mound of oranges, Florida Foods changed its name to the Vacuum Foods Corporation a year later and began selling the nation’s first concentrated frozen orange juice, which it called Minute Maid (in reference to the product’s quick and easy preparation). Despite initially slow sales, Minute Maid eventually took off — with the help of a catchy jingle from Bing Crosby — paving the way for similar frozen products.
TV Dinners
The first successful frozen prepackaged meal — what was later dubbed the “TV dinner” — hit supermarket shelves in 1953. Produced by Swanson, it was a Thanksgiving meal of turkey, cornbread stuffing, and peas. But while Swanson took TV dinners to the masses, the concept was originally developed for the military.
In 1945, Maxson Food Systems manufactured the first complete frozen meal — known as “Strato-Plates” — specifically to be reheated for troops and other passengers on long military flights. A typical meal was a basic three-part combo of meat, vegetable, and potato, each housed in its own compartment on a plastic plate. Maxson’s frozen meals never made it to the civilian retail market, but they were the precursors of the TV dinner, despite no TVs being involved.
Spam
Though Spam wasn’t invented specifically for the military, war rations certainly helped popularize it. When Spam was created in 1937 by Hormel Foods Corporation, it was seen as a way to increase sales of unprofitable pork shoulder, which was then considered an undesirable cut. Initially, sales of Spam were poor, partly because people had doubts about canned meat being safe for consumption. Then World War II began, and the U.S. military saw Spam as a perfect addition to its soldiers’ rations, being affordable, filling, easily portable, and shelf stable.
Spam accompanied U.S. troops all over the world, with 100 million cans shipped out to the Pacific theater alone. It became something of a culinary icon during the war, and went on to become an enduring supermarket staple — today, more than 9 billion cans of Spam have been sold.
Creamed chipped beef on toast, know to GIs as ‘s—t on a shingle’ (thus SOS) was a standard meal. A mess hall might be known for how palatable they made it (my father was a GI cook and bragged about mess halls he worked in)… RESIST!
on January 17, 2026, 3:47 pm
