ARMY FOOD

GOOD NEWS: Because we won a major lawsuit against the Natick Soldier Center Combat Feeding Program and also applied grassroots pressure with things like this website, Natick finally caved in 2014 and removed trans fat from the notorious First Strike energy bar that they feed to troops. (The trans-fat First Strike bar is the main energy bar in rations, and for years we’d been lobbying Natick to stop pumping millions of them into the troops.) We estimate that by forcing the removal of trans fat from First Strike bars, we’ve saved troops from having to ingest 16 metric tons of trans fat per year. BAD NEWS: they replaced the trans fat with something almost as bad... palm kernel oil. First Strike bars are now laden with unhealthy palm kernel oil. As Dr. Weil puts it, “unlike palm oil, palm kernel oil can't be obtained organically. Instead, the oil must be extracted from the pit with a gasoline-like hydrocarbon solvent. In short, palm kernel oil is a cheap, unhealthy fat, and I recommend avoiding food products containing it.”