Press release by Jennifer Bowden, based on published article.
The tragedy of poor nutrition meant our men at Gallipoli fought not only the enemy but also scurvy and lack of immunity.
soldier needs to be in excel lent health, physicall) fit and mentally prepared to deal with the rigours ol militar) operations. Nutrition affects a soldier's performance, both physically and cognitively, which in part explains the job Major Nicola Martin has in the New Zealand Army as a senior dietitian. Martin sets out to keep New
Zealand's soldiers at peak performance and operational readiness by making sure they are properly fed and watered.
Contrast that with the experiences of Kiwi soldiers involved in the campaign on the Gallipoli Peninsula from April 1915 to January 1916, during which 2779 Kiwis lost their lives, including at least 200 from infectious diseases such as dysentery and typhoid. In all there were an estimated 7991
New Zealand casualties. By the campaign's end most of the New Zealand men who survived were too weak and sick to continue as soldiers.
The rations New Zealand's Gallipoli soldiers received for nearly all their meals consisted of tinned meat (bully beef), jam, hard biscuits and a mug of tea. Says Martin: "The sheer monotony of what they ate would have been absolutely awful for them.
No matter how hungry you are, if this is your 56th day in a row of eating canned corned beef and biscuits, chances are you're not going to want to polish it off." Worse still, the meat, generally supplied from Argentina, was of poor quality - stringy and salty - contributing to thirst. Little wonder tins of the meat would sometimes be hurled at the Turkish enemy, and legend has it one was thrown back with a note in English saying, "Cigarettes yes, bully beef no." The British-supplied biscuits were so hard the New Zealanders typically nibbled at the edges and threw the hard centres into No Man's Land; and harassment by flies made it almost impossible to eat their jam ration during daylight hours.
Although the poor quality and lack of variety of the soldiers' diet is well documented, it was only last year that Associate Professor Nick Wilson and colleagues from the University of Otago published a nutritional analysis of what they ate in the New
Zealand Medical Journal. It revealed the Gallipoli rations were deficient in vitamins A, C and E, as well as potassium, selenium and dietary fibre, and were far below modern nutritional requirements. They were also high in saturated fat (more than three times the recommended daily allowance) and sodium (five times the recommended amount).
Vitamin C content was about a third of daily needs, which tallies with reports of scurvy. Vitamin A intake was about a third too low, a shortcoming that, with the other nutritional deficiencies, may well have contributed to the high rates of illness. Says Wilson: "Most of them also had some level of diarrhoea from dysentery and typhoid, so they would have been either not eating on those days that they had bad diarrhoea or they would have had very poor food absorption." The result would have been further impairment of their nutritional status.
HISTORY'S LESSONS Wilson speculates it's "not unrealistic to expect some of those 200 deaths from dysentery may have been partly attributable to their low immunity from poor micronutrient status, particularly vitamin A".
"The tragedy of history is that people don't learn," he says. "It was known scurvy could occur because of the experience in previous wars. And although vitamin C hadn't been discovered, it was well known by doctors at that time that you could prevent scurvy and you could treat it by providing fruit and vegetables." Vitamin A deficiency (and reports of night blindness) occurred during the American Civil War and among a number of European armed forces.
Some of the poor ration planning may have been due to the expectation that the Gallipoli campaign would be short-lived.
Still, even without today's nutritional knowledge, better rations could have been provided by basing them on a typical New Zealand diet containing fruit and vegetables. "To just go to a diet of bully beef, biscuits and tea and jam was ridiculous in terms of morale," says Wilson. Troops need to be fed what they're used to and be given variety to avoid the boredom that drives down morale.
Martin agrees. "When it comes to soldiers, food equals morale. And when you think back to what those poor guys went through in 1915, it didn't take long for their morale to hit very low levels." Canned fruit and vegetables in the Gallipoli soldiers' diets would have eliminated the vitamin A and C deficits and substantially improved their overall nutritional status, at a cost of an additional 40c a day in today's money. Just six foods - bread, flour, cheese, rolled oats, dried peas and canned tomatoes - would have provided optimal nutrition at under half the cost of the 1915 rations.
However, a diet limited to those six foods wouldn't pass muster for New Zealand soldiers in 2014. Nowadays, considerable effort goes into providing variety and ensuring soldiers eat enough to meet their high energy and nutritional needs.
Army dining hall menus typically repeat on at least a monthly cycle, with three to four protein options available at lunch and dinner.
MARCHING ON THEIR STOMACHS In general soldiers have higher energy needs than civilians, says Martin, although that depends on their specific roles. There's little scientific research into how much energy a soldier expends in combat, but studies investigating what they burn in training suggest a daily 18,000-22,000 kilojoules are needed, compared with the 9000-11,000 kilojoules of an average active person. Army recruits typically walk 8km
a day between barracks, dining hall, gym and so on, says Martin, even before they begin to train or exercise.
Soldiers are encouraged to eat communally. "When you're in a social setting, you tend to enjoy food more and also typically eat more, which for the general population is possibly something they could do with a little less of. But if you have high energy requirements, then obviously encouraging people to eat within a group setting is really valuable." That becomes particularly important during operational duties. Combat stress, whether environmental or caused by anxiety or fatigue, can suppress appetite, points out Martin. "The concern is appetite suppression over a prolonged period can lead to progressive energy and nutrient deficits, which would ultimately have an effect on physical and cognitive performance." The answer is to ensure the food and fluids available to soldiers in such conditions are highly palatable, require little effort and are energy- and nutrient-dense to minimise the amount they need to consume.
"We typically don't have too many issues with guys on deployment in terms of weight loss - not any weight loss that we would be concerned about from a health perspective, anyway," Martin says. Even though they have high energy needs, soldiers generally return from deployment in pretty good shape, says Martin, "because there's no access to fast food, there's no alcohol and often they're doing quite large amounts of physical activity".
And for the record, there's no tinned Argentinian beef in today's ration packs.
Rather, they consist of predominantly New Zealand-sourced ingredients and meals ranging from "traditional homestyle meals such as chicken casserole and beef and vegetable stew through to more ethnic varieties, such as chilli con came and butter chicken".
It sounds good, and apparently the Australians and British think so, too. Word has it some of their ration packs are made in New Zealand. I
| Period | 19 Apr 2014 |
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| Held at | Listener, New Zealand |
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