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Scientists Create Pizza That Can Last Years
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the US Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center have created a pizza that can be stored for up to three years while still remaining edible. 'It pretty much tastes just like a typical pan pizza that you would make at home and take out of the oven or the toaster oven,' said Jill Bates who heads up the lab. 'The only thing missing from that experience would be it's not hot when you eat it. It's room temperature.'"
The good news is that after three years it still tastes better than Dominos.
Who did what now?
Pre-made pizzas these days are so bad. They either taste too much like a tomato or they are dry.
I'd sooner make a hacky-at-best pizza using some standard bread slices flattened and shaped more or less in to a circle and then ingredients on it. At least then I know it will actually taste of something.
Plus, making that is so easy. Even the biggest turbo NEETs could do that.
It would still be warmer than the average delivery pizza.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If they only just close enough to finalizing the recipe now how do they know it will last three years?
Does it really take yet another invention to prove that human resources can survive on a soilent-green diet and alike? Sounds to me like an unnecessary all time low in the already moribund eating culture some western nations have committed to.
I guess in 3 years scientists will be researching bacteria, that eats the pizza, to clear the pollution that it will cause meanwhile
How do they stop it spoiling ? Bacteria need 3 things to grow: moisture, time and nutrients (something to digest to provide energy). The article says that they keep it moist and try hard to remove oxygen, but things like Anaerobic bacteria don't need oxygen. They make it slighly acidic which might help, but too acidic and it will damage soldiers' teeth. The other way of stopping things growing in it is to remove nutritional content -- which is presumably the reason that soliders need to eat it. Hmmmm.
... while still remaining as edible as it was to start with.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
they could amke a decent crust that I could put my own sauce cheese and stuffings on, and that I could cut into small pieces.
Bobboli's just doesn't cut it and pillsbury is too greasy.
PS: The army should learn about microwaves. Then they would get warm pizza,
4 years old frozen burrito he found buried in the back of the fridge.
When I told him what he was doing, he just shrugged and carried on munching.
Nothing happened. And that had meat and vegetables in it.
So yeah, 3 years old Pizza is nothing special.
How long will it take until some disgruntled ex-Fort-Detrick employee sends such an abomination of Pizza to some US offcials to make them aware of their atrocity?
Back when I was in college.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
kevlar body armor
I can't remember how long ago it was (a decade or more, IIRC) they were irradiating uncooked food for long term shelf(room temp) storage.
I think they irradiated some raw chicken carcasses to test, and were going to test and taste them after 10 years.
I have not heard a single thing about this since.
Wonder what came out of the 10 year fowl experiment?
Now, they are trying 5 year pizza. Hmmm.
Past experience in the military has taught me that when they start experimenting with field rations, nightmares frequently result.
In my day, fights over the few edible entrees packed in the C-rations resulted in more severe(and numerous) casualties than accidents, Acts of God/Nature, poor planning, and Demon Murphy taking over, than all of 'enemy action' casualties combined during the 'Reign of the C-Rats'.
If you were the unfortunate troop to find 'beef stew' in you ration pack WITHOUT a p-38 to defend your life, it turned gruesome quickly!(p-38's were only included in one out of five ration packs, and were highly coveted items.)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
How bad that pizza must be if even microbes don't like its taste!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
for Valentine's Day three years from now.
it would be labeled "Pizza Component"
MRE:
- Meals Ready to Eat
- Meals Regurgitated by Everyone
- Martian Rectal Ectoplasm
You know, like dog chow or cat chow.
Why is Snark Required?
Notice the missing adjectives! Like good, tasty, nutritious, delicious, just like ma used to make. If you guessed "edible", you WIN.
What did Jeeve Sobs' study report?
Sounds pretty gross but...can't be worse than Pizza Hut.
p>If you were the unfortunate troop to find 'beef stew' in you ration pack WITHOUT a p-38 to defend your life, it turned gruesome quickly!(p-38's were only included in one out of five ration packs, and were highly coveted items.)
Not surprising. It has to be really hard to fit one of those things into a ration pack.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Air Force officer here. I've eaten MREs. They are nasty. I can tell you this pizza is most likely disgusting as well. It's all fun and games to joke about 4 year old frozen burritos, luke warm pizza delivery, etc... but there is no comparison. MREs are a last resort option because there is no other food available, and they turn your digestive tract into a living nightmare.
Now that Pizza in the back of some college kids mini fridge really is going to have been there for at least three years.
And decades ago, Asimov ranted about processed "cheese" that never went bad. His take: if even bacteria won't eat it, is it really food?
P-38 is a can opener, but yeah parent poster really should define their terms.
After a nuclear war they'll find footprints leading to the only thing that hasn't dissolved. Just like the Clovis people controversy, there'll be an argument whether the makers originated in Europe like the Salutreans. It'll be a wonder in a museum.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
I was going to say they just re-invented Pizza Hut pizza, but then I saw the part about it being edible. At least they don't have to worry about Pizza Hut suing for patent infringement.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
This is a good step in the right direction. They now have about 18 months to come up with a fully rehydratable, dehydrated pizza.
That is, of course, once they've sorted out proper hoverboards and Mr Fusion.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I can't decide whether you're talking about the fighter plane, the pistol, or the can opener. The plane is the most amusing of the three.
Sounds like you've just got shitty delivery services in your area. I've never had a cold delivery pizza, ever.
The Amarri pray for god, the Caldari pray for profit. the Gallente pray for peace, but the Minmatar pray their ships hol
That's 4 years while frozen. Almost anything intended for refridgeration can handle being stored for long-term so long as the temperature holds. This however is 3 years on the shelf with no temperature controls at all. There are very few things that can make that particular claim. Just ask anyone that works in your local Target/Wal-mart/regional groccery about product rotation. Only candy manages to hit the 3 year mark, and that's pushing it.
The Amarri pray for god, the Caldari pray for profit. the Gallente pray for peace, but the Minmatar pray their ships hol
Past experience in the military has taught me that when they start experimenting with field rations, nightmares frequently result. In my day, fights over the few edible entrees packed in the C-rations resulted in more severe(and numerous) casualties than accidents, Acts of God/Nature, poor planning, and Demon Murphy taking over, than all of 'enemy action' casualties combined during the 'Reign of the C-Rats'. If you were the unfortunate troop to find 'beef stew' in you ration pack WITHOUT a p-38 to defend your life, it turned gruesome quickly!(p-38's were only included in one out of five ration packs, and were highly coveted items.)
20 years ago, when i was serving in the Greek marines (as a conscript - a requirement for all capable male Greeks), in an joint exercice taking place in Italy i had the opportunity to experience the field rations of several NATO allies. The -unfortunate- USA marines and British royal marines were eager to trade their rations with us Greeks (in the begining we were curious about their "edible thing" -i am not calling it food... sorry!- so we always agreed happily, later we just took pity on them and gave them our rations without demanding theirs), but everyone (including us Greeks) were admiring the Italian ones (almost restaurant level quantity and -more important- quality) - of cource i understand the logistic reasons for that "edible thing" and i even accept that the quality of it was inversely proportional to the fighting ability...
With enough synthetic chemicals and a complete disregard for nutritional value, you can get the complete American pan pizza experience.
I don't know if this is just a north east thing but we used to make pizzas by taking half an English muffin and putting sauce, cheese and toppings on it and then put it in a oven. That was a quick, easy, and tasty.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Well sure, stuff is pretty stable while frozen - microbial activity approaches zero, and chemical degradation is a far slower process that mostly just gradually robs food of flavor and nutrients.
Now, if your burrito had been sitting on an open shelf in a warehouse for 4 years instead it would likely have been a very different narrative.
But I'd still side with your roommate - if the flavor's okay and I've already swallowed a couple bites, then why not? Worst case the extra backup gives the infection that's already been established a few hours head start.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Not really, but it can only be done reliably when The Doctor is around to lend the use of a dimensional stabilizer.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I mean, at least I assume it's already here, all I keep hearing is how 3D printing is the greatest revolution ever.
I've seen "Ghosts of Mars". I know how it works out when you find a bunch of canned food and no can opener.
It would be less offensive to the tastebuds, as Beta is to the eyeballs.
So the army bought all the remaining stocks of Twinkies and converted them into pizza?
On the other hand, this might well fit in a ration pack, and really would be handy for defending your beef stew...
Perhaps it'll taste like grocery-store, refrigerated-truck, warehouse-shelf toppings, but it won't taste anything like my pizza. My pizza, with farm-fresh toppings that have never seen a truck, nor a refrigerator, nor even a shelf, goes bad in about twelve hours -- with visible mould in 24 hours.
Many people have said "it's so bad, even the dog won't eat it". Well I've always said: "if mould doesn't want to eat it, neither do I."
So if your pizza keeps for three years, it lacks any form of nutrition. It's not for me.
Only a person with a broad base of mediocre pizza experience would accept a shelf-stable product approximating reheated previously-frozen pan pizza at room temperature.
same
First Twinkies and now this.
What will the next lull in cold war profiteering result in?
Forever Tacos
Burritos With a Half-Life
Gene engineered Buffalo Wings from real Buffaloes
Nutrition doesn't have to be engineered. It just needs to be living.
Actually 3 year long shelf-stability tests for consumer package food products are not uncommon. One of my college friends, a food technology major, got a summer internship at Nabisco -- what did they have all these foodie interns do? They got to do sampling on shelf stability tests :) Measure, observe, sniff, and.... taste. I asked her if there was ever anything she couldn't bring herself to taste. Answer: "Yes. I had already written 'Looks like dog vomit' and 'Smells like dog vomit' on the report form. I skipped the taste test on that one.'"
Who would really want THAT!?
One guy this will make happy is Pizza the Hut.
Table-ized A.I.
Twinkies supposedly last for just about ever too, but that doesn't mean you want to be eating them...
Stop it. Everybody knows a sonic screwdriver would work very well.
Nobody's commenting on someone being called Jill Bates? Really?
Some students were shipwrecked on a desert island, and that's exactly what they were able to salvage.
The geology major looks up at the cliffs, and says "there might be hard rocks up there. Maybe I could find some that we could use to bash the cans open", and he sets off exploring.
The chemistry major picks up a can and says "these aren't coated on the outside. So if we leave them in seawater eventually they'll rust and we can pop them open", and sets a few in a rock pool as a test.
The economics major stands up and says "assume that at price P1 the supply of can openers is Q1..."
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Mould would want to eat the pizza, but there isn't any inside the package to eat it.
If you have a flat rock which is not excessively smooth, you can open a can reasonably gracefully.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
PJs may have leaked their secret ingredients.....
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
You know what else lasts for years without refrigeration? Flour, canned tomato sauce, dry yeast, some cheeses and dry pepperoni.
Those MRE's are as well sealed as the tires on my car.
Unquestionably the MREs are sealed better than your car tires.
The little packets of gum were hard as rocks, and were rumored to contain a mild laxative
Wouldn't be surprising. I have some cousins who served in the army and they informed me that MREs will constipate you rather badly if you have to eat them continuously for a while. I'm guessing that is on purpose since you really don't want an army getting a bad case of the runs.
I've had MREs from time to time. Not exactly fine dining but I've eaten things from actual restaurants that were nastier than some of the contents. A few of the items in them were actually fairly decent and all are calorie dense. If you are a picky eater you are going to hate them but if not they are generally decent if not pleasant fare.
One of the best SNL skits EVAR!
http://youtu.be/BpyUmVFYrp4
Your government won't tell you that, but it's true, Glenn Beck told me.
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I visited Slashdot on my PC after lots of months of strictly visiting on my tablet. I couldn't believe when I read about it, but my GOD HOW THE BETA SUCKS!
This is *almost* comparable to the mess the new version of the dick-shaped StumbleUpon created. Almost.
... I was going to make a funny comment about how Pizza Hut had already done that (well, it feels like it lasts for years in my gullet), but then I saw the bit about the pizzas actually being edible and we all know that Pizza Hut has not done that yet.
linquendum tondere
C'mon, guys, the right link isn't that hard to find...
Really... I hardly consider field exercises to be bullets flying. if you've got bullets flying, you're generally not stopping to pull your damned MRA out of the lava hot heater bag. Though, with the addition of a plastic bottle you can use them to make some fairly effective improvised weapons. My favorite was mixing the cocoa and peanut butter to make a "reese cup".
I'm not exagerting or being sarcastic - we really need to be pouring more money into making pizza even better. It's nature's perfect food, where would any of us be without it? It's there for us a 3am Saturday when we're hammering out a solution. It doesn't judge. It doesn't talk back. You don't need to have a meeting with it to discuss anything. It's there for you 24hours/day. It's pizza, and it's awesome. Let's try to make it even better.
that you should...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Casteism
I take things differently and make pizzas that are instantly inedible.
Not exactly US Army issue though, is it?