[Discuss] Armies and food

[Timothy Collett]

On Jan 14, 2008, at 5:13 PM, Robert Croson, Jr wrote:
> But what you're saying is that a soldier, in the normal course of
> performing his duties, consumes 5 times the *calories* of a
> peasant.

No, I'm not.

Nutrition is more than just calories, as most modern people ought to  
know.  I'm not a nutritionist, or any kind of scientist with relevant  
knowledge--and, again, I don't insist on the 5x figure, it just  
seemed reasonable to me--but given the relative availabilities of  
meat and various carbohydrates, I don't think it's unreasonable to  
designate good meat as being "worth" more actual bushels than  
grains.  Factor that in with all the rest, and somewhere between 3x  
and 6x seems reasonable to me, *as a factor to discourage large army  
concentrations.*

Timothy Collett
Anaris Family

--

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
  - Arthur C Clarke