The US military has devised a way to ensure its troops in battle need never go hungry – with dried food that can be rehydrated using dirty water or urine.
The meal comes in a pouch that filters out 99.9% of bacteria and most toxic chemicals, says New Scientist magazine.
The aim is to reduce the amount of water soldiers need to carry.
The firm behind it says soldiers should only use urine as last resort – as the membrane can not filter out urea, which in the long term causes kidney damage.
“The pouch – containing chicken and rice – relies on osmosis to filter the water or urine,” the New Scientist Magazine reported.
The liquid passes through a membrane, thin sheets of a cellulose-based plastic with gaps just 0.5 nanometres wide.
It means only clean water can reach the food, and the bacteria is left behind.
indestructible sandwich’
The idea has come from the Combat Feeding Directorate, part of the US Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Massachusetts.
The organization is also the brains behind the “indestructible sandwich”, which can stay fresh for three years.
A spokeswoman said the dehydrated pouches would reduce the current weight of 3.5kg for a day’s food supply of three meals, to 0.4kg.
But Hydration Technology Inc, in Albany, Oregon, which made the membrane, warned it is too coarse to filter out urea so soldiers should only use urine in an absolute emergency.
Engineer Ed Beaudry was quoted by the New Scientist as saying that the body would not find using urine to rehydrate food toxic in the short term, but in the long term it would cause kidney damage.
I tore the skin on my arm sometime yesterday… If I think about it, I imagine that I can feel it stitching back up, white blood cells acting like sap and thread, building fresh skin where the old cells were torn away by some random abrasion. I can faintly sense a shoot breaking free, with the promise of a new leaf at the spiraling tip, reaching toward the light. hmm…speaking of which –Vegetable Cruelty. Oh, the Atrocities! See also – EAT YOUR PEAS!
Typo generator -nifty typeface/logo blender gizmo. the user types some text; typoGenerator searches images.google for the text and creates a background from the found images, using randomly chosen effects. then it places the text, using random effects too.
Quote of the Day –
“If you expect a kick in the balls and get a slap in the face, then it’s a victory.”
PLH, Dear Journal.