Tasty homemade ‘energy balls’ could help French soldiers get the fuel they need
A soldier holds one of the snacks. (MOS Nutrition/)The French armed forces are renowned the world over for their sophisticated combat rations—their version of American MREs. Still, troops on operations, particularly special forces soldiers, will lose weight if they expend more energy than they get from the calories they ingest. So their militaries provide snacks in addition to their meal rations. But French soldiers apparently don’t much like these, so instead they buy candy bars. Now imagine the state of one of these bars after it has spent a few hours stuffed into a sweaty pocket or jammed into a backpack in intense hot or cold conditions: squashed, sticky, crushed into crumbs, melted, or—on the contrary—frozen solid.This was the problem that Mélanie Oullion-Simon, a 25-year old dietician and nutritionist with two years of medical studies under her belt, decided to solve. Her interest in feeding soldiers arose when she was...