---
title: 'Why Did the Chocolate Bar Ration of WW2 Taste Terrible?'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZVrT8mrll-0'
video_id: 'ZVrT8mrll-0'
date: 2026-07-10
duration_sec: 1392
---

# Why Did the Chocolate Bar Ration of WW2 Taste Terrible?

> Source: [Why Did the Chocolate Bar Ration of WW2 Taste Terrible?](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZVrT8mrll-0)

## Summary

This video explores the infamous US Army Field Ration D, a chocolate bar designed to taste bad so soldiers would only eat it in emergencies. The host recreates the original recipe from 1937, discusses its development by Captain Logan and Hershey chemist Samuel Hinkle, and shares historical accounts of soldiers' experiences with the bar during World War II.

### Key Points

- **The D-Bar Legend** [00:00] — A chocolate bar given to US soldiers as an emergency ration, claimed to be purposefully designed to taste terrible.
- **Origin: The Logan Bar** [00:41] — Originally called the Logan Bar, named after Captain Logan who spearheaded its creation, inspired by a 1932 cavalry ration that failed due to high thirst-inducing fat and salt.
- **Hershey's Involvement** [01:30] — Captain Logan enlisted Samuel F. Hinkle, chief chemist at Hershey, to develop a portable, calorie-dense, non-melting bar that tasted 'just a little bit better than a boiled potato.'
- **Original Recipe** [02:21] — Ingredients: 160g unsweetened chocolate, 160g sugar, 70g powdered non-fat milk, 30g cocoa butter, 20g oat flour (key for non-melting), 0.5g vanillin, and 1.8g thiamin hydrochloride (vitamin B1).
- **Molding Process** [05:01] — The mixture is a paste, not pourable; early bars were hand-packed into molds. Cooling takes about 8 hours at room temperature, but refrigeration speeds it up.
- **Field Trials and Adoption** [08:34] — Tested in extreme climates (Philippines, Panama, Hawaii, Texas, Antarctica). It didn't melt, prevented starvation, and was adopted as the primary emergency ration on November 9, 1938.
- **Packaging Evolution** [09:51] — Initially wrapped in aluminum foil, but switched to waterproof cellophane due to aluminum scarcity and fear of gas contamination. Stored in waxed cardboard boxes with instructions.
- **Soldier Experiences** [10:35] — Soldiers found the bar extremely hard, especially in cold weather. Some shaved it into boiling water to make hot chocolate, which was well-received.
- **Mass Production** [11:23] — By war's end, Hershey produced 24 million bars per week. Other companies made variations, including a tropical version without oat flour (tastier but prone to blooming).
- **Survival Stories** [14:02] — During the Battle of the Bulge, soldiers survived on D-rations. In a famous story, Louis Zamperini's crew had six bars that were eaten by one man, leading to 47 days at sea.
- **POW Camp Use** [16:10] — Red Cross parcels in German POW camps included D-rations. Prisoners made desserts by mixing crumbled chocolate with powdered milk.
- **Taste Test** [17:48] — The host finds the bar not as bad as expected—grainy but edible. He notes that aging might make it harder. The hot chocolate version is surprisingly good.

### Conclusion

The D-ration's taste depends on context: mediocre when other food is available, but lifesaving and even delicious when starving. It fulfilled its purpose as an emergency ration.

## Transcript

A chocolate bar that was given to US soldiers as an emergency ration. A chocolate bar that many claim was purposefully designed to taste terrible.
But just exactly how terrible did this chocolate bar taste? Well, I am going to find out for myself by recreating the US Army Field Ration D using the original formula. So thank you to Bombas for sponsoring this video as  I make the D-Bar,
this time on Tasting History. Ever since I made my first World War II video here  on the channel almost 4 years ago, I have wanted to try
the D-ration. It is the stuff of legend. But before it was actually known as the D-ration, it was called the Logan Bar. And it was named after the man who spearheaded its creation,   He had been inspired by a previous ration from 1932 meant for the cavalry
that was a 12 ounce chocolate bar made of just pretty much chocolate, sugar, and peanut butter. Absolutely delicious, but a complete failure as an emergency ration. First, the high fat and salt content made it so that whoever ate it became incredibly thirsty,
So with this failure in mind, Captain Logan, while working for the Army's Subsistence School in Chicago, began to develop a new chocolate ration that would be portable, packed with calories, have a long shelf life, and wouldn't melt in the soldiers pockets. 
Eventually, he turned to the chief chemist at the Hershey Company to help. His name was Samuel F. Hinkle, and he was the genius behind Hershey's Syrup and the Mr. Goodbar. And according to the Hershey archive, at that very first meeting, Logan laid out all the specifications that he needed for this bar.
And he threw one more thing in. Since it was supposed to be an emergency ration, he didn't want the soldiers eating it unless it was  an actual emergency. And so he said that it should taste And so following those marching orders, Samuel Hinkle developed this recipe which included chocolate, plain,
sucrose (sugar), milk, dry, powdered, skimmed, extra added cocoa fat, raw oat flour, vanillin which is the vanilla flavor, and later on they added thiamin hydrochloride which is vitamin B1.
So since this recipe gives very specific quantities I'm going to give it all in grams so you can weigh it out. So this will make four 4 oz bars. What you'll need is 160 grams of unsweetened chocolate,
160 grams of sugar, 70 grams of powdered non-fat milk,   30 grams cacao fat, also known as cocoa butter.  You want to make sure to get food grade   Then 20 grams of oat flour. This is the key ingredient that makes it so this bar will not melt.
A half gram of vanilllin. This is vanilllin powder. This is the kind of stuff that probably would have been used. It's kind of expensive, kind of hard to find. So you can just use some vanilla if you want. And then about 1.8 grams or one capsule of thamin hydrochloride. Honestly, you do not need to add that. It's not going to really affect the flavor at all.
And it was only added a little bit later on to prevent people from getting Beriberi, which is a tropical condition that leads to a bunch of things including hurt feet.
It makes your feet hurt when you walk. What does not make your feet hurt when you walk, in fact makes them quite comfortable, are the socks and sandals that I got from today's sponsor, Bombas. So I have gushed over the wonderful socks that I wear from Bombas. But today,
I am gushing over the wonderful sandals that I get from them. Perfect for summer are the Friday sandals. They're light and cushy without being too soft, and they  support my feet, so I can stand for hours at a time in this kitchen as I film.
They also have great traction on the bottom. So, I can wear them outside as I spend the entire summer doing everything I possibly can to stay out of the sun.   But Bombas doesn't just focus on feet because they  also have underwear. They also have t-shirts. And  
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then do so with Bombas. And right now, new customers can get 20% off of their first purchase when they use my link in the description, bombas.com/tastinghistory,   and use my code TASTINGHISTORY20 at checkout.  That is bombas.com/tastinghistory.
And now, let's get back to that D-Bar, which I kind of think sounds like a childish insult, you D-bar. So once you have all of your ingredients ready,  you're going to need to get a mold.
I got this one off of eBay. As you can see, it's already been used by me. I got this off of eBay, but I've seen others online. This one is for the 4 oz bar, which was the original standard.
It's cut into six pieces. Later on, they also made a 2 and then 1 oz bar, but the 4 oz bar was the standard.   Then for melting all of the chocolate and ingredients,  you're going to want to use a double boiler or if you don't have that,
a heat proof bowl over some boiling water because if you just put it right onto the stove, So add the chocolate and the cacao fat to the upper pot of the double boiler and then bring the bottom pot to a rolling boil and set the top pot on.
Then you can add the sugar and stir it in to let it melt. You want to get this as smooth as possible because from here on out, nothing we add is going to help this texture at all.
Next up is the powdered milk. I guess the idea here is to kind of make milk chocolate, but the fact that it is powdered and we're not   rehydrating it makes it so it is not going to become fully rehydrated.
And so really, you're lucky if it's going to even mix with the other ingredients. This is when the mixture goes from smooth to kind of grainy. And it is only going  to get worse when we add the next ingredient,   the oat flour. Of all the ingredients, this is probably the one that has the most unpleasant effect on both flavor and texture.
But at least according to one marine in the South Pacific, it wasn't that bad. But they were all right. They were good." And I think that rather tepid response is exactly what Captain Logan was going for. Good enough to eat, but only good enough to eat.
Now after the oat flour, the only other things we're adding are the vanillin and the thiamin hydrochloride. Also, I've never used this crystallized vanillin, sometimes called vanillin.
Either one is correct. I'm not sure exactly how much regular vanilla to use in comparison with this, but I'm thinking maybe a  teaspoon. I don't know.  ̄\_(ツ)_/ ̄
Once everything is added, keep stirring for about 2 minutes just to  make sure everything is well incorporated.   And this is when I wish I had bought four of these molds because doing them one at a time is going to take a very, very long time.
The thing is, when the Hershey company started making these, they were a little taken aback as well because they were used to pouring chocolate into molds. But this is not really pourable. It's more of a paste. And so
when the first major order of 90,000 bars came in 1937, they had to pack every single mold by hand. And so that's what I'm doing. So take a spatula and fill up the mold and level it off.
And FYI, it takes about 8 hours for the chocolate to cool into a hardened mass. So we're going to be here all day if we don't put it into the fridge. So, I ended up putting it in the fridge
make sure you are subscribed to Tasting History and hit the notification bell because then you will get notifications as I release the rest of this series because this is actually the first video in a series on the rations of World War II.
Not civilian, I have done those, but military rations and not just of the US. I'm going to do Britain, and Germany, and the USSR, and Japan, maybe Australia. Whoever I can find I'm going to do a video on their rations, but we're going to start with the D-ration
and we will hopefully answer the question of exactly why this bar was so notorious.
After months of development and weeks of production, Captain Logan's new Logan bar was ready for distribution. And in 1937 and 38, it was sent out to some of the more extreme climates of the world
to US soldiers in the Philippines and Panama, Hawaii, and even on the Texas border. Eventually, some boxes even accompanied Admiral Richard E. Byrd on his third expedition to Antarctica. And the trials were an absolute success. The Logan bar did not melt. They kept people from starving
during starvation exercises. And while nobody was complaining, the taste was not good enough that anyone felt the need to eat it before they were supposed to. And with this success, on November 9th, 1938, the US Army adopted the Logan Bar as the primary emergency ration.
And a year later, it was designated as the US Army Field Ration D. "Chocolate goes to war in 'D' ration... 'D' ration consists of three four ounce bars of concentrated chocolate. Its primary purpose is to give sustenance to the armed forces in times of extreme duress, stress,
and when out of touch with bases of supply for short periods of time. It is also planned to give troops extra energy when engaged in continuous combat and regular eating time is not permitted."
At first, the bars were wrapped in aluminum foil, but very quickly after the war started, aluminum became scarce. There was also worry that just like in World War I, the different combatants would begin using mustard gas and chlorine gas.
And so to protect the ration from contamination, they switched to a waterproof cellophane wrapper. Then the chocolate was stored in waxed cardboard boxes on which was printed the ingredients, the calories, 600 per bar, and the instructions on how they should be consumed  
Though to hear one soldier tell of it, you would be lucky to be able to eat this in a half an hour. and I don't know how you could melt it. But we were cold out there, winter cold.
And you had a D-bar, it was hard as a [rock]. And you try to chew something, you can't.   You can put it in your mouth and jaw on it a little  bit and get a little bit of flavor, but that's about it. Another seemingly more appetizing way of ingesting the stuff was also printed on the box 
saying "Can be dissolved by crumbling into a cup of boiling water if desired as a beverage." And that's how William Abel consumed it when he was in the European theater. "In our rations... one of the bars of candy was hard chocolate, and what we would do,  
we would take our knife and shave it off into a  canteen cup, put water in it, and it made the best hot chocolate you ever tasted. So we had that just about every day." Now, by the time the US actually entered the war, the Hershey Company had figured out a way to automate molding these chocolates  
And by the end of the war, they were making 24 million per week. Other chocolate companies came in and produced the same bar with slight variations to the recipe.
One variation was in its size because while it began as a 4 ounce bar, 2 ounce bars were also made These were collections of preserved foods meant for emergencies. Things like canned processed meat,
raisins, peanut butter, pemmican, chewing gum, bullion powder, and cigarettes along with some candy. Either hard candy or the 2 ounce D-ration. As the war went on, they continued to make adjustments to the original D-ration. Like if you were in the Pacific theater,  
then you might get the tropical version, which did  not include oat flour and was said to be quite a bit tastier than the standard D-ration. The issue with these was that they were more subject to blooming. That's that kind of white stuff that
gets on the outside of Easter candy from last year and the soldiers would think that it was mold and so they kept throwing it out. So they would have to put onto the package "Storage conditions may cause the surface of the bar to whiten. 
These tastier bars remained relatively rare until very close to the end of the war. So for most soldiers, they had to rely on the D-bar to sate their sweet tooth,
"You never got enough sugar. They gave you something called a D-Bar... you were supposed to save that for when you ran out of food.  It was chocolate... but it was a special kind of chocolate, that they neutered, so that it wasn't sweet.
One soldier named Robert W. Miller hated these bars so much that even after the war,   "You had a Class A ration, Class B, Class C, which was emergency ration.
Then Class D was emergency emergency emergency ration, which was a chocolate bar made out of tropical chocolate. You couldn't melt it. In order to eat it, you had to whittle it, you know, like that... God, it was awful... It was like a rock...
And I lived off that for a while, you know... I come back, I couldn't eat, I couldn't eat chocolate." But while many complained about the D-ration, others loved it because it kept them alive.
And that was the whole point of the D-ration, to give you something to eat Like one soldier said that during the Battle of the Bulge, they were pinned down for three days and survived off
just a little bit of cheese and an emergency chocolate bar. One of the most famous survival stories of the war, one that was actually turned into a movie features the D-ration, but it never got to live up to its full potential.
See, in May 1943, Lewis Zamperini's bomber experienced mechanical issues and crashed into the ocean Only 3 of the 11 crew survived the crash, but they were able to climb aboard two inflatable rafts.
"As for provisions, between the two rafts, we had six bars of chocolate and eight half-pint tins of water. Designed as survival food, the chocolate bars were big, divided into six sections..."
He kind of took charge and portioned out the chocolate so that each of them would get a little bit each day and  it would last for an entire week. That night, they all go to sleep and they wake up the next morning  excited to have a breakfast of this chocolate,  
but it's gone. All of it is gone. And that is because one of the three men, McNamera, ate all six bars during the night.
but that's because they expected to be rescued in  just a few days. Unfortunately, that is not what happened. It took 47 days.
47 days of living off of rainwater and eating two albatrosses that they caught and some fish that they caught using one of the albatrosses as bait. 47 days of typhoons, constant shark attacks,
almost dying from starvation, and even being strafed by a Japanese fighter. On day 33, McNamera, who had eaten all of the chocolate, actually died. And it was only on day 47 that the other two landed in the Marshall Islands
only to be immediately captured by the Japanese. They were then sent to a POW camp which was almost as bad as being on the raft. And speaking of POW camps, that's actually another place where people could get the D-ration.
Mostly it was in Europe, in the German POW camps. And while in one of those camps, Francis Flynn recalled that "...in the prison camp, we got the equivalent of a small bowl of cabbage soup or potato soup once a day.
But we used to get Red Cross parcels that were brought in once a month... There was a chocolate bar, powdered milk, crackers, cigarettes... We would take the chocolate bar, cut that up, and put that in with the powdered milk,
and then take some of the powdered milk that we had left and we'd make a little whipped cream out of it, and we'd put that over the top and it was delicious."   Another prisoner recalled escaping during a forced  march from one of the German POW camps with another prisoner
and the only food that they had with them was one of these D-bars. And so after a few days of starving, one of them sees some snails in like a gutter and decides we have to eat, so let's eat these snails.
So they did, but they were so grossed out they could not keep them down. So they said, "Let's just take a little bit of the chocolate and then pop that thing.
So I suppose the answer to just how bad the D-ration really was kind of depends on the situation that you're eating it in.   If you got access to other food, then yeah, it's probably not great.
But if you're starving and there's nothing else to eat, then it is probably the best thing that you can possibly imagine.   And that's the whole point of it, to only eat when  you are starving.
Unfortunately, I just had lunch about 2 hours ago, so I'm not starving. So, I'm not sure what I'm going to think of this World War II D-ration. So once the chocolate bar is firmed up, you can unmold it and it is ready to eat.  
And here we are, the D-ration of World War II. So I don't really know the best way to eat this at least to start. I'm going to try to break it off, you know, it is perforated kind of, or-  
Okay. Okay. So, that's not- it is hard, but it's not as hard as I was worried it would be. So it's very- you can see it's already very grainy on the inside. Let's give it a taste.
[CHOMP] Hm. It's not as bad as I thought it would be. I  would want it to be a little sweeter, yes,  
but it's not super bitter. There's  a good amount of sugar in there.   love sandy, but not like-
not horribly so. It's just like there's something off about it. The thing is, I just made these   and I bet that if I let it sit there for months,
it might get harder um and more unpalatable. So, maybe I'll keep one for half a year or so and then try it again. But it's not- not terrible. And this is this is what they were  supposed to have used.
Now, maybe like I said, there were different companies making these and they made them to different specifications.  If you look at actual pictures from the time, you can tell that they are not all the same.
And some of them are almost like- they're so dark brown, they're almost black, which means there's probably very little if any sugar in there. And so those are going to be really bitter, almost like eating just, you know, pure cocoa powder, which is terrible.
but what I want to do is I want to break some of this up and try to make some hot chocolate. So, I'll use a knife to just kind of crack some of this up and put it into a cup  and pour some boiling water over it. And voila.  
This is not a period appropriate R2-D2 mug,  but it'll have to do. Let's give it a shot. It's actually really good. More water  to chocolate. I I used too much water,  
would actually be really good because you  lose the texture of the the graininess. It just tastes like- like hot chocolate. I  don't know. You know, the thing is-
if you look through the quotes from the time of people talking about it,   they're not all bad. Some people are like,  yeah, it was chocolate, it was fine. And what's what's interesting is my grandpa had  some of these and he told me stories growing up about
at the end of the war he was going through Germany, I want to say into Frankfurt, and   he would hand out these chocolates because he didn't smoke. So they would all get cigarettes in their packs and everything  
and he would trade them away for chocolate, not for himself,   but so he could give them to the little kids, the little German kids and I think Belgian kids at one point. And he said they absolutely loved it because again it's all about your situation.
Is it as good as Belgian chocolate or German chocolate today? Heck no. But when you're starving, when your entire country has been decimated and you're lucky to get a potato,
then some mediocre chocolate is going to taste mighty fine. Yeah, I used to love those stories that he told me. He would call them little frauleins, but in his accent, little frauleins.
Anyway, yeah, that's the D bar, the D-ration. I've wanted to make it for a long time.   I am going to be doing more rations, whether  I'm actually making the rations or cooking with   the rations or making something that is ration adjacent, the history that I'm going to be talking about
is about the rations and about just the cooking and what the different soldiers, and the different militaries were eating because they were very different. And so over the next year, two years, the last one took me like two years to do and I'm still not even done with the homefront series.
So stick with me for the next couple years as I make my way through these videos and I will see you next time on Tasting History.