Why Military Chocolate Was Deliberately Made To Taste Bad

The years before the United States joined World War II were no picnic in the park. The country was in the midst of the Great Depression, when unemployment was high and food rations made dishes like the water pie (one of several Depression-Era desserts you can still make) common. News of ever-increasing tensions in Europe had everyone worried, and there were whispers that if the "old" continent went to war, Americans would eventually join. Anticipating conflict, Captain Paul Logan thought the U.S. Army should start preparing survival kits for troops. To feed its soldiers, he needed items that were light, nutritious, and long-lasting, so he turned to Hershey's and asked the company to come up with a special chocolate bar. The most important caveat? It shouldn't taste good.

Captain Logan felt that giving soldiers delicious chocolate would pose a number of problems: They might eat it too soon, or they might use it as currency and trade it for other goods like cigarettes and magazines with pictures of scantily-clad women. The army wanted to avoid making these chocolate bars desirable because they were meant to keep soldiers alive in an emergency situation. If soldiers indulged in the candy beforehand, they might then find themselves without their potentially life-saving ration when they actually needed it. As a solution, Hershey's delivered the Ration D bar, which did not melt, was as hard as a rock, and contained very little sugar. Many soldiers disliked it so much that they refused to eat it, although there are records of the bar saving lives.

The U.S. joined World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The Ration D bar was handed out to countless soldiers, and Hershey's received the Army-Navy 'E' Production Award in August 1942 for helping in the war effort. But the company's work didn't end there. The next year, it came out with the Tropical Chocolate Bar, which had a slightly better flavor but could also survive in hot climates. This bar was used by the Army until the 1990s. Even after the Axis powers surrendered in 1945, Hershey's continued to play a role in war history. Its products were used in a heart-warming effort called Operation Little Vittles, in which the military air-dropped chocolate bars from paper tissue parachutes to children in Soviet-controlled Germany. 

While Hershey's efforts are certainly commendable, the company might have  saved a lot of research and money if it had looked to countries like  Mexico and Colombia, which make hot chocolate with bitter blocks of  chocolate — very different from the 10 types of chocolate common in the U.S. Like the Ration D bar, these hot chocolate blocks don't melt easily, are hard as a rock, and have little to no added sugar. They're meant to  be melted in boiling water or milk rather than eaten alone, and would have perfectly fit the bill of what the Army wanted. In today's  globalized food market, we have the benefit of other countries' culinary knowledge, in times of war and peace.