There must be spreadsheets somewhere with all of the ingredients broken down, costs, quantities, and probably cubic volume occupied (since freezer space and food storage space is somewhat at a premium).
There must be spreadsheets somewhere with all of the ingredients broken down, costs, quantities, and probably cubic volume occupied (since freezer space and food storage space is somewhat at a premium).
A lot of the docs on large naval ships cover this - modern marvels has a good episode on it too.
Morale is a huge issue on boomers and subs, which patrol for months at a stretch, generally submerged the entire time (the whole idea being for your adversary to not know where you are). Crap food on top of the isolation and lack of outdoor exposure fares poorly (so to speak).
Fresh produce is limited to the first week or so of cruise AFAIU, but preserved/frozen and dry goods are available for the duration. I don't know if there's any fresh-grow possible, though there've been experiments.
(General information, no direct experience.)
Some sources:
"Everything you wanted to know about food on a US submarine" https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a147643...
"Sub Grub Is Navy’s Five-Star Secret" (2003) https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-jan-18-fi-subma...
"US navy researchers conduct tests to grow vegetables on submarines" (2016) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/06/vegetable-ga...
For submarine crew, the balance between "eating home food" vs. "nutritional sufficiency" may swing the balance, though I'd argue that something (sprouts) is better than nothing (frozen / canned vegetables).
Crops which could be grown in conditions in which power is abundant (nukes!) as is water, and atmosphere could be controlled (high CO2 via redirected scrubbers), but space is highly constrained, becomes an interesting question. Probably not trellis or tree crops, though lettuce/greens, carrots, possibly cruciferous vegetables and onions, possibly.
How much use of fermented vegetables is made would be another interesting question.
I can't tell if "reading materials" is a euphemism for pornography or not but I'm guessing probably.
That's an interesting article though, I never thought about it before.
Apparently this isn't restricted to the modern era either, I've read that the german u-boat fleets of the world wars had the best food in their military too.
German uboat staff were treated like heroes in Germany, but that was partly their success in nearly amputating Britain from her colonies, and partly from boosterism by Admiral Karl Donitz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_D%C3%B6nitz
IIRC, he said he'd win against Britain with 300 subs, but initially only got about 100.