I Lived on an Italian Soldier's Field Ration for a Day

Napoleon is said to have been one of the first to understand the importance of proper nutrition for his men – the quote "an army marches on its stomach" has been attributed to him. The American physiologist Ancel Keys – the first theorist of the Mediterranean diet – agreed with Napoleon. In 1941, after several trials and tests, Keys created a first version of the modern field ration, the K-ration.

Keys was working for the United States Army Quartermaster Corps at the time, trying to develop a non-perishable, innovative single meal that would be ready for consumption, cheap and light to carry, while providing a sufficient daily calorie intake for soldiers. During World War II, the ration designed by Keys was tested by some of the US Army's elite units, and later became the standard meal in nearly every army in the world. Every national army develops its own version now, adapted to the local culture and culinary habits.

Field rations don't just help soldiers through the day, they're also a sort of Holy Grail for preppers, who flock to their forums to discuss which country has the best ration and try to figure out the diet the ration is based on. The general verdict: Italian field rations seem to be the most tasteful and the most sought-after, not in the least because they contain fundamental but generally unavailable goods, like disposable toothbrushes.

I decided to try an Italian field ration, to see if the preppers are right. After getting my hands on one, I invited my trusted friend Federico – who also stood by me when I prepared a futurist menu recently – and together we embarked on a new mission.

It has to be said that field rations – or MRE (Meal, Ready-to-eat) as their current US equivalent is called – aren't a soldiers' only meal: they're meant for consumption in emergencies, when no other food or organised food facilities are available.

To ensure at least a little variety, the Italian field rations are made up of seven modules – one for each day, each presenting a different menu. Each module is divided in three cardboard lunch boxes – one for breakfast, one for lunch and one for dinner. Inside the box you'll find plastic cutlery, paper napkins, paper bags for garbage, a tiny disposable stove, matches and several pads soaked in fuel – the fuel being unknown but allegedly lethal, according to the booklet: "Do not touch, do not inhale and avoid contact with tins," it writes.

We didn't have a tin, so we decided to use a pot to cook our meals. After opening the first of the three boxes, we moved to the terrace to start a fire and cook breakfast.

First, we filled the pot with tap water to prepare hot coffee and milk. For a realistic touch we decided to purify water beforehand. There's no such a thing as clean tap water on the battlefield.

When it was all ready, we sat down to enjoy our breakfast: I drank coffee and Federico sipped his milk. We also decided to share our chocolate bar, candies and biscuits. The coffee and the milk were terrible – the problem probably wasn't the quality of the ingredients though, but the fact that the disinfected water tasted like it came straight from a public swimming pool.

The sweets were perfectly normal fruity sweets so they were amazing. The chocolate bar looked a bit like it had just been recovered from an archaeological excavation site, but it tasted fine. The biscuit on the other hand – if you want to call it that – did taste like it had just been dug up.

Once we had finished out breakfast, we washed the cups and threw the rubbish in a bag. We wasted no time and opened the second part of the field ration.

Lunch: A can of tortellini with meat sauce, a can of hot dogs, two packs of crackers, a can of fruit salad, four vitamin tablets, three oat bran tablets, a pack of instant coffee, sugar, a plastic knife, a plastic fork, a plastic spoon, a paper towel.

Judging by the amount of food, lunch had to be the most important meal of the day. The tortellini can alone weighed 7 Oz, which I'd say is more than enough to satisfy an average person. An average person isn't staring death in the eye on the battlefield on a daily basis though, and I guess you'd burn through a lot of energy if you did.

According to the package insert, there are two ways to cook the pasta. The first is to simply pour all the content in the tin and place it on the fire. The other option is to place the can directly in a pot of water and heat it. To fully appreciate the quality and texture of our lunch, we opted for the first method.

The tortellini were edible, we thought. That changed when we opened the can of hot dogs though – suddenly, the tortellini seemed a lunch fit for the gods.

"This," I thought when I tried them, "this is what fighting on the front lines must taste like." Imagine spending your days constantly on the edge, having to make decisions the outcome of which could mean life or death – your life or death, that of your friends, of innocent civilians. Imagine having to creep on all fours through the dust and the dirt every day, not knowing if you'll see the next day. And now imagine having to do all that with the aftertaste of pickled mini sausages and clotted fat lingering in your mouth. That must be the würst.

We tried to mask the aftertaste of the sausages with the crackers that came on the side, but they came in the same packaging as the biscuits and tasted similarly of cardboard. However, if you're trying to get rid of the taste of death in your mouth, cardboard works wonders. Once that was done, though, we met our biggest hurdle.

There are no words to describe the smell coming from this rather innocent looking can of fruit in syrup. If I tried, though, I'd say it was closest to 'yesterday's sick from a wine gum overdose'. I didn't try it, sorry.

To compensate for the vitamins we missed by not consuming the fruit salad, we swallowed the multivitamin tablets – those big, fizzy ones that dissolve in your mouth. Instead of the usual orangey aftertaste, these came with a soapy one, which weirdly kind of made them taste healthier.

The dinner menu comprised of a can of pasta and bean soup, a tin of mackerel fillets, two fruit bars and some more cardboard crackers. Personally, I cherished high hopes for the soup, because I absolutely love pasta and bean soup. But then this happened:

The mackerel was fine, though. Our ration came from March 2014, so it was likely that this particular mackerel had been swimming the seas of paradise for the last two years, yet it did not taste like Ötzi the mummy. So, no complaints there.

After dinner we sipped another coffee, using both the second and third pack of dried coffee. This time we opted out of trying to purify the water but the result still didn't taste like coffee. Oh well.

The last two things left in the MRE were the bran tablets – which we took with water – and, thank fuck, a toothbrush and some toothpaste. Brushing my teeth, the strong mint freeing my mouth from that disgusting mix of aftertastes, was a glorious moment. Suddenly, the importance of dental hygiene was crystal clear to me. Dental hygiene was suddenly one of my favourite things.

And with that, our mission was accomplished.

I was born in 1990, so I was never drafted for military service: a 2005 resolution revoked the compulsory military service for Italian men born after 1984. Of course, that didn't stop me from spending a huge part of my childhood fearing that I'd receive a draft card.

But sometimes I find myself wondering if it might not have done me good if had been drafted. I could have gotten some discipline. I might have developed the ability to wake up in the morning without having to set five different alarms. Maybe I would have grown up a little faster. But having had an Italian soldier's field ration, I know one thing: Had I been in the army, I would have either died of starvation or learned not to be such a pussy about food anymore.