> can't find the page I remember reading - .  It's interesting that
> pemmican has been tried so many times, but it doesn't look like it's
> been used recently?

Correct.

> I guess now we have the food pyramid there's no chance it will be
> adopted again.  

They could make pemmican the standard ration for elite Special Forces, but
it would be too expensive and limited in supply to make it the overall
standard military ration. It was too limited in supply and too difficult to
mass-produce to be the standard ration even during WWI.

> Which is a shame, if only because there's a *lot* of
> people in armies across the world, and from what I've heard, they are
> not fed much better than school kids or prisoners.
> 
> Ashley

Institutional food has similarities across all institutions, because it
generally has to be able to be mass-produced, be easy to cook quickly and
have a long shelf life. It would be very difficult and expensive to feed
hundreds of thousands and millions of people Paleo foods. Which is why the
only long-term possibility that would give armies and humankind in general
the OPTION to eat Paleo would be if armies and general populations were much
smaller than they are now. Hunter-gatherer armies (more like small bands of
warriors) were much smaller than the armies of agrarian peoples.

For example, the military units (light cavalry) of the Plains Indians, such
as the famous warriors of the Lakota Oyate, numbered in the dozens to
hundreds (although over 1,000 warriors supposedly were gathered at the
Little Bighorn, an unusually large number for Plains Indian warriors--and
yet still infinitesimal compared to the army of the agrarian Persian empire
centuries earlier that reportedly numbered well over a million men) and ate
pemmican, fresh meat and organs, berries, water, etc., whereas U.S. cavalry
units (regiments) numbered in the thousands (3-5,000) and standard troopers'
rations were hardtack (hard, dry biscuits resembling hockey pucks), bacon,
coffee and sugar ("The West Breaks in General Custer,"
http://www.kshs.org/publicat/khq/1970/70_2_millbrook.htm). Officers also got
canned hams and other foods that gave them a somewhat better diet. Standard
cavalry trooper rations were so low in nutrients that scurvy was a chronic
problem among Custer's men, and the rations were so unappealing and
unhealthy that Custer named them as the primary cause of the high desertion
rate in the 7th Cavalry. These rations were also very low in vitamin A,
carotene and other nutrients important to vision.

If my memory serves me correctly, I read an account years ago from the US
Cavalry's perspective of a skirmish between 7th Cavalry troopers and Plains
Indians some time before the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The Indians
appeared on the horizon, amassing for the charge, so the U.S. cavalry
dismounted and formed a skirmish line, a standard U.S. cavalry tactic to
enable better aim. The Indians rode directly through the skirmish line,
killing and wounding numerous troopers with mostly primitive weapons and
throwing the bluecoats into panicked chaos. Despite being dismounted and
having firearms, the U.S. troopers were unable to hit a single Indian--by
their own account! I found this story to be hard to believe at the time (and
I read similar battle accounts from a pro-Nez Perce Indian perspective). But
now that I know about the Paleo foods and how deficient the diet of U.S.
soldiers was, I can believe it. Since there probably weren't many opticians
in Indian country, my guess is that many of the US Cavalry troopers were in
need of spectacles. Indians also tended to charge with the sun at their
backs (as did other traditional peoples, like the Zulu warriors), which
would further hinder the bluecoats' ability to see them.