Fruitcake History and Dairy

The holiday season is here and along with it come reminders of everyone's most hated holiday food, fruitcake. So this morning I asked, "Why is this thing a tradition, where did it come from?"

Fruitcake was the original energy bar.  Ancient Romans concocted something called satura to sustain their troops in battle, which consisted mostly of pomegranate seeds, pine nuts, raisins, barley mash, and honeyed wine.  Sounds good, actually.  And sounds like something that will last and provide energy.  Over time varying versions of this came to be what we call fruitcake today.  I daresay the Roman version didn't include the gross candied fruits and gelatin stuff.

The U.S. Military went a different route.  Rather than following the successful example provided by a legendary military power, we went with canned milk.  Yes, instead of ingredients easily provided by nature and proven to go the distance with soldiers we went with the pregnancy lactations of a bovine that cause digestive problems for the 68% of humans who are lactose intolerant (that means you aren't supposed to consume it).  But that's just the start.  When the Army Core of Engineers went about expanding existing dairies this meant the damning of rivers, the choking off of wetlands, mowing down of native plants, the eradication of native animals (in particular predators) and the production of incredible amounts of waste pollution.  But hey, at least this industry also relies on stealing babies from mothers right after birth in order to harvest their milk for ourselves.

Why go with seeds, fruit, and and barley when you can destroy nature, cause digestive problems, hurt animals, and end up with an industry that costs us billions in bailout subsidies every year only to then dump a massive percentage of that same product down the drain?

We modern people are so advanced! Only ancient fools did things that made sense.

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