Food for Buoyant Health 223 



cargo is air and water. Therefore, it is the processors of dehy- 

 drated foods who are helping lick the submarine menace now, 

 and who will help banish the menace of pestilence and plague 

 tomorrow. 



R. B. Tobin, formerly the dehydrated-food expert of the 

 Beech-Nut Packing Company, has stated that one hundred 

 cargo planes, loaded with dehydrated foods, could supply the 

 daily food requirement of England. For example, a five-gallon 

 container of dehydrated beets, when prepared for the table, 

 will serve six hundred men. Also, says Mr. Tobin, dehydra- 

 tion has a further advantage of not destroying the vitamin 

 content of food. 



"For example," he says, "spinach loses 75 per cent of its 

 vitamin Bi when canned. But in dehydrated spinach, the vita- 

 min Bi is preserved almost 100 per cent. Canned peas lose 73 

 per cent of Bi as compared to a loss of 10 to 20 per cent in 

 dehydrated peas. Studies on meat show that there was less loss 

 of vitamin Bi and 62 in dehydrated meat than in the canned 

 form." 



Dehydration removes from 50 to 90 per cent of the bulk 

 from food, and compression, or smashing out of the air under 

 tremendous pressure, removes from 30 to 70 per cent of the 

 remaining bulk. A compressed brick of potatoes the size of a 

 pack of cigarettes, when prepared for the table, will serve 

 four. A package the size of a shoe box will serve one hundred 

 people. 



Dehydrated foods were introduced in the first World War. 

 They did not "take." Any resemblance to the original flavor 

 of the food was purely coincidental. The soldiers took one 

 look at the pasty gray mess that was called potatoes, and de- 

 cided that Sherman was right. They protested loud and long. 

 When dehydrated foods were proposed in World War II, the 

 Army eyed the subject askance. But when the shipping short- 

 age became acute the Army decided to try again, and the 



