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The Future of MREs
jonerik writes: "MSNBC features this article today about scientists at Washington State University who are attempting to perfect a way to add two staples of American cuisine - eggs and macaroni & cheese - to the US military's MRE ration packs. The problem has been that MREs need to have a shelf life of three years. The scientists have focused on microwaving the rations during the packaging process instead of the traditional method of boiling the contents (which alters the smell and color of eggs and cheese and makes pasta soggy)."
MREs
They look nice. I'll have a #3 please.
Nothing like sitting down to a hot bowl of eggs and macaroni & cheese.
That's a meal that will keep our soldiers sane. The three great tastes that go great together!
Well, at least they're doing it halfway through my military career instead of right at the end...
Karma: Good. I'm hoping in the same way as pizza is 'good'...
That's always been the problem with the battle field, no good comfort food like macaroni and cheese.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
Is there a particular reason theyre spending money (a great deal, I assume) on paying scientist to figure out how to add eggs and mac'n'cheese to rations, other than "A lot of people eat it". Seems like a waste of money to me.
Used to be a disclaimer on each box that they have been stored in temperature and humidity controlled conditions and date of pack should not be considered when determining usage. FWIW, I doubt it matters toooo much, since I've had several that were well over 5 years old, and I got no sicker off those than brand spanking new ones. :)
Some of them you can work with, and some are just plain nasty, much like anything else I suppose.
Our company works with the military quite a bit, and I've had an occasion to try an MRE. They're actually kind of cool. They come with their own (chemical) heat source and re-heat the foods pretty rapidly-- It uses technology similiar to those little handwarmers I use to have when I was a paperboy. As I recall, you'd boil em to "reset" em.. (I think the MRE heatsources are one-use)
In any case-- it's okay-- better than freeze dried anything-- but I still wouldn't like one of them falling on my head from the skies above-- it's not *that* delicious.
Didn't these scientists ever go to college?
You open the eggs, macaroni and cheese. A capsule inside explodes, instantly cooking the meal to perfection.
Mmmmm... incinerated gruel.
-Jeepthang
-------------------------------
High-Res Beer Bottle Collection
I worked one summer as a prep cook at a camp. If I had known what a shitty job it would be, I would have gotten a job as a circus freak instead.
Anyhow, we had this scrambled egg shit that came in a plastic bag. Just pop it from the freezer to the oven, bake it, and instant, semi-funky tasting scrambled eggs. It relied on freezing and baking, so it would unsuitable as an MRE, though the taste was right.
I also had powdered scrambled eggs on a month-long fishing expedition (just add water). I'd susepct they could be used.
Look at menus 10, 11 14 and especially 13.
How come Cheese Tortellini doesn't suffer from the same problems as Mac&Cheese as described in the article (pasta goes mushy, cheese tastes burnt) ?
You'd think sitting on a shelf for 3 years would take care of any such worries.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Macaroni and cheese?
What next?
Peanut butter and jelly?
I can see it now.
"Hey, soldier. Get up at the crack of dawn, lug around a hundred pound pack through all kinds of terrain, in all kinds of weather.
Maybe get shot at. Maybe have to shoot back.
Maybe get your sorry butt killed.
But if you manage to make it back to camp, you can have three year old mac and cheese."
Bet the recruiting lines are a mile long.
Last time I checked, Microwaved eggs tasted nasty thankyouverymuch. Blech.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
...is that there's actually a vegetarian MRE.
:-)
You don't win wars with sal-ad! You don't win wars with sal-ad! You don't win wars with sal-ad!
~Philly
Actually, if anything, the military is becoming less and less part of American popular culture. A smaller percentage of 'middle America' serves these days.. and we haven't exactly had a draft in quite a while.
MRE's: Meals ready to eat.
When I was in JROTC we usted to call them MRE's: Meals rejected by Ethiopians...
MRE's a great for camping in bear country. The bears are smart. They learn to knock down bear bags. They'll suck your maple syrup dry, eat your oreos, tear the tent apart, even break the latrine down if you try to put food in it. But they can't smell the MREs and don't touch them. Good thing too, we had a diabetic with us.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
Anyone ever wonder why the military, with its tomes of regulations and procedures succumed to the "Rock or something" on an MRE?
... so on the instructions there is a picture of a rock with an MRE leaning on it, and the caption for the rock is "Rock or something"
The little heater thingies (mmm, smell like acid), need to lean at an angle to work good
I may sound like a complete moron, but man, in the middle of the desert with no sleep, some dude brings up "Rock or something" and I keel over in laughter.
Most of the MRE's I've had when out backbacking and such have been fine (gotta use the tobasco every time). While adding Macaroni & Cheese sounds good, does anyone really want to eat nuked scrambled eggs that are a couple years old?
Ever eat eggs that have been in the fridge too long?
Just give me the chicken loaded with enough preservatives and chemicals to kill my colon & petrify my inestines, thanks.
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety
We may critisize the yanks for the americanisation of our world especially for spreading their crap tv, fast food and pop music to all 'corners of the globe', but i'm just SO glad they haven't contaminated Australia with that.... yet.
How long do we have to wait for hot grits?
1) When they ate Rations on the last Enterprise I thought "Gee that seems impraticle." But after reading about the MRE's, it seems like its entirely possible.
2) These menus seem far more varied than that of the meals I remember eating in my college dorm. So maybe that's why people liked being in ROTC... (j/k)
I was in the Marines from 1995 - 2000. When I was in boot camp and MCT, I remember an "Ommlette" meal.
You used to have to save your tabasco up for the ommlette. Any less than four bottles and it was in-eatable....
my brother used to bring a sampling home with him after a few weeks of training or what not while in the army. A little sampling of what he had to sustain himself on when in the field for weeks @ a time. Good stuff.
There's still one that sticks out in my memory, Chicken and Rice. Man, that chicken and rice was tasty. Basically came in a nice vacuum sealed heavy-duty plastic baggie. You cut off a corner and squeezed it like toothpaste to eat. (Or, if you had a mini-set of folding pans, you could heat it up in a little aluminum cup and chow down)
But the dehydrated fruit, a little 2.5x2.5x.25 inch square of styrofoam looking fruit was n-a-s-t-y. So was the grape drink mix that came with some of the MRE's..The orange powder however, mmm, now that was nice, almost like Tang.
LBCs - Lazy Boy in a Can, for the soldier out on the battlefield that needs to relax for a while. Can be used with the ...
SBCCs - Superbowl Commericals in a Can, for the soldier caught out in battle and unable to tune into the superbowl. After all, who cares who wins or loses, the commercials are what count!
BJCs - Blowjob in a can. This was created by the sex toy industry, and was licensed by Uncle Sam for the "protection" of our boys overseas. (Has been tested under battlefield conditions.)
OBLCs - Osama Bin Laden in a Can, developed by army engineers with help from the "Dolly" project, this secret device will be used if we are unable to locate the real Osama Bin Laden. Everyday soldiers can have fun with their Osama in a Can by making him do silly stunts, and recording the insane hijinks on....
CCC - CamCorder in a Can. Send in your funny battlefield tapes to America's funniest Battlefield videos, and win an MRE!
I just had waaay too much fun with this ;)
-- Dan
Despite the myth that MRE's taste like crap, I tried some and found it to be pretty tasty!
:)
I had a roommate in the Air Force last year who brought some MRE's with him to the room, and one day he decided to cook some (by the way, they have a self-contained chemical mix that does the cooking, and when it's done, the food is steaming and very very hot!) -- I think it was like chicken soup or something similar.
Anyway, he cooked it up with the built-in chemical mix, waited about 10 min. and it was done. I thought the food would be nasty, but much to my surprise, it tasted basically like anything you'd find in a sit-down restaurant. Easily a replacement for a real meal...
OK, this is a turning out to be a pretty dumb story, but I was very impressed with MRE quality anyway.
MRE = "Meals Rejected by Ethiopians".
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
In my other, non geek, life, I am a National Guard officer, with a fair amount of time on Active Duty. The first MREs were absolutely awful. Anybody else remember the dehydrated pork or beef patties? YUCKKKK! They were uniformly horrible ( BBQ beef, ham slice, wieners), until a few years ago they started adding ones with actual taste, like jamaican jerk pork, and so forth. Now they want to go back to the inedible bland menus, because the percieve it to be "comforting"? Are they high? If you are cold, lonely, and a long way from home, a plastic envelope of several year old eggs will not make you feel any better. I want more spicy foods in the field, not less. ( At least they do include a tiny bottle of hot sauce.)
just do like I always did and drownd it all in those little tabasco sauces. ;)
MMM... There nothing quite like Fresh MRE's! :)
Lies! Uses Gamma Irradiation not Microwave as method of preserving the item.
True.... heat is used to cook the items, but as has been done to navy food for decades, and foods in France like milk and eggs, IRRADIATION is used to kill all lifeforms within the plastic bags.
This is a heavily kept secret because it turns out the public hates gamma irradiation for many reasons... one of them is the fraud issue (humans have a hard time judging ages of irradiated meats in plastic bags without use of smell and sight of decomposition).
True, maybe nothing is wrong with gamma irradiation, but the REAL STORY is that MREs are planning on introdicing gamma irradiation.... something banned from usa store shelves without proper labling.
In San Francisco, in import shops in ChinaTown you can buy illegally imported spiced meat that was irradiated by gamma rays, but it... and US Military MREs are not meant for us store shelves unless properly labelled as GAMMA IRRADIATED.
Ok I didn't read the article... while camping I have used MRE before and their great, no animals get in to them and all you need is water but I don't bring a microwave with me when I go, nor a power supply and aren't microwaves tuned to excite water molecules? So wouldn't they contain a lot of water anyways also making it heaver?
This must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Eggs are going to be in a rotten state when military personnal will eat it.
This is amazing work of scientist......
They just want to start using GAmma Irradiation more often and this is part of a cover story.
Its old hat. Military foods have been gamma irradiated for ages. (no pun intended).
In my previous life as a defense contractor, some reservists brought some MREs in to the lab... This was right when they came out, replacing the K-Rations (C-Rations?). They were totally nasty. Including the Spaghetti&Meatballs...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I was in Uncle Sam's Marine Corps for five years ending in 1998. We had egg MRE's (omelet... my least favorite), and every MRE had either peanut butter or _cheese_ to spread on the brick-like crackers. Given my experience with MRE's, I'd have to say it doesn't matter which process they use to prepare the food. It will still taste like crap. The trick to being able to stomach the MRE's is to make sure you get one w/ a Tabasco in the accessories pack. Better to taste the Tabasco then an artist's rendition of whatever it says on the label.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
Amen to that, I eat better when doing field exercises than I do when I cook at home!
I grew up in Pullman, went to WSU for 3 years (droped out as a freshman :) and am proud to still call myself a Cougar. I know this is completely offtopic, but I'll take the bitch slap. WSU has a great Agriculture department, as well as a really good Vet. school, lots of Betties, and some wicked parties. This is the first time I have ever seen an article on /. about the school, and it fills my heart with pride to see the crimson and grey up there. Props to all of my buddies roaming the hallowed halls of Sloan hall. GO COUGS!!!!
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
Back in the day, before flavor was engineered to survive a 3 year shelf life, MREs were fondly referred to as "Meals Rejected by Ethiopians."
Anyone know other trivia?
if this is what passes for a /. story.
I mean, really. Who cares?
If you have nothing interesting to post, it's best to post nothing.
I'm suprised it doesn't contain beer.
Can I look upon your works and despair?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Why don't they just use Kraft EasyMac? It only needs water and heat, and is readily available at every Wal-Mart in the country. Sounds much easier than some $400,000 grant to figure out how to preserve cooked Mac&Cheese. And it's lighter (actually the same if you count the extra water needed).... MRE's already need water to be cooked and for the drink powder to be of any use. And EasyMac is tasty. I'd have told the military for only $1,000
Love,
Jay and Silent Bob
I hate the fact that most Army units get screwed and are only given MREs for long periods of time.
I served as an OPFOR Support Platoon Leader at the National Training Center at Ft. Irwin, CA. Unfortuantely for guys like you, the chains-of-command of visiting units (especially Guard units) were too lazy to bother to get hot food, and would just go for an entire 3-4 weeks on MRE-only for their soldiers because its an easy out. Don't take this as an accusation or anything against you and your unit, I just think its a shame that the Army has spent millions of dollars working on ways to get fresh food for Joe, and most leaders choose to just use MREs.
The US Army has mobile kitchens, and tons of creative ways of getting hot chow to soldiers, unfortunately most of the officers are too lazy to coordinate that kind of support.
Now there is a difference when training for war and just being stupid, but after an extended period of time, the nutrition of troops becomes highly important. MREs are meant as a supplement to regular meals - we usually went Hot-MRE-Hot for Break/Lunch/Dinner, for normal missions, and used that as a baseline.
Naturally that changes according to the mission, but you'd be suprised at how many REMFS (Rear-echelon motherfuckes) would rather say "We'll go all-MRE" because they are too lazy to plan hot food for their soldiers.
Not everyone eats meat, and not everyone eats every kind of meat. The MREs that were being dropped to Afghans were vegetarian MREs. There are also vegetarian soldiers in the US Army, and Muslim/Jews who cannot eat Pork and Hindus who cannot eat Beef.
Mine, Canadian Army, hers, American Navy. Cousin who is a marine, another a helicopter pilot, and a third a technician.
The cousin who is a marine is also a vegan. Yah - hilarious - the vegan marine. She is in Afghanistan right now - wonder what the hell she eats. No dairy, no eggs, no seafood, no poultry, and no meat.
I was a vegan for a few years - pretty tough to find food in a supermarket that has no dairy. Imagine what it's like when your food comes in a grey plastic bag.
I pitty the day when I'm deployed and they give me *eggs* to eat in the MRE. I hate eggs. And they've got to be even more nasty as an MRE. I sure hope they supply plenty of those cute little miniature tabasco bottles with it... don't get me wrong, MREs as they stand now are really nice... for some reason I've always loved the pork chop MRE which is really nothing more than pressed meat. Those mint(iirc) brownies/bars are the _bomb_.
Mmmm.
-Drache Kubisuro
It must be a really slow news night if this is what passes for a /. story.
You said it. This story is from MSNBC, for goodness sakes. I've learned quickly that Microsoft is not a safe topic around here. So I have 3 theories.
1. CmdrTaco is taking a 3 day weekend to spend more time with Kathleen, and is not posting stuff.
2. There really is a change of opinion toward Microsoft around here. Stranger things have happened.
3. Everyone (even nerds!) is out partying and not making anything newsworthy.
I'm working on a Perl assignment. Sigh.
Does anybody else remember C-Rations? They were the predecessor of MREs. They came in a cardboard box, full of little OD green cans. You haven't lived until you have eaten Ham and Eggs, cold, out of a can. See Army Chow and Other War Atrocities by David Thayer, for a look at Army chow in the pre-MRE era.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Secondly....Eggs??? I don't want to eat a three year old egg. Hell, I don't want to eat a one year old egg. Come to think of if, I'm not sure I would trust it after a couple months. I don't care if it's not a real egg, it's supposed to taste like one or something (otherwise what's the point) and that thought just makes me cringe.
Thrid. Who the hell cares how good the food tastes, if good food is your primary concern, then don't join the military. There must be more important things to spend money on.
The great KD nourished an entire generation. Mac and cheese is the ultimate geek food. Good with beer, good cold in the middle of the night, good fried in the morning with coffee. (except maybe for poutaine which maybe the second greatest geek food)
heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
In canada we typically call them REM's (Ready to eat meals) or Individual Meal Packs (IMPs) however it is a similar idea.
The difference however, is that the Canadian ones taste GOOD. You usually get:
1. Your main meal. (things like mac and cheese, stew, salsbary steak, chicken, chili etc)
2. Tea.
3. Coffee
4. Hot Choclate
5. Choclate Bar
6. Some kinda fruit based destert
7. A little bread loaf
8. Peanut butter, jam, salt/pepper and sometimes spices
9. Some bonus items like instant mashed potatoes, instant dressing..
I remember really enjoying these things. I believe they had a shelf life of about 4-5 years.
*mmms just thinking about them*
Smilee
BTW. I think I enjoyed them more then the hot food we sometimes got shipped while were in the bush.
These soldiers can eat in excess of 3000 calories per day which is the equivalent of 6 Big Macs a day
mmmm.... 6 Big Macs a day
The breakfast versions of the Canadian Forces IMP (Individual Meal Pack) has contained Macaroni and cheese since at least the 1980s, and although it is no longer available now they also served a mean "ham & egg omlette". For anyone who has seen this notorious "omlette" it was like a compressed rubber sponge in a foil packet with ham floating at the bottom. Some people despised it, I thought it was rather good. I also know that the shelf life of these meals was 3 years. Maybe the cold up here helps them keep longer.
If you want to get a good idea of what the Canadian meals are like, check out the bottom of this page. MREs and the number each soldier gets a day vary greatly from country to country. No shitting but the French get pate de fois gras and a little wine in their rations, although they only get one box of rations for the whole day.
Canucks get 3 packs a day, each worth between 2500 and 3000 calories (soldiering takes a lot of energy), similar to the Americans they are rather formulaic in there content but much more substantial: the first foil pouch contains a main course (chili con carne, chicken breast, even cabbage rolls to please the Albertans), the dessert pouch (sliced peaches, pinapple spears, or the nasty cherry cake) follows, but the best part shall always remain the "goodie pack". Not only will it include the strangest brick of bread you've ever seen, it is also guaranteed to contain various condiments, juice crystals, soup, coffee, tea sugar and whitener, lifesavers (oh the irony), an after dinner mint (yes, really), a toothpick and either a candy bar or cookies. You can also expect to find matches, an industrial strength napkin, a long neck spoon (so your fingers don't get dirty) and best of all, a moist towlet (field shower is the other term that comes to mind). Much more substantial than the Americans but still lacking both the infamous bottle of tobasco sauce and the self heating pouch.
IMPs also include a survey as to how you liked your meal, a great bit of fun to fill out when your bored in the field. I can proudly say that because of my input they added mini-Ritz crackers and mini-Oreo cookies to the array of snacks that come with any ration pack. Whenever a Canadian soldier stuck in the mud or snow of the ubiquitous "field" looks into his/her ration pack and smiles to see they got mini-ritz cheese sandwiches rather than the instant (and useless) chocolate pudding that I helped contribute to that smile.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
I've been on 80+ day field rotations, where sometimes it was MRE's, sometimes it was T-Rations, which is where basically a platoon shares a giant aluminum-packed MRE, and you really start to miss the MKT (mobile kitchen trailer), as little as you might have thought of it at the time when your unit had access to, and the use of one.
If you're really lucky, someone comes from the rear with a dozen or so mermites of REAL FOOD. If you are blessed with your own personal angel, you get picked to drive the Bn CSM back to the rear, and maybe get some of that good Anthony's Pizza! MMMMmmmmmmm.... my Sergeant Major, a surprisingly young guy for an E-9, by the name of MacDonald, said it best, during one of these rare outings...
"There's nothing like a good, hot piece of cheap, greasy pizza."
I couldn't have agreed more. The new bastards coming in to the army now, (and probably the other branches as well) have it soooo good. I'll point out a few differences: (Pvt=private)
Force XXI_______________________ In my army
Stress cards__________________DS' Puttin a boot in my ass
"Good morning Pvt's" _________ "Get the FUCK UP PVT'S!!!!"
DA Form 4856________________Wall to wall counseling
"Don't run on stairs"_____________"You better RUN up those goddamned stairs!!!"
Thousands of dollars just to sign up, millions for college...
_____________________GI Bill. That's it.
31 Flavors of MRE's ___________8 Flavors, only 5 of which are edible, plus a bonus- WWII era M&M's which tasted like soap. Yum!
Man, that is so awesome. I leave the service and they start getting good junk! The military gets pay raises, new gear, better weapon technology, and to top it off, Mac & Cheese. That is it, I am calling my recruiter so that he can tell me some more lies and I am back in baby! On the serious note though, I think that this administration is doing a great job keeping the morale and welfare of our troops as a top priority. Pepole sometimes don't realize that when you put up with junk from both sides of the fences a good meal goes a long way. So next time you are sitting at home watching Women's Figure Skating and eating a bowl of freshly made Mac & Cheese, think of a Marine, soldier, airman, or sailor in some far away land protecting us and keeping America free and just think (you don't have to say it)a thought of gratitude. God bless this Country!
Let the little weenies eat powdered eggs. That's what we did back in the REAL army. No video game warfare then, nosiree. In the field for days at a time, body lice the size of bottle caps. Hell, we had C-Rats that came in cans, including eggs and ham. Carried a jumbo sized bottle of Tabasco on my web gear - man that was eatin'. We thought powdered eggs was a real treat. Little weenies and their dried food...
If you put an MRE heater in a snapple bottle full of water and screw the lid back on the snapple bottle will explode.
If this packaging process could be done cheaply enough, it might make it easier and cheaper per kg of food for relief efforts to get underway compared to traditional methods without having to worry about the food going bad in the process.
We'd ride around in the back of a 3/4 with a pile of water jugs & insulated aluminum cans a bit bigger than 5gal jerry cans. Pick'em up full at a messhall (ordered early, obviously), make four-five stops to feed the co, return and start all over again.
Our sargeants-major worked for a living, and didn't strut around like peacocks. That's the Officers jobs!
Just to play devil's advocate, this could also be viewed as a valid training element in of it's own right. Keeping the personnel as hungry, dirty, tired, and pissed as possible is probably not-bad training for being in that situation "for real". At least then they won't be hungry, dirty, tired, pissed, and suprised about it. ;-) 7P: Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. (devil's advocate mode off: yeah, doing weeks on end with less than ideal nutrition is pretty retarded, becuase before long you're hurting the soldier's ability to learn and retain even moreso than the usual levels of fatigue would... ever tried to go through finals week on coffee and doughnuts?)
Are you comparing the Aussies to kids?
You have got to be kidding me. Anybody who eats vegemite doesn't rate to comment on taste in food.
Several years back, my school decided to get rid of this Civil Defense Postapocalyptic Nuclear Shelter/Hospital that they had in the basement.
Apparently, if the Commies ever dropped the Big One on NYC, the survivors were supposed to live on water, crackers, and hard candies. The water was all gone by the time we went in there, along with the Geiger Counters (which I really wanted - apparently at some point some public agency came and took them back), but there were still maybe an 8' high 6' wide 18' long stack of all these boxes of candy and crackers, packed with various dates around 1963. There were big cardboard boxes with a Civil Defense logo on the side, the words SURVIVAL CRACKERS or CARBOHYDRATE SUPPLEMENT on the side, and inside were either 6 tins of crackers (~40 pounds total) or 2 45 pound tins of red and yellow hard candies.
Both were still good in '99 when we cut open the tins and tried. Crackers tasted pretty nasty and dry, but the candy was delicious. I still have stored in an airtight container some candy that was dated October 1963, I'm waiting for October next year so I can eat 40 year old sour balls.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Why hasn't this caught on with the general public? If I had a box of thses, plus a toilet for a chair, I wouldn't have to leave the computer for *DAYS*
Do the Mario!
Swing your arms from side to side
Come on, it's time to go, do the Mario!
Take one step, and then again
Let's do the Mario! All together now!
You got it!
It's the Mario!
Do the Mario!
Swing your arms from side to side,
Come on, it's time to go, do the Mario!
Take one step, and then again
Let's do the Mario! All together now!
Come on, now!
Just... like... that!
It's ironic: I had the booze, she had the chronic; the Lakers beat the Supersonics.
I'm not a military man, so I may just be talking out of my ass here, but what's wrong, exactly, with rice? I mean, it packs light, lots of carbohydrates and vitamins, easy and quick to cook, and can be flavored (and taste good to boot) with anything from plain old salt to spicy cajun jambalaya and chinese mixes (and of course meats and veggies when they are available). How long does an MRE take to heat up? A tin can full of water, and handfull of rice, dump in a few spices, shred a few sticks of beek jerky and in under seven minutes I've made myself a high energy, hot meal that tastes great.
Maybe I just don't understand the logistics of it, but I would think if I was given a choice of carrying around a 5 lbs package of MRE's that will last me a couple of days vs. a 5 lbs bag of rice that will last me weeks, I would have to go with the rice...
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Slashdot:
I've posted pretty much this same comment before, but:
From the demographics I once saw on the OSDN Website, it looks like the readers of slashdot are the type of people who are well-off, white, and fairly unlikely to ever experience war except through Quake, CNN, or Neal Stevenson Novels. Why are there always military articles posted on Slashdot?
Nerds and geeks will forever be the whimpering lapdogs that build the technology for killing! Racial military minority representation has risen from 14 percent in 1975 to 26 percent. This is faster than the rate that African Americans and Latinos have attained Internet access! Slashdot readers are smart, when will the poseur editors get over their military wanna-be aspirations?
We want hot grits please!
when I'm coding and don't want to break for food, I usually end up eating junk (and regretting it) and getting a real meal later.
It would be great to have a decent food source I could just heat, but I haven't come across anything suitable that has a very long shelf life and doesn't need refrigeration. I've considered some canned goods, but they generally require a bit of cleanup.
any suggestions?
Dehydrated pork and beef patties were my favorite! Any pack of MRE's we opened in Desert Storm, I would raid for those two. Seriously. MMmm. Beat the heck out of "pork with rice in barbque sauce." I am still pissed that they dont make them anymore. They stopped arround 89 I think. A shame.
The Canadian Military has has Macaroni & Cheese for years, jeez you Americans are lagging behind :)
When I was at NTSC we did the hot/mre/hot.
When I was in Desert Shield/Storm/Calm Hot/MRE/Hot.
Perhaps my regular army unit is different, but that was three different brigades so maybe it's just the NG or Reserves.
P.S. OPFOR Cheats like hell with the god guns! (pluss all the dead tanks on the field, and no flashers, or hoffman devices, sheesh a company can unload on a visible target with no feedback while OPFOR kindly shoots you from thier HMMWV)
MRE's rock. I was in the Marine infantry for 6 years and I HATED hot meals in the field. Too much trouble, too much time, and too much work.
Of course you lazy, coddled, spoiled army doggies had to have your hot meals.
So this is probably a recruiting pitch. Can you see it now?
Definatly inspires me to want to join and get shot at in some foreign country...
I voted Browne, Libertarian. I just think that I value the food and happiness of my soldiers out in the field.
GPL Deconstructed
I know they're all scietifically preserved... But if someone told me to eat eggs 3 years old... I'd be like, whoa, how the hell did I get in the military.
Reminds me of me trying to convince my one friend to eat bubble gum from 1991 baseball cards.
When there are alternatives to dairy & cheese made from soy or rice, it seems crazy to develop a new way to keep dairy from spoiling when it's easy enough to produce a plant based sauce with the consistency of cheese. It is also very easy to simulate the flavor of cheese itself with some chemicals. Food chemistry is a science with its own fascinating consequences. Most of the "natural" and artificial flavors come from the same factory along the New Jersey turnpike, so why not add a cheese flavored chemical to the sauce and fake it? It's not like MREs are that spectacular, anyway...
WHAT?! You dare denigrate the dehydrated pork patty, mister? There was a "#1" on that package for a reason!
Admittedly, you couldn't eat it dry and like it (tasted like cardboard and chalk-dust). (But it was still better than the slime-encrusted weiners).
Like most of the first generation MREs, the blessed pork patty required preparation...fill the little plastic baggy about a third full with water and let it rehydrate...throw in some of your cheese-spread, a crumbled up cracker, and some tobasco. UMMM, good! The best MRE of all time (at least until I got out in '97).
Of course, in those days, we weren't lucky enough to get individual bottle of tobasco...it was just one big bottle to the case of MREs. Then they started putting individual bottles in *some* MREs. It wasn't until generation three or four that all MREs came with hot sauce.
(And does anyone remember the short-lived dehydrated strawberries? They were even better than the dehydrated pears. Sadly, they were only packed in chicken a la king and chicken stew for a short time in generation two).
If you have to talk about BAD MREs, let's talk about omelette with ham...or maybe tuna with noodles (the only saving grace was that it came with the chocolate nut cake -- the absolute finest piece of MRE cuisine ever).
I'd better stop now before I get all worked up.
I was wounded for life during my 1st NTC rotation. I was with a mechanized infantry battalion. We brought bunches of T-rats (think really big family-size metal boxes of food).
After our first week, the only T-rats that we had left were (1) barbecue pork and (2) rice. For the next two weeks it was BBQ and rice for lunch and dinner. It was literally years before I would eat barbecued anything.
Are they going to have special field microwaves that run on battery power or something? Sure it might be really fast compared to boiling it, but it would take so much power, it would probably take an entire battery charge just to microwave for half a minute! (or less!)
Why not WSU? They have a fantastic Agro department, and make one damn fine cheese in award winning Cougar Gold.
This is the same WSU that invented a cheese canning process during WWII for military purposes. You can still order it from their creamery in assorted flavors. The Cougar Gold in particular is good; it's the only cheddar-type cheese I know of that is aged for a full year.
-- Jeff Paulsen
"Happy soldiers are better soldiers. The idea that enforced misery makes better soldiers has historically been a popular one in a lot of armies, but every time the US military has come up against one of those armies, we've beaten the hell out of them (e.g., the Iraqis. The Iraqi POW's I took care of lived better under our care than they ever had in their own army in peacetime. Probably one reason they were so eager to surrender.)"
This is one way to look at it, and historically it's been true. Incidentally, it's the only example I know of where my own theory is at a loss.
When I was in PME, I observed to my instructor that in every war in recorded history, the victorious side was the one whose uniforms were the simplest. The American revolution, WWI, WWII, the Falklands, the Boer War, etc stand out in particular as examples, but your comment about the war in 1991 makes me wonder if better rations aren't the real key to success in battle.
The state is the great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everybody else. ~F. Bastiat
hat's what we used to call it. Back in 1991. Kind of like the military training eye glasses-- BCG's (Birth Control Glasses)...thick black rims that can handle being run over by a tank
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
Uh, are you trying to be funny?
Are you fifteen?
Can you lift your arms higher than your shoulders without panting?
Not to be rude, but sheesh! If it was a joke, it wasn't funny. If you're serious, I really feel badly for you. I'm no hawk, but I have respect for the people who putt their butts on the line for me (and you).
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
Popular Mechanics did a nice little article on the "New" MRE's which can be found here:
0 0/ 10/army_goes_gourmet/index.phtml
http://popularmechanics.com/science/military/20
It talks about how there are vegitarian MRE's now, and how they now compress food at 70,000 to 100,000 psi, the pressure causes bacteria to burst and die.
FREE food? We worked more before 9 AM than most Civvies did all day!
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
According to a friend of mine, who is currently in MP training for the Marines, the hot sauce is included, and required eating for every meal for a specific reason. Hot sauce works to keep you regular and since the MREs are notorious for arriving as bricks and leaving as bricks, to put it lightly, the Sgts require their men to eat the entire bottle of hot sauce included with every MRE.
adam
I bought some MREs off a survivalist website just to see what they were like. Most of the stuff was tasteless/bland/pure sugar, but edible. The main course in each case, however, was utterly rancid and inedible. I tried one bite of the "teriyaki beef" and nearly lost everything else I'd already eaten. That was the worst. I feel truly sorry for the armed forces having to eat this crap. No wonder the Afghanis wouldn't eat the MREs the US dropped on them.
It seems like a joke for them to try to figure out how to include eggs and such when it seems clear they have quite a bit of work to do to even make the current MREs better than dog food.
Man, I was in the Illinois NG between 93-95, before going Active. I'll tell ya, my NG unit was great at making sure that we got hot food in the field, I was too young at time to really appreciate it, but after being MRE'd to death in Europe under a really shitty command I learned to miss those days. The frankfurters were the best, I would always try and get some kind of chow related duty before going to the field to be able to pick through the boxes and get the Chicken ala King, Ham slice and Frankfurters with the little string fries. Yum. Only the omlette was gross, but even that had it's fans.
Later.
Just remember to you college boys, some of us were doing other things than sitting in a nice campus in our late teens early twenties.
2 Hots a day sounds great unless you factor in the amount of time your counterparts in the BLUFOR support platoon have to spend driving. I know our S&T guys spent at least 6 hours a day on our one logpac of the day, what with company XOs being late, vehicles breaking down, convoys getting held up or lost, BSA jumping, etc. Another battalion tried the two a day concept and wore their support guys into the ground, and BTW, nobody wants the hot meals anyway a lot of time - it takes way too long to set up the chow line and eat when you're trying to do important stuff like sleep or dig in. But that was a light/heavy rotation, so maybe things are different for the heavy guys.
MREs aren't much better than Pop Tarts or Cliff Bars. MREs are also designed to plug up the works, if you know what I mean (source: a friend is USMC). I'd take Top-Ramen over MREs anyday, but you still need amino acids and micronutrients that your body cannot manufacture. Too bad MntDew and Ramen isnt a complete meal. =(
"Is there anything worse than astronaut ice-cream?"
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
MRE - Meal Ready to Eat
MRE - Meal Refusing Exit
MRE - Meal Rejected by Ethiopians (no offense intended)
Easy mac doesnt need anything but water and heat; of course you'll have to add vitamins and protein to the mix or noodles.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
A friend of mine, who used to be in the Marines was once out on patrol. They called for a 5 minute break so everyone broke out their MRE packets and began to wolf them down. They had so little time they didn't bother to heat them. He just poured the instant coffee in his mouth took a hit off his canteen and swallowed it. He came across the accessory packet, ripped it open and ate the candy. He saw a little bottle of something(Tabasco sauce) didn't know what it was but figured it was edible. He opened it up and poured it in his mouth. He thought they had put some nasty poisonous shit in his MRE it hurt so bad! Quite the shock.
The really funny part about MRES is they contain a little pack of toilet paper(like 12 squares). I swear if you eat MRES for a couple of days thats all the toilet paper you need.
OK, I gotta ask: If macaroni (or any pasta product) gets so nasty as a prepared MRE, how is it that I can go to a store and buy perfectly fine tasting Spaghetti-Os (loved em as a kid and can still eat them right from the can). I'm sure that they don't have a shelf life of 5 years, but I have had cans that had quite a few months "buildup of dust" on their lids.
And why is it that irradiation is not an option. I freely admit to limmited knowlege of the subject, but I was under the impression that it was possible to irratiate a hermetically sealed package and destroy virtually any living pathogen. Then these packages should keep indefinitely. Anyone know more about this (or why it can't be used)?
"Remember, no matter where you go, there you are."
why anyone bothers with this stuff. The airlines do it too. Why bother making some half baked (no pun intended) version of a staple when there are other much better options. Some foods travel well and some don't. If I'm longing for some home cookin' a military industrial engineered egg isn't going to make me feel any better. This is why I hope for a turkey sandwich and a cookie when I step onto a plane and not some failed attempt at microwave meatloaf (no I haven't traveled first class).
I see you're in denial already.
You spend more money on the military than on any other govt program. You spend more money on the military than all other nations combined. It's not like anyone invades you, is it? In fact, you're completely, geographically remote from your enemies. You're the safest nation on earth. With the mightiest, most extravagent military presence.
How do you explain all this? I'm sick of blackhawk down, pop stars blowing kisses to murderous american troops in afghanistan, cnn's extensive coverage of every teary eyed and pregnant wife of PFC Skeeter, and xenophobe talk show hosts like David Letterman glorifying the most unaccomplished trailer trash to ever fill out a uniform.
Why dont you Americans admit you're the biggest Nazis to ever occupy a Homeland? Sick, dangerous people.
Drill sergeants always say that sort of thing. They learn it in Drill Sergeant School, it's their way of pretending they're part of a more elite army, and making the privates feel even more like shit. What they're really saying is:
/pole a week or two ago. Anyway, the issue concerns our armed forces, so it's still /vaguely/ on-topic.
/they/ regard as unimpeachable truth because it's in their little torrah or talmud or whatever, I do NOT accept, and I don't think anyone else should either.
... jews ... or anything, I just don't see why I should be forced to like them, or support them (via statutorilly required payment of taxes to the US gov., which ends up supporting them) when they are doing almost exactly what was done to them not so long ago.
:-O
For the next 8 weeks, we promise we will do our absolute best to humiliate you and make you feel like shit. We know one day in about 8 weeks if you're lucky, you'll graduate and move on, and we'll all just be a bad memory for you, but no matter how far you get from here and us, you'll still be just a little chunk of shit in a larger ocean of shit army. Just our way of continuing to make you feel bad (and thereby, ourselves sooo good) even after you depart.
I had to work with these pricks for two years at 1/31'st (reflagged to 1/22nd) Field Artillery, FATC (Field Artillery Training Center) and Fort Sill, Fort Sill Oklahoma. They had sucky jobs and they knew it, so they derived what pleasure they could from the torture of privates, the sorry fucks (the DS's). Some DS's, I admit, took their responsibility to train troops seriously, and trained to "standards", not to the more popular training goal of "time", but most were just sadistic assholes.
I think being a DS is the sort of job that just naturally attracts people during peacetime, who in time of war would be thoroughly enjoying throwing fragmentation and incindiary grenades at enemy troops and then standing for hours admiring their handiwork... I mean, the corpses. Sick, sick, sick.
As you may have guessed, I was cadre at Fort Sill, but not a Drill Sergeant. Yes, I read the propaganda that says the DS is known in Basic as "the man with no heart" but in combat as "the man who saved my life" but I don't think they all quite lived up to this.
Too many of them seemed to take pleasure in watching others suffer. It's the same sort of thing which causes Israel to murder innocent Palestinians to get back at the few who actually may (note I said may, not do) deserve eradication... the same exact thing that was done to them in the first place to cause the powers that be in Europe and the US to steal someone else's land and give it to the jews so they could create their little "jew state in the holy land".
I know this is a controversial issue and this thread started out with MRE's, so this will probably get judged offtopic, but fuck it, the topic was just about as trivial as that shit about Cowfuck Neal vs. Cowfuck Neal vs... in that
The thing about the notion of the land having been promised to them is that I don't believe it was. I want to see it in writing, and not some bound and printed set of lies put forth by some jew or any human, in fact... I want to see God's signature at the bottom of it, something like:
"Dear jews,
I hearby promise you one Holy Land, to be delivered
at a later date whenupon you shall be deemed and judged
by Me to have spent enough time wandering My glorious
Creation and admiring It and Me as well, to be worthy
the Land which I have Promised you.
Signed,
~God
HOLY AND ALMIGHTY
CREATOR, WORLD AND UNIVERSE
Commanding."
Oh, and I want to see it notarized, and I want to verify the signature. Somehow, despite their insistance that the land was promised them by Yahweahjahdlafwhateverthefuck, I don't think they're able to produce that document. Anything which
Not that I dislike
The people of the middle east have it all wrong, and I'll tell you how they can rectify the problem. Forget propaganda, or trying to sway US public opinion. They should just come here and fuck and fuck and fuck like bunnies until they have a voting block of sufficient magnatude to overide all the jews here and cut off support for isreal. (To see what would become of isreal, without US support, money, funding, equipment, etc., think Indianna Jones part two, when Indy puts on the sly, smug smile and reaches for his gun like he did in #1, but this time it's not there.)
IANAA (I am not an Arab) but... I don't see why we should engage in or fund or even permit behavior of this sort. If the jews needed someplace that belonged to them after the Germans beat the fuck out of them in WW II, why didn't Europe simply give them a chunk of Germany? I'll tell you why: Europe would have been too close for them. Europe didn't want to be infested with jews, and no doubt they figured, the Germans might be mad having to continue living with jews right there, under their lilly-white noses, and thus be too tempting a target for them, in the future, so they had to take someone's land who wouldn't have the power or brains or hardware to do anything about it, like the Palestinians. How very very sad.
Seemed like a good solution. At the time. By the way, I want to reitterate IANAA, (although IAPGAPR (I am part-German and part-Russian), but I don't let that influence my opinions).
Anyway, just my $14.91. I started with my two cents but got nickel-and-dimed to death!
CA!
This is interesting - the Canadian military has had Mac and Cheese in their rations for years. Maybe it's time for a liason! :)
The "Humanitarian Daily Ration" is vegan. "The components are designed to provide a full day's sustenance to a moderately malnourished individual. In order to provide the widest possible acceptance from the variety of potential consumers with diverse religious and dietary restrictions from around the world, the HDR contains no animal products or animal by-products, except that minimal amounts of dairy products are permitted."
I think it's funny that you said we got paid plenty, The $200 a week I got as an E-1 was a whole hell of a lot.
In the field, preparing food takes to inventive procedures. Yuo can usully whip up something for nothing:
USMCpaznzer's recipe for MRE macroni and cheese:
1) take one white noodles package(yeah, I know, it doesn't look like mac.)
2) One package of cheese spread.
3) Heat accordinly, mix.
4) Enjoy!
4 x $200 = $800 a month and you do not have any expenses whatsoever, not for food, not for rent, water, electricity or heating. Don't whine. You have plenty of money left at the end of the month while there are people with real jobs who have to decide whether they want to eat or pay the rent.
Of course the Military should carry my favorite hostess treats. Everyone knows twinkies will surivive anything :)
You most likely ate it wrong. :o)
The fruit is much, much better when you eat it dry. Prepare it as intended, and it is indeed nasty as hell.
--
Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
But nothing like watching Dave Letterman and Leno back-to-back when I got in each morning :o)
--
Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
. . . which, seeing as how I failed to be creative, I ended up not doing, and thought the pork was only 2nd to the chicken a la king in the "disgusting" department. No way I'd waste my cheese or that tiny bottle of tabasco in order to eat that!
Tho I have to admit your idea of preparing it sounds great.
Now I'm hungry. Dang.
--
Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
Offtopic as hell, but here is your much-deserved bitchslap, mister coo-gar. Actually, this should be modded up as a public service for any of the younger /.ers who may be considering WSU.
I know of no reason why attending WSU is a matter of pride. What's there to be proud of? The worst football, if not the worst athletic, program in the Pac-10? Probably one of the worst field coaches in college football in Mikey Price? Oh, I forgot, they went to the Rose Bowl in 1998 for the first time in 50 or so years - and lost, of course. What happens after this? The WSU athletic idiots give him a seven year contract extension after only, what, three winning PAC-10 seasons in the previous ten years? Then there's the Apple Cup "rivalry" between WSU and the University of Washington. Last time I checked, a rivalry is when two teams are somewhat evenly matched. WSU and the UW are not, UW has won three times as many Apple Cup games as WSU. A better football rivalry for WSU is between it and the 1-AA University of Idaho just up the road, to whom they've lost twice in the last three years.
"WAZZU" is run by a spineless, incompetent administration that will spread its legs for the highest alumni donor. Anyone who doubts this needs only to realize that WSU took ZERO action against the fraternities involved in the campus riot four years ago for fear of loss of contributions. That riot did inestimable damage to WSU's already shaky-at-best reputation. What's more, their oh-so-wonderful Edward R. Murrow School of Communications (now THERE'S an employable major!) gave Ted Turner the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Journalism! Now, Ted Turner wouldn't know journalistic excellence if it bit him in the face, but he's got piles and piles of cash.
Typical coo-gar is there to party and not to get an education. Then again, it's quite hard to get one there, especially in a major that is remotely employable or useful. This is a school that announced an E-commerce degree option - in 2001, after the E-commerce bubble had long since burst. You can get an "Information Systems" degree there without taking a SINGLE coding class! Their "computer science" department does not offer a course in C++. Worst of all, anything to do with technology is bought and paid for by His Billness, which of course means no courses in anything not Micro$chlock. WSU was one of the first schools approved to offer M$ certification as an "academic" course, again well after the market for Minesweeper Champion Solitare Experts had dried up. This is a school where one of their sysadmins told me that Win2K has a lower acquisition cost and lower cost of ownership than Linux! And don't even THINK of criticizing M$ there. No, everybody knows that M$ is the only software company in existence.
How bad is WSU's academic reputation? Well, their last two "career" fairs, even when the job market was hot, speak for themselves. Every major retail chain was well-represented. Wal-Mart, Target, Blockbuster, Shucks, JC Penney, K-Mart, you name it, they were there. Of the several dozen companies that showed up, maybe four had ANY kind of high-tech openings and they were all deluged with resumes.
All in all, WSU is like the embarrassing relative that nobody talks about who shows up at the family reunion. It's a fourth rate school with a crappy athletic department in the middle of a wheat field. Small wonder why their enrollment is down and they can't attract decent athletes to their losing teams. Thank God I saw the light and transferred to the UW while I still could.
HUSKIES RULE! COUGARS DROOL!
HAHAHAHA That is the funniest piece of UW FUD I've read in a long time. I haven't been back to P-Town in a couple of years, and I forgot how absolutely pathetic people from the UW are. First of all dont even talk to me about M$ money, trying to find a company using Linux is Seattle is like trying to find a virgin at a UW sorority. The UW football program makes all of its money selling drugs and guns to the poor black folk who live in downtown Seattle, and the have an absolutely wicked basketball team NOT.
Why dont you go back and crawl under whatever half-calf frap crap mocha ganja chino latte you crawled out from under and wank off till your purple and gold in the face. BTW that's not even gold, its the color of the diareah that came out of my ass after eating the nasty food found on University Ave. You've probably never been on that street though because your scared of gangstas. How do I know you're scared of gangstas? Because you're from Bellevue and go to BCC.
Bye bye now, have a nice time learning all about Bill from the paid off professors at UW.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
my anus still puckers from the memory of those
Yes, military foods have been irradiated for decades. We first started gamma irradiation of food in the 50s. Back in those days the soldiers had to run with their meal trays towards a nuclear blast. Nowadays, foods are irradiated at considerably less cost in special gamma irradiation facilities.
{
The nickname for them was
Meals
Rejected by
Ethopia
I actually made the dehydrated pork patties edible. I have to put water in the bag then slow heat it for about 1/2 hr and add in liberal amounts of the hot sauce. The hot dogs were the worst, they used to be good, until someone starting packing them tons of grease. They tasted like vienna sausages after that even after heating.
{
At interesting side note was that they did distribute MRE's in ethopia which the natives did like, but the protein rich and calorie rich content did cause problems for people who had not eaten decently for months, some had medical problems because of that, and 1 or 2 may have died from the scuttlebutt I heard.
}
}
-1;
I'd hate to be in a tent with a bunch of guys who'd just eaten prserved eggs and probably beans too. Glad they have gas masks handy.
Accomodating troops' nutritional needs and providing a semblance of gastronomic comfort has been a problem even further back than the C rations in Vietnam. For example, here is a site describing the K rations used in the field.
For what it's worth, some Army cooks were able to work wonders with not much more than this kind of stuff. Dad, an Ordnance Corps guy, one day came across an infantry outfit in a not-all-that-rear area that was getting fed from a field kitchen that definitely had its act together -- Dad was awed that the cooks had even made soup and baked some fresh bread. It had to have been the first real meal these dogfaces had eaten since they'd gone into the line in France.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
WoW! Now THAT'S the way friendly school rivalry is SUPPOSED to sound!
BTW, you may want to schedule your psycho-therapy sessions a little closer together...
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello