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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
Dear Private Void,
Eating an MRE has more of the effect of putting a solid brick in your bowels than getting you "hopped" up. The only raw sugar I encountered eating all the hundreds of MREs I've reluctantly consumed in my 7+ years active duty Marine Corps was the sugar packets that came with the instant coffee packets. There's also a candy of some sort, my favorite being a bag of M&Ms stating they are proud sponsors of the 1984 Olympics (this was in 1996). Anything new, tasty, and FSM forbid, energizing would be welcome.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
As a former Marine myself (8 years active duty), I can attest that Oodaloop is right on the money. We used to call them Meals Rarely Excreted.
As an aside, if you ever go to Korea (not Best Korea, the other one) the locals will trade you a bottle of Soju (rotgut liquor) for the main meal in your MRE.
Don't believe anything I say. I crash test crack pipes for a living.
Did you eat them...?
(a) ...Out of curiosity ...Out of self defense (lest they eat you first) ...Because you wanted to
(b)
(c)
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
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.
I think it's a bit like the uncanny valley. MREs are close enough to regular food that you focus on the differences between them and freshly prepared food. They really aren't bad for something that can be eaten after sitting on the shelf unrefrigerated for years, being exposed to temperatures ranging from -60F to +120F, then dropped 100 feet.
The old C-rations left no doubt as to what they were about. It was quite obvious the only reason anyone would willingly consume a C-ration was that the alternative was death by starvation. It also weighed 5.5 lb, as opposed to 1lb 2oz - 1lb 10oz for a modern MRE. K rations were so bad that even the prospect of starvation wasn't enough. Men in one unit lost an average of 35 pounds living on them and contracted pellagra and beriberi. According to one report, soldiers who'd been forced to survive on K-rations would vomit at the mere sight of a K ration box afterwards.
No prepackaged meals have ever been as good as even mediocre fresh cooking. Yet people still buy frozen dinners and freeze-dried camping food. MREs seem to be in the same range as that stuff. You wouldn't want to live on them, but they sure beat starvation.
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