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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?
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?
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
You know, like dog chow or cat chow.
Why is Snark Required?
This problem has been solved for decades.
Check out the Wiki page on how many different menus there are for MREs.
As for injuring the soldiers' teeth these are combat rations, MREs, stuff you eat when bullets are flying, and therefore the least of your worries.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Microwaves for combat rations?
What are they going to plug them into? A current bush?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Just hold it in front of the anti-aircraft radar for 30 seconds.
There's a reason the first microwave ovens were called "Radaranges" (http://www.radar58.com/radarange/radar.html), and were made by the Amana division of Raytheon, a military radar manufacturer.
Nobody is planning to serve it in restaurants.
..... or are they?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Well ... maybe they also use some heat/radiation methods to kill bacteria?
The article mentions using iron filings to remove the oxygen, which makes me suspect they use an air tight container. So, if you manage to not have any bacteria in there, in the first place, and that air tight container is any good, I don't suspect anything living to take a bite from that slice, except when somebody actually intends to do so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... No, it was a commercial food product that got adapted for military use.
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?
Don't be a prisoner to the circle! French-bread pizza can be awesome - use the top and bottom halves of a loaf as the crusts and pile as many topping as you can. Use big enough chunks and you can stack that sucker as tall as the original loaf.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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
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...
So the army bought all the remaining stocks of Twinkies and converted them into pizza?
. . . and then put the top and bottom halves back together to make a giant sub sandwich, wrap it in bacon to keep it together, dip it in batter, and deep fry it!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I can assure you the seals on the MRE's are airtight. After Katrina I went through about 5 cases of them myself. The entree's seal is about 8 mils of rubbery but laminated aluminum backed plastic. They have those curls cut in the end that make you think it should be a tear-able edge, but all that happens is the plastic stretches a little. I never had a problem once the knife came out though. Those MRE's are as well sealed as the tires on my car. The M&M's and Skittles were in their standard packaging. The little packets of gum were hard as rocks, and were rumored to contain a mild laxative. I can't speak to that, as I spat them out the instant I stuck them in my mouth. Nasty. I still have a collection of really tiny Tabasco bottles. One with every meal, you know.
The pasta dishes were by far the tastiest. The chicken cacciatore in particular was quite good. The tomato based sauces were all pretty ok, but they just tasted a little off. Metallic, maybe. The meat entrees suffered a little bit more by the processing. Anything beef was better by than anything pork. The "pork ribs" was a large piece of jerky-style pork pressed into a childs rendition of a Mc-Rib and stored in this weird transparent BBQ sauce preservative. Ewwww. The crackers and packets of peanut butter and jelly were completely normal. The "bread" depended on where the MRE was manufactured. The ones that came from the midwest were better. The bread was a thick fig-newton shaped bar of pressed bread. Ugly as sin, but it tasted OK. The MRE's that were made in the east had bread that was shaped like a bread icon but tasted like cardboard. The only thing that was truly inedible was the omelette. Trust me, trade the omelette for an extra pack of the sport-drink.
The chemical heaters didn't really do that good of a job heating the food. I suspect that with time, the aggressiveness of the reaction fades a bit. I'd just boil a pot of water and drop the whole entree packets in to heat them up.
4th thing: not being already dead.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."