- 59,422 breakfast sausage patties
- 98,220 eggs
- 21,082 packages sliced American cheese
- 2,451 containers frozen apple juice
- 13,500 packages julienned French fries
- 24,159 corn dogs
- 8,682 frozen burritos
To say the U.S. military buys in bulk is an understatement—the above shopping list is from a single prime vendor contract for facilities near Seattle, Washington, and Hermiston, Oregon, in 2002. The weekly grocery needs of the entire armed forces could pick clean whole regions of their number one agricultural products, leave bare-shelved commissaries across the country, and tie up battalions of baked‐goods manufacturers for months. It’s essentially one giant mouth munching the American landscape, and, despite commanding deep discounts on its purchases, with $3.8 billion in annual spending in 2011 alone, it is far and away the nation’s leading institutional grocery buyer. (In the private sector, the annual expenditures of behemoth food distributor Sysco and monster restaurateur McDonald’s exceed those of the Department of Defense.)
The military’s influence over food is like Texas’ over history books: They buy so much that they run the show