Beef Taco #6

[DangerousDave]

Is it just me, or do some of the current meals seem unbalanced? I just opened a Sopakco 6-2013 Beef Taco. Yea, had the taco filling and tortilla's. I thawt I saw it was suppossed to be crackers somewhere, OK, but then this one had Peanut Butter, Grape Jelly and BBQ sauce, along with applesauce astronaut tube, and reguler Cheeze-It's pack. What the ? Am I suppossed to dip the Cheese-It's in the PB&J or?

[Norton]

It seems to be missing regular crackers, the peanut butter and jelly should give you a second snack or even a breakfast meal if necessary. So it should have MRE Crackers or at least two packs of tortillas to spread the PB&J on. I have done this before and it's not bad Now what is the BBQ sauce for? Is the idea to make a BBQ Taco? I would rather have salsa than BBQ sauce for a taco
This meal would be a good fit for both the Jalapeno Cheese and salsa pack,

[SugarLord]

This must be ongoing. I have just opened up a Beef Taco MRE (Menu 6) to find:

Beef Taco Filling
Plain Tortillas
Cheese filled pepperoni cracker (i.e. Cheeze-its)
Zapplesauce
Fruit punch Electrolytic drink
Apple Jelly
Peanut Butter
Flameless Heater
Cardboard sleeve
Sundries packet (Matches, Gum, Tissue, Coffee sachet, Non-dairy creamer sachet, Sugar sachet, Salt sachet and moist towelette)
Long handled spoon
Hot Beverage bag
Saltless seasoning sachet.

So, like you, I have nothing to eat with my Peanut Butter and Apple jelly. I'll just have to suck em from the tube!

[parafireboy]

Wow, that is certainly an oversight by the contractor SugarLord. It would seem to be common sense, but obviously this is a fairly normal occurrence. Crazy!

[SugarLord]

Well, I always try to carry a small supply of Bath Oliver Biscuits for just such an eventuality, but I imagine anyone out in the field would be pissed!

[RockyRaab]

Many MRE menus make little sense. I have always thought that when NATICK sets the meal contents they look only at the calorie count and pay no attention whatever to what people would choose to eat as a meal. Sausage and gravy with crackers? (Menu 20) C'mon.

[gschultz9]

MREs have improved so much over the past few decades. It's great that Natick is ALWAYS looking to make them better and trying to keep them interesting for the soldiers rather than just putting out the same thing year after year after year. But...it's true that sometimes some of the components just don't seem to go well together in some of the menus. Because of the inclusion of TWO spreads in this one (and the fact that they'd make a perfectly fine all-american item like a PB&J sandwich with a twin pack of Wheat Snack Bread, or at least make a nice snack on crackers) with NOTHING to put them on (unless you skip the obvious thing and DON'T use the Tortillas with the Taco Filling--duh) just doesn't make any sense. I'm sure they have a lot to deal with with new menus and random items getting added to and pulled from menus every year, along with the fact that they need to keep up with the nutritional balance that Rocky mentioned, but still.

Looking at the menus it appears that this problem started in 2013, when the Beef Taco Filling replaced Beef Roast with Vegetables as Menu 6. The problem that year was that, while they DID include Crackers for the PB&J, they DIDN'T include any tortillas or anything else to put the Beef Taco FILLING into! They fixed that oversight in 2014 by adding the obvious Totrillas, BUT also got rid of the Crackers! It's amazing that, despite how many sweets they seem to put into some of the menus, they seem to be obsessed about NOT providing more than one bread product! So while they fixed the Taco Filling problem they created another one with the PB&J with nothing to put them on! While I haven't had a chance to check out the 2016 version it looks like they FINALLY caught on to the problem. Apparently the PB&J have been cut out and replaced with Cheese Spread (which can of course be used with the Taco Filling and Tortillas). Even with 24 separate menus it seems like SOMEONE at Natick would have noticed the PB&J problem in less than THREE YEARS!

[SugarLord]

Thanks for the info gschultz9.

This MRE has a 2014 date of manufacture for your information. So the contents will be in date for ages yet.

As a Diabetic, in general I would prefer the cheese spread (especially if it was with jalepenos), but I'd still love some crackers! Or leave out the spread altogether and add some Almonds or cashews to make up to the same calorific value.

Nevertheless, I am looking forward to the pleasure of my first MRE entree for many years. (The kids can have the Zapplesauce and other sugary stuff!)

[gschultz9]

This MRE has a 2014 date of manufacture for your information. So the contents will be in date for ages yet.

Well, the good news is that, according to what the menu says here at MREInfo (which I consider to be quite reliable, natch) in 2016 they got rid of the Peanut butter and Jelly and added Cheese Spread! That was what I was referring to. It took a few years for them to catch onto their mistake (oversight?), but it looks like someone finally noticed that they gave soldiers TWO spreads (nice idea) and NOTHING to put them on (dumb idea). Now, while there still isn't really anything to put the Cheese Spread on if you use the Tortillas to make tacos out of the Beef Taco Filling (which I think most people would expect them to do) at least it's something that you can add to to the tacos. It's not a "perfect" menu, but at least a big improvement over the problem you and DangerousDave (and countless others I'm sure) encountered!

Now, of course it will probably take a couple years before most of us here are able to get our hands on current 2016 DOP MREs, but I guess at least it's something to look forward to!

[RockyRaab]

Because of this thread, I took a Beef Taco TOTM out on the boat yesterday. It was packed on 5023 and contained the beef, crackers, zapplesauce, patriotic cookies, raisins, L&L drink, hot pepper flakes and the usual stripped-down acc pack.

Despite this being a new FRH, I tried the added salt trick. About half the salt packet turned that thing into a nuclear FRH. It literally got too hot to handle, and the beef came out piping hot.

With the crackers, some pepper and half of the red pepper, it was a delicious lunch!