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Military Labs Develop Caffeinated Jerky and "Zapplesauce"
A military research facility outside Boston has come up two new super foods for MREs (Meal, Ready to Eat). Soon soldiers will able to stay awake during guard duty thanks to caffeinated meat sticks. They'll have the energy for extended patrols from a "super-charged" applesauce. From the article: "'There is a lot of science that goes into this,' said David Accetta, a spokesman for the Natick Soldier Research, Development & Engineering Center, where every item put into an MRE is tested and tasted. 'And that’s what a lot of people don’t realize. It’s not just a bunch of cooks in the kitchen making up recipes.'”
“I’m never gonna get used to the 31st century. Caffeinated bacon? Baconated grapefruit? ADMIRAL Crunch?”
Fry, Futurama
Anything that starts with a Z reminds me of Halloween.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Or as the veterans I know who were familiar with them call them:
Meals, Rarely Edible.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Have you ever actually eaten an MRE? The things are 1200 calories or so, about 900 of those from raw sugar. What better way to get a bunch of teenagers to go out and kill people, than to get them all hopped up on a sugar high like a squad of heavily armed Cornholios?. Caffeinated jerky fits right in.
Could you please learn to English?
Gotta love the media.. ITS NEW!! LOL.. Its been around since 2009 for the First Strike Rations.
http://xbradtc.wordpress.com/2009/09/13/zapplesauce/
"'There is a lot of science that goes into this,' said David Accetta, a spokesman for the Natick Soldier Research, Development & Engineering Center, where every item put into an MRE is tested and tasted. 'And that’s what a lot of people don’t realize. It’s not just a bunch of cooks in the kitchen making up recipes.'”
No wonder they taste so bad. Remember to make friends at the mess.
A ./ article about MREs and the first post is criticizes our food system. These are not designed for civilians these are military field rations. Honestly it's pretty neat.
My local store has caffeinated jerky, and has for awhile.
Big deal they have instant coffee in MRE's. I used to gather up all of these from the non coffee drinkers. When I needed a shot of energy from say a long forced march rip open the packet and down the hatch.
Foolish... this is nothing compared to Ketracel-white to keep soldiers ready to di^Wsave the world :/
Baconated Grapefruit? Admiral Crunch?
It is delicious. I had some in Afghanistan last year. It tastes like regular applesauce, which is to say, delicious.
Next they'll find a way to put caffeine in coffee. That would work for me.
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
Yep, because the food industry sells MREs primarily to the public.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Caffeine is an awesome drug. So long as your job doesn't ever consist of accurately firing a weapon or going long durations without peeing.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Q: Oh yeah? You want to review your rapid progress?
Q: Rapid progress, to where humans learned to control their military with drugs.
Um, how is the caffeinated jerky anything new? We've had it for years thanks to http://www.perkyjerky.com/ and until recently it was sold over at ThinkGeek.
The Amarri pray for god, the Caldari pray for profit. the Gallente pray for peace, but the Minmatar pray their ships hol
Two words: Nazis, meth.
I'm surprised that they'd be using caffeine: 1. It's already dirt cheap and readily available in a wide variety of convenient forms. Coffee(with varying tradeoffs between goodness and portability), tea(ditto), water, pills, assorted energy-shot things, etc, etc. It's a readily water-soluble alkaloid stimulant. Not hard to work with.
Perhaps more importantly, caffeine is actually a mediocre alertness aid. In sufficient quantity it will prevent you from sleeping; but the jittery, dubiously-lucid, feeling that it provides isn't exactly "wakefulness". Not really a win for clear thinking or straight shooting. It seems like some exploration of Modafinil, or related drugs, if any, would be more productive.
That stuff isn't nearly as readily available in already common, light, nonperishable forms, and when it prevents you from sleeping you just don't feel sleepy. The effect is uncanny.
OK, so instead of cold, tired, scared recruits with overpowered assault rifles standing guard in the dark of night we're going to have jittery, cold, tired, scared recruits with overpowered assault rifles standing guard in the dark of night. Lovely.
Sounds like military research discovered 5150 ...
Fancy some panzerschokolade?
And how many millions of dollars has this cost the taxpayer? Why didn't they just buy a bunch of already caffeinated products from Think Geek?
I've heard that the MRE acronym is jokingly explained as "Meal that Refuses to Exit." So, I hope they've taken care of that...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Well that's obvious.... you ever taste an MRE?
Does that make it any better? What's wrong with a caffeine pill? Do you really want a soldier getting caffeinated when he's just hungry?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Special forces MREs have had these items for years, I remember trying to buy some Zapplesauce online a while back to give it a try but couldn't find a worthwhile price. Also, I've eaten a number of modern MREs and some of the are very tasty. Most packs now contain candy or Tobasco or other incentives to get you calories down. I wouldn't want it every day, but for a field ration it's pretty good.
It must taste like a plastelinized leather shoe sole with added caffeine's bitternes for the extra diminuitive swallowing gag reflex....
Red Bull & Salami?
As an active duty soldier, this doesn't really pump me up much. Most MREs include a packet of coffee or tea (which I think is caffeinated). True, those require some sort of water/container, but many MREs already have Ranger Bars, which are like those energy bars you can get at the grocery store (which work to varying degrees).
Now, when they get rid of the Vegetarian Omelet MRE, then there will be some cheering.
(Some MREs have other, ah, means of keeping you awake...)
IIRC Methamphetamine was used by Axis soldiers to keep energized for long periods such as combat...
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Could the food industri please stop selling addictive drugs to people?
No.
Well, I mean they could, but then someone else would do it instead.
I was in one of the first training platoons in the Army which received the "newfangled" MREs instead of C-Rations. Although they were colloquially called "Meals Ready to Excrete" by the "early adopters" of such a technology of cuisine, it felt like they traveled at Mach 2 through the digestive system until the last "quarter mile" of the intestinal tunnel. Then they seemingly sat there for days.
Much of the above activity was due to the famously known "Dehydrated Beef Patty" and "Dehydrated Pork Patty." No matter how much water you added to them, they went down like shredded corrugated cardboard, exhibiting the same gustatory and gastronomical effects.
This was pretty informative.
The topic of food that is readily available, has shelf life, and is designed to give energy boosts -and don't taste like metal scraps. Nothing lowers morale like not eating well- is very interesting. I wonder if there are more articles giving more details on the process, pros and cons of proposed rations, and their energy values.
I hope it's not a military secret or something like that, though.
subject says it all
As Napoleon said, "An army marches on its stomach".
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
They just need milk plus to have a complete and balanced meal
DEAD BABIES FOR a better AMERICA!
Stay awake longer, and KILL more BABIES!
Hooray, NATO!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUqKY7S4MHw
I wish I had my face back. Then I could have COFFEE and KILL!!!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
They've improved the taste somewhat over the years.
On the other end, however, it still gives you constipation like you wouldn't believe. They should start packing an ex-lax into each one to balance it out...
MREs aren't all that bad if you can heat the entree. If not, they're not much fun.
Go for the chicken-based entrees. "Pasta with Vegetables in Tomato Sauce" (discontinued in 2006), not so good. There are 24 different MREs in each year, and each case contains a semi-random selection. They're reliable survival food. Everyone should have a case or two around, just in case.
The packaging is very tough. They can be dropped from an aircraft without a parachute, and at least 80% of the units should survive.
They supposedly do. Ever tried the gum?
They airdrop them into third-world areas as a "humanitarian" gesture. Only then they call them an "HDR" ("Humanitarian Daily Ration.")
Wrapped in yellow plastic dangerously similar to the yellow plastic around unexploded cluster bomb munitions, approximately the same size/shape too.
Just to confuse the fuck out of the poor people who don't know if they're about to get a meal or their hand blown off...
On a delicious meat stick that keeps you up all night.
That has nothing to do with the food industry or MREs in general.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
A soldier may not have the luxury of being able to carry around a bunch of pills.
This stuff comes in an MRE. Why not put the caffeine pills in the MRE next to the jerky, instead of inside the jerky?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It saves space and reduces weight. When you're out there you would prefer any food you have to carry to have some caloric benefit. It's also more convenient not to have to take a pill if you're say sniping where any movement at all can take 5 minutes.
Freeze-dried pork patties, four fingers of death ("frankfurters"), freeze-dried fruit cocktail brick, brown packet of coffee powder, no Tobasco, no candy but two pseudo-Chicklets. The only thing really edible was the applesauce, but you had to get the dreaded pork patty meal to get it.
Meal, Ready to Eat. Truly three lies for the price of one.
In comparison, the modern MREs are quite good.
My colon's been aware of the supercharging power of applesauce for decades.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Why waste time (and taxpayer dollars) on all of this food science mumbo jumbo. Just contract with McD's, Burger King, etc. and very soon we'll be seeing the inimitable cheeseburger/french fry combinations flooding the battlefield and military base.
They do it at the universities. When working on my degree I used to enjoy delicious (and nutritious) egg salad and tuna salad sandwiches along with luscious cartons of chocolate milk. When the college administrators replaced the cafeteria with an on-site McDonalds franchise, my days of good eating were over. The rest of the student body greatly rejoiced, however.
better than Zappa Plays Zappa. Seriously, I'm surprised Gail Zappa hasn't tried to sue anybody who's trying to call their applesauce product "Zapplesauce".
I would mod you up if I had any points left today.
"And that’s what a lot of people don’t realize. It’s not just a bunch of cooks in the kitchen making up recipes."
<tinfoilhat>
Finally, the American government tells the truth!
Back during the height of the Cold War, one Finnish grocery store chain had a rather popular series of TV commercials where a nice likeable chef gave out nice recipes and, of course, showed off he delicious food on sale right that day.
The problem was, some of the Finnish TV transmitters were a tad bit too powerful. In that people in northern Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic could tweak their TVs a little bit to also receive PAL broadcasts and watch to something else besides state-approved television. Stuff like Dallas and Knight Rider. Not material that turns people into burning-hearted Communists. And they had these commercial. Ugh.
Anyway, Once the word got out to the highest levels of authority, they had to make a statement. A carefully prepared official story said that the chef is obviously a CIA plant. The food shown was obviously just plastic replicas. No way that stuff was real - the grocery stores were dismal and often empty in the Soviet Union, and obviously the capitalist world was doing even worse, dear citizens! They also filed a formal complaint to the Finnish government, though it was not acted upon.
So now the American government finally reveals the culinary programs and use of food as weapons? I used to dismiss the statement from the Estonians as ridiculous propaganda, because I have lived in Finland all my life and our food has never tasted of plastic. But the true identity of the mystery chef remains a mystery! In light of this new information, perhaps he was a super-chef-spy! Perhaps he spread delicious recipes that were penned in some dark laboratory in the US!
And I liked Knight Rider - was it nothing more than a carefully calculated ploy to defeat the Soviet Union? The culinary mystery is solved now, but we still need the details on Knight Rider! The food question is relatively irrelevant compared to that. And talking cars are cooler. We need information! Question the American government!
</tinfoilhat>
Whatever happens to the days where shit made sense and logic ruled the world? I know I'm probably wrong, but it always feels like it was this way (at least to some degrees) back when I was a kid growing up in the 80s. I know, I know... Stuff was always screwed up and I was probably just too young to know it... Doesn't matter. There were better shows on TV back then, more affordable gas, people seemed nicer... Today's shit is wack and it's all because of stupid mindsets and idiotic agendas like the one noted in this retarded article.
I mean, do you honestly believe that caffeinated fucking bacon is going to turn the tides of war one day? Jesus... I can only imagine how many tax dollars that shit is painted with.
Mix that with the omelete, add Tobasco, not bad.
I had a large collection of saved MRE pieces to make my recipes. For example, crush a cracker, add jelly, creamer and sugar, mix, flatten, let bake in the sun for a while, you have a Pop Tart.
There just isn't room in a MRE for fiber. It's crammed full of protein, sugar, and starch. They want every ounce of it to get absorbed and used.
However, the sorbitol in the chewing gum is a mild laxative, if you save them up and chew enough of them at once.
... meatinated caffeine sticks! (Certified by the Vegan Authority of Califonia to contain no meat)
These are not designed for civilians these are military field rations
And I hate them for it.
Otherwise, I'd take two cases. Today.