Vegetarians are carried over from Finnish military training

The Finnish Border Guard trains border hunters and frontier hunters. Perhaps many can imagine that it is a difficult education that is not for everyone, but perhaps it is for less people than many think.

In principle, all special diets are prohibited in training, reports Yell. In other words, vegans, vegetarians, lactose intolerants, and those intolerant of gluten can forget about becoming a borderline hunter.

Vil Juvonen, head of the Border Hunters Company of the North Karelian Border Guard, tells Elle that the reason is to train the troops for tasks that require emergency conditions.

– Wartime duties are very tough and feeding is very difficult to do. With this decision, we want to make sure that everyone gets enough nutritious food even in exceptional circumstances. If the diet has to be restricted, Juvonen says, it becomes more complicated.

Field rations and food from nature

Critical hunter-soldiers ate mainly field rations of freeze-dried food mixed with hot water, but they were also trained to find food in the wild. Yle writes that soldiers learn to fish and prepare food from reindeer. Edible plants do exist, but they are not enough according to Juvonen.

– It is admitted that people have eaten stale bread in exceptional times. But in difficult tasks, a person’s energy consumption can be more than 6,000 calories. You don’t cover that up with crusty bread. In order to get enough calories, high-quality nutrition is required, says Vile Juvonen.

– If you think that in wartime missions you cannot take into account various factors, then from my point of view it is a waste of training time if you know that the people involved cannot be given difficult tasks.

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