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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)."
It's a conscious decision to spend money on our soldier's comfort and happiness. I can advocate that.
I mean, it's not any more wasteful than spending money designing and creating newer and bigger SUVs or creating and marketing XBoxes.
GPL Deconstructed
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) ?
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.)
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.
Which, to me, is an interesting idea. In 'respecting people's beliefs', the Army (and other armed services) has gotten away from a core tenet: You are not special. You are a part of the Green Machine, as they say, or a part of the Navy/Air Force/the Corps (the Marines, sorry). The point is that once everyone is treated the same, then you won't have the little whining about how "it's against my $BELIEFSET !"
:)
Cripes. PC is nice, and all, but this is a little extreme. About the only real choice you had in boot camp was to holler for what kind of meat you wanted. Didn't want either? Better eat something to give you energy while your Company Commander makes you drop.
Ah, the memories...
"If there's hope, it lies in the proles..."
Does that also mean the military shouldn't provide Jewish, Muslim, and other minority religion chaplains for soldiers who follow those faiths? You can take "you are not special" too far. As long as it doesn't interfere with accomplishing the mission, taking care of GI's as individuals as well as part of a team is a very good idea.
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.)
-- US Army infantryman 1987-1989, US Air Force medic 1989-1997
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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.
Because many people in the military are geeks.
:] ). Navy personnel, in order to keep from going bored out of their minds, master 3 or 4 jobs as well as their primary MOS, and they are good at all of them. Talk to a Air Force or Navy tech guy sometime that works on radar or AWACS type of technologies. They have to go to military training school (In the AF its Keesler AFB Miss.) for over a *year*. IE they dont take classes like humanities, and the classes are 8 hours a day, and it does deal with theory and real *hands on* experience working on the equipment.
Especially in the Air Force & Navy -- if you are in a Comm unit, you essentially have a "white collar" job. Air Force personnel dont get up at oh dark hundred hours in the morning to run, they wait until 3 weeks before the yearly fitness test to get in shape. (I can speak from personal experience here
In short, dont forget the first computers where designed for military purposes, the first PC (Altair) was designed by an Air Force engineer.
These military guys and gals know there stuff and take *pride* in what they do (ideas that may be to old-fashioned to many on this site, but it works in the military, trust me)
So yeah military postings do have a hell of alot of relevance to this site.