Section through a Nansen Sledging Cooker mounted on the primus
The subject of food is one which requires peculiar consideration and study. It is assumed that a polar expedition must carry all its food-stuffs in that variety and quantity which may approximately satisfy normal demands. Fortunately, the advance of science has been such that necessaries like vegetables, fruit, meats and milk are now preserved so that the chances of bacterial contamination are reduced to a minimum. A cold climate is an additional security towards the same end.
Speaking generally, while living for months in an Antarctic hut, it is a splendid thing to have more than the mere necessaries of life. Since one is cut off from the ordinary amenities of social existence, it is particularly necessary that equipment and food should be of the very best; in some measure to replace a lack which sooner or later makes itself keenly felt. Explorers, after all, are only mortal.
Luxuries, then, are good in moderation, and mainly for their psychological effect. After a spell of routine, a celebration is the natural sequel, and if there are delicacies which in civilization are more palatable than usual, why not take them to where they will receive a still fuller and heartier appreciation? There is a corresponding rise in the "tide of life" and the ennui of the same task, in the same place, in the same wind, is not so noticeable. So we did not forget our asparagus and jugged hare.
In the matter of sledging foods, one comes down to a solid basis of dietetics. But even dietetics as a science has to stand aside when actual experience speaks. Dietetics deals with proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and calories: all terms which need definition and comprehension before the value of a sledging ration can be fundamentally understood. When the subject was first introduced into table conversation at the Hut, it was regarded somewhat suspiciously as "shop." But it gradually won interest simply because it was of such vital concern.
In sledging there is undoubtedly a critical allowance which will yield the best results. Circumstances alter cases, and the correct ration under one set of conditions cannot be expected to coincide with that in another situation. Thus, the journey may be conducted under conditions of great cold or of comparative warmth, by man-hauling or auxiliary power, at sea-level or on an altitude, through regions where there is a reasonable hope of securing additions of meat by the way, or across barren tracts devoid of game. In each instance particular demands must be supplied.
In selecting the articles of diet, idiosyncrasies of individuals should be consulted in reason, and under no consideration should anything be taken which bears the slightest stigma of contamination. It remains, then, to discriminate those foods which contribute the greatest amount of nutriment for a given weight, and which, inter se, preserve a proper dietetic balance. Variety is very desirable, provided that there is no important sacrifice in nutrient value. The proof of a wisely selected ration is to find at the end of a long sledge journey that the sole craving is for an increase in the ration. Of course, such would be the ideal result of a perfect ration, which does not exist.
Considering that an ordinary individual in civilization may only satisfy the choice demands of his appetite by selecting from the multifarious bill of fare of a modern restaurant, it will be evident that the same person, though already on the restricted diet of an explorer, cannot be suddenly subjected to a sledging ration for any considerable period without a certain exercise of discipline.
For example, the Eastern Coastal Party, sledging at fairly high temperatures over the sea-ice, noted that the full ration of hoosh produced at times a mild indigestion, they drank much liquid to satisfy an intense thirst and on returning to the Hut found their appetites inclined to tinned fruit and penguins' eggs. Bickerton's and Bage's parties, though working at a much higher altitude, had a similar experience. The former, for instance, could not at first drink the whole allowance of thick, rich cocoa without a slight nausea. The latter saved rations during the first two weeks of their journey, and only when they rose to greater heights and were in fine condition did they appreciate the ration to the full. Again, even when one becomes used to the ration, the sensation of full satisfaction does not last for more than an hour. The imagination reaches forward to the next meal, perhaps partly on account of the fact that marching is often monotonous and the scenery uninspiring. Still, even after a good evening hoosh, the subconscious self may assert itself in food-dreams. The reaction from even a short sledging trip, where food has been plentiful, is to eat a good deal, astonishing in amount to those who for the time being have lived at the Hut.
It may appear that a serious case is being made against the polar sledging ration. On the whole, it was found to be excellent and the best that experience had been able to devise. Entering the polar zones, one must not be over-fastidious, but take it as a matter of course that there will be self-denial and deprivation of small luxuries.
The energy exerted by man, and the requirements of tissue-building are derived from the organic compounds known as proteins,** fats and carbohydrates, though in a slight degree from other substances, most important of which are minute quantities of mineral matter.
A calorie as used in dietetics is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one kilogramme of water at 0 degrees C. to 1 degree C. The heat-value of food-stuffs, stated in calories, can be quickly reckoned when chemical analyses stating their protein, fat and carbohydrate contents are available. It has been ascertained that one gramme of protein or carbohydrate yields 4.1 calories, whilst the same amount of fat produces 9.3 calories. Thus the value of fat-containing foods in a sledging ration is at once apparent.
** The proteins are complex nitrogenous compounds which are preeminent
in fulfilling the two functions of a food: to form tissue and to produce
work and heat. As examples may be quoted, myosin the chief protein of
ordinary meat or muscle, ovalbumin one of the proteins of egg-white,
casein belonging to milk and cheese, and gluten a protein-mixture in
flour.
Fats are organic non-nitrogenous substances obtained from both animal and vegetable sources, e.g. butter and olive oil.
The carbohydrates are compounds of carbon with hydrogen and oxygen in a certain proportion, e.g. cane-sugar and starch.
Mineral matters are inorganic, being chlorides, carbonates or phosphates of calcium, sodium and potassium.
Theoretically, any of the three classes of foods mentioned might be thought to supply adequate energy, if taken in sufficient amount. Practically, however, protein and carbohydrate are essential, and it is better to have a mixture of all three. So, in concentrating foods for sledging, the largest possible proportion of fat, compatible with other considerations, is included.
Ordinarily, a normal man consumes some four or five pounds weight of solid food per diem, of which 50 per cent., it is rather surprising to learn, is water. When sledging, one has the satisfaction of knowing that all but the smallest quantity of the food dragged is solid nutriment. The water is added when the meals are cooked. It is just in this artificial addition that the sledging ration is not perfect, though as a synthesis it satisfies the demands of dietetics. Food containing water, as cooked meat oozing with its own gravy is a more palatable thing than dried meat-powder to which boiling water has been added. In the same way, a dry, hard biscuit plus liquid is a different thing from a spongy loaf of yeast bread with its high percentage of water. One must reckon with the psychic factor in eating. When sledging, one does not look for food well served as long as the food is hot, nourishing and filling. So the usage of weeks and a wolfish appetite make hoosh a most delicious preparation; but when the days of an enforced ration are over, the desire for appetizing well-served food reasserts itself. The body refuses to be treated merely as an engine.
The daily polar sledging ration for one man has been concentrated to a figure just above two pounds in weight, For instance, in recent Antarctic expeditions, Scott, in 1903, used 34.7 ozs., Shackleton in 1908 used 34.82 ozs. and our own amounted to 34.25 ozs. Exclusive of tea, pepper and salt, Shackleton's ration and that adopted by Wild at the Western Base and ourselves in Adelie Land were identical—34 ozs. Reverting to earlier explorers, for the sake of comparisons, McClintock in 1850 brought his minimum down to 42 ozs., Nares in 1875 to 40 ozs., Greely in 1882 to 41.75 ozs., and Abruzzi in 1900 to 43.5 ozs.
Our allowance was made up as follows, the relative amounts in the daily sledging ration for one man being stated: plasmon biscuit, 12 ozs.; pemmican, 8 ozs.; butter, 2 ozs.; plasmon chocolate, 2 ozs.; glaxo (dried milk), 5 ozs.; sugar, 4 ozs.; cocoa, 1 oz.; tea,.25 oz. It will be instructive to make a short note on each item.
Plasmon biscuit was made of the best flour mixed with 30 per cent. of plasmon powder. Each biscuit weighed 2.25 ozs., and was made specially thick and hard to resist shaking and bumping in transit as well as the rough usage of a sledging journey. The effect of the high percentage of plasmon, apart from its nutritive value, was to impart additional toughness to the biscuit, which tested our teeth so severely that we should have preferred something less like a geological specimen and more like ordinary "hard tack," The favourite method of dealing with these biscuits was to smash them with an ice-axe or nibble them into small pieces and treat the fragments for a while to the solvent action of hot cocoa. Two important proteins were present in this food: plasmon, a trade-name for casein, the chief protein of milk, and gluten, a mixture of proteins in flour.
The pemmican we used consisted of powdered dried beef (containing the important protein, myosin) and 50 per cent. of pure fat in the form of lard. The large content of fat contributes to its high caloric value, so that it is regularly included in sledging diets. Hoosh is a stodgy, porridge-like mixture of pemmican, dried biscuit and water, brought to the boil and served hot. Some men prefer it cooler and more dilute, and to this end dig up snow from the floor of the tent with their spoons, and mix it in until the hoosh is "to taste," Eating hoosh is a heightened form of bliss which no sledger can ever forget.
Glaxo is a proprietary food preparation of dried milk, manufactured in New Zealand. It is without doubt an ideal food for any climate where concentration is desirable and asepsis cannot be neglected. The value of milk as an all-round food is well known. It contains protein as casein, fat as cream and in fine globules, carbohydrate as lactose (milk sugar) and mineral substances whose importance is becoming more recognized. At the Western Base, Wild's party invented glaxo biscuits; an unbaked mixture of flour and dried milk, which were in themselves a big inducement to go sledging. At the Hut, making milk from the dried powder required some little experience. Cold water was added to the dried powder, a paste was made and warm or hot water poured in until the milk was at the required strength. One of the professional "touches" was to aerate the milk, after mixing, by pouring it from jug to jug.
Butter, although it contains nearly 20 per cent. of water is a food of high heat-value and is certainly more easily digested than fat, such as dripping, with a higher melting-point. Ours was fresh Victorian butter, packed in the ordinary export boxes, and carried to the Antarctic on the open bridge of the Aurora. With a sheath-knife, the sledging cook cut off three small chunks of two ounces each from the frozen butter every day at lunch. To show how the appetite is affected by extreme cold, one feels that butter is a wholesome thing just in itself, being more inclined to eat a pound than two ounces.
Sugar—the carbohydrate, sucrose—has special qualities as a food since it is quickly assimilated, imparting within a few minutes fresh energy for muscular exertion. Athletes will support this; in fact, a strong solution of sugar in water is used as a stimulant in long-distance running and other feats of endurance. Wild, for instance, found as a matter of experience that chocolate was preferable to cheese as a sledging food, even though similar weights had approximately the same food-value.
Cocoa and tea were the two sledging beverages. The cocoa was used for two meals, the first and the last in the day, and the tea for lunch. Both contain stimulating alkaloids, theobromine and caffeine, and fat is a notable constituent of cocoa. Of course, their chief nourishing value, as far as we were concerned, lay in the glaxo and sugar added.
Lastly, plasmon chocolate is a preparation of pure chocolate (a mixture of ground cocoa, white sugar and starch) with the addition of 10 per cent. of plasmon.
As food for the dogs, there was nothing better than dried seal-steaks with the addition of a little blubber. Ordinary pemmican is readily eaten, but not appreciated by the dogs in the same way as seal meat. To save weight, the meat was dried over the stove without heating it sufficiently to cook it. By this measure, almost 50 per cent. in weight was saved.
The Hut was all agog with movement and bustle on the days when rations were being made up and packed. Starting from the earliest stage in the process, there would be two men in the outer Hut grinding plasmon biscuit into powder. One would turn away for dear life and the other smash the biscuit with a hammer on a metal slab and feed continuously into the grinder. The atmosphere would be full of the nauseous vapours of blubber arising from dishes on the stove where seal meat was drying for the dogs. Ninnis and Mertz superintended in this department, in careless moments allowing the blubber to frizzle and diffuse its aroma through the Hut.
Inside, spread along the eighteen-foot table would be the weighers, the bag-makers or machinists, and the packers. The first made up a compound of cocoa, glaxo and sugar—cocoa compound; mixed glaxo and sugar and stirred together, pemmican and biscuit—pemmican compound. These were weighed and run into calico bags, rapidly supplied by several machinists farther along the table. In spare moments the weighers stowed chocolate, whole biscuits, butter and tea into 190 sacks of various sizes. Lastly, the packers had strong canvas tanks, as they were called, designed to hold food for a week and a fortnight respectively. Into these the rations were carefully distributed, butter in the centre, whole biscuits near the top. Then the tanks were tightly closed, and one man operated with palm and sail-needle, sewing them up with twine. At the same time, a side-line was run in pemmican which was removed semi-frozen from the air-tight tins, and shaved into small pieces with a strong sheath-knife. Butter, too, arrived from the refrigerator-store and was subdivided into two-ounce or pound lumps.
Meanwhile, other occupations were in full swing. An amateur cobbler, his crampon on a last, studded its spiked surface with clouts, hammering away in complete disregard of the night-watchman's uneasy slumbers. The big sewing-machine raced at top-speed round the flounce of a tent, and in odd corners among the bunks were groups mending mitts, strengthening sleeping-bags and patching burberrys. The cartographer at his table beneath a shaded acetylene light drew maps and sketched, the magnetician was busy on calculations close by. The cook and messman often made their presence felt and heard. In the outer Hut, the lathe spun round, its whirr and click drowned in the noisy rasp of the grinder and the blast of the big blow-lamp. The last-named, Bickerton, "bus-driver" and air-tractor expert, had converted, with the aid of a few pieces of covering tin, into a forge. A piece of red-hot metal was lifted out and thrust into the vice; Hannam was striker and Bickerton holder. General conversation was conducted in shouts, Hannam's being easily predominant.
The sum total of sounds was sufficient for a while to make every one oblivious to the clamour of the restless wind.