MREInfo News

Here’s an article from Popular Mechanics about a review they did of three different types of Emergency Food Ration bars: The ER Bar, Datrex, and Mainstay:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/worst_case_scenarios/4219185.html?series=29
Excerpt:

While the Mainstay bar received the highest ratings on average, its strong lemon flavor was polarizing-some staffers loved it, some hated it. The Datrex bar consistently received neutral ratings, even reminding one editor of dried biscotti. The ER Bar, while the favorite of one staffer, received low marks and was described as “soapy.” For everything else you need to know to prepare for a disaster, see PM’s August cover story, “Facing Down Disaster.”

You can discuss this article in the MREInfo.com Forums here.

As you can tell from some of the dates in this section, I took a break from updating the news section. For the past year, I’ve been posting most of the new stuff over in the Forums. But with all the new stuff coming in, I think I’ll give the News section another try.

So here we are in 2005 but there’s still no sign of the 2005 MRE menus on the DSCP’s web site. That’s kind of strange, especially seeing as last year, the 2004 menus were posted in late 2003.

Of course, you can pretty much figure out what the 2005 menus are going to look like based on the MRE improvements page (or see the official page here.

In one of the comments sections, Steve was asking for more info on Australian rations packs. I’ve been working on that web page and it should be up soon. But until then, here are a couple of links:

Digger History
Great Japanese Rations site. You’ll need to run this through Babelfish if you don’t read Japanese and want more than pictures.

I was doing some googling today and ran across this Air Force site with lots of pics and videos from the Humanitarian Relief Mission from Operation Enduring Freedom. The pics are mostly from October - December, 2001, and show how the Humanitarian Daily Rations (HDRs) were loaded onto C-17s and airdropped into Afghanistan.

I’ve included a few sample pics below (click on them for larger versions), but I’d also encourage you to visit the site above for more.

A buddy of mine has recently returned from Iraq and brought back a whole case of British rations for me. Woohoo! A few interesting things about the rations…first off…that case is heavy! There are 10 rations per case (one ration = food for one day) and the whole case weighs about 45 lbs.

Another interesting thing I’ve noted so far is that neither the case nor the individual ration packs are marked with the menu letter or a date - that area on the box is just blank (pictures coming later).

And finally, the contents of the rations aren’t matching up with the menu listing. For example, one ration contains “Sausage & Beans” and “Pork Casserole” entrees. But the sausage is supposed to be in menu C and the pork in menu D. It looks like they’re just mixing and matching ration parts.

Maybe this is standard practice for British rations or maybe they were in such a hurry to get new rations into the field that they gave up marking the boxes and making sure all the parts matched up.

Check it out: over at Redsix’s blog, Armor Geddon he has a post and a picture about how tank crews heat up their water:

From the blog:

Mr. Abrams the coffee maker. If you take the lid of a .50cal ammo box and pound the side lips down, you can slip the lid into the back grill of the exhaust. Then set your canteen cup for about 2 minutes. Let the 900 degree exhaust of your jet engine heat that puppy up and BAM - hot water for shaving, Ramen noodles, coffee, washing your face, etc.

Excerpt from The Canton Daily Ledger:

A specially trained team from the Texas Forest Service came to the Florida panhandle and set up logistical staging areas, where truckloads of food, water, and ice were brought in, unloaded and reloaded for distribution, and sent out to the distribution sites throughout the county. During the two-week period, the Logistical Staging Area in Santa Rosa County served 74,245 carloads of people, distributing 530,045 gallons of water, 1,393,648 MRE’s (”Meals Ready-to-Eat,” commonly used by the U.S. military), and 3,387,500 pounds of ice.

Wow…that’s just over 116,000 cases of MREs or 2400+ pallets. And judging from some of the ebay auctions I’ve seen lately, they were sending them brand-new stock from 2004.

From The Courier Press:

AmeriQual to supply more meals to troops

November 6, 2004

Vanderburgh County-based AmeriQual Foods Inc., which produces Meals Ready to Eat for the U.S. Department of Defense, was awarded a government contract worth more than $21 million this week.
Under the contract, AmeriQual will produce thousands more MREs to feed U.S. troops and federal civilian agencies.
It comes on the heels of a defense department contract of more than $16.2 million awarded to AmeriQual on Sept. 23.
Both contracts are for MREs for the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and federal civilian agencies, according to the defense department Web site.
The completion date for the latest contract is expected to be March 31, 2005. The completion date on the earlier contract is Jan. 31, 2005. A spokesman for AmeriQual could not be reached for comment.
The company has received a number of other defense contracts in recent years.
AmeriQual produces some two dozen different types of MREs, including mesquite chicken, seafood jambalaya, salmon fillet and sloppy joe, all in a pouch.
The meals are designed to sustain an individual engaged in heavy activity, such as helping to fight the war in Iraq, when normal food-service facilities are unavailable.
The bag is lightweight and fits easily into military field clothing pockets. A flameless ration heating device also is provided.
The shelf life of an MRE is three years at 80 degrees Fahrenheit. However, the shelf life can be extended through the use of cold storage facilities prior to distribution.
In addition to its effort to feed American military personnel, AmeriQual has commercial contracts to produce and/or package products for major companies.

Welcome to the new MREInfo news section!

Every day it seems I run across some new interesting article or website on MREs and ration-related stuff. I usually read it, bookmark it, or save it for “later use” - which usually means it gets filed away for that mythical time in the future when I’ll have the free time to integrate the new bit of info into the web site. But I’ve had to admit to myself that this mythical time will never arrive and all this good info I have saved up is just sitting there on my PC. So why not let it sit here on the Internet and at least other people will be able to make use of it.

So I’m giving this a try. I’ll be adding in whatever looks fun. Hope you like it.