MRE's in the news

[thechip1]

Thought everyone might be interested in this from yesterday's Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... 5Mar1.html

[kman]

Thanks, thechip1! I was reading that yesterday and thought it was a decent article.

[DIRTYDAVE]

It is asking me for an email and pw, what is your email and pw Kman? LOL!

[German_EPA]

i saw MRE and HDR (single and cases) very often in the last days on N-TV (www.n-tv.de) when they were reporting from the haiti earthquake.

[Bypah]

This was from Haiti...it comes from MSNBC...

[kman]

That's a pretty good article. I'll post a copy of it here for posterity's sake:

Making Military Meals, Easier to Take

By Terri Sapienza
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, March 2, 2005; Page F01


Chief Warrant Officer John Cantrell has torn into roughly 500 MREs -- Meals, Ready to Eat -- during his 20-year Army career, and he knows what to do when he gets one. He starts dealing.

"Everyone wants the Tootsie Rolls," said the Kansas native, 45, who's served in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia and Hungary. The chewy candies are in four of the current 24 MRE selections, and they hold up indefinitely. "I'll trade any of the fruit or any cakes or cookies for them," he says.

"A strawberry shake can usually be traded for a whole meal," e-mailed Marine Cpl. Richard Wade, 21, from Ramadi, Iraq. As "soon as a group of Marines opens up MREs, you'll start hearing them yelling out trades. Everyone has their own recipes. Some guys get pretty religious about it."

More than a million troops have been sent to Iraq and Afghanistan since terrorists struck New York and the Pentagon in 2001. Plenty of them have subsisted at least some of the time on MREs, the portable chow eaten in the field, although many day-to-day meals are prepared and served in mess halls. MREs don't get a lot of respect from the troops, who know them all by number. But today's descendants of canned rations are a technological wonder.

They must be able to hold up for three years at 80 degrees or six months at 100 degrees, withstand airdrops from thousands of feet and fit into a rucksack. Their long shelf life makes them attractive to survivalists, who buy MREs online. The foods are rated on a 1-9 scale for aroma, flavor, texture, appearance and overall quality. A menu is accepted if it scores a 6.5 or above overall.

MREs have changed significantly even from those of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Spaghetti with meat sauce has remained a constant, but vegetarian and lacto-ovo options (with dairy, but no animal or alcohol products) have been around since 1996. A wider range of ethnic entrees, such as this year's chicken fajitas, goes far beyond the pork chow mein offered in 1993.

They deliver at least 1,200 calories per meal (50 percent carbohydrates, 35 percent fat and 15 percent protein), or 3,600 per day for those who eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Complete menus range from 1,200 to 1,350 calories per meal, formulated to fuel troops who operate in high gear.

MREs contain a full meal, including a cardboard-boxed entree and side dish, dessert, and cracker or snack bread. Condiments, seasonings, utensils and flavored drink mixes are also included. And since the early 1990s, each one comes with a flameless ration heater.

MRE menu planning starts at the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Mass., part of the Defense Department's Combat Feeding Program. The program's blue-paneled building, referred to as " the blue palace," sits on a Defense Department campus on a 78-acre peninsula, surrounded by Lake Cochituate.

The combat feeding program employs about 100 people, primarily civilians. "We actively seek surveys and information from soldiers," says Max Biela, team leader for the Operational Forces Interface Group at Natick. Decisions on which rations stay in the MREs and which go are made "strictly by soldier input," he said.

For soldiers at various bases around the country, answering the call to MRE duty means testing items such as Meatballs in Marinara Sauce and Chicken and Dumplings, which will replace the Jambalaya and the Cajun Rice with Sausage in 2007 in MRE No. 27. Selected units that volunteer to participate while they're training in the field are asked to eat MREs for a period that usually runs from seven to 10 days, depending on the length of the field exercise, and then they fill out questionnaires.

The food technologists at Natick pay close attention to the feedback and adjust MRE menus accordingly on an annual basis, and the responses can be brutal.

"Few people like the brownies. They're dry as hell," said Cpl. Wade via e-mail.

While some menu items never really find a following, Judith Aylward, senior food technologist and registered dietitian with the Combat Feeding Program, said, "Comfort foods like beef stew have been enduring favorites since the beginning" -- MRE I dates from 1981. A current soldier favorite: Menu No. 8 -- Hamburger Patty with Mexican Macaroni & Cheese, Bacon-Cheese spread, barbecue sauce and wheat snack bread.

The military is nothing if not ingenious when it comes to doctoring MREs. Cantrell said a combination of the instant coffee and cocoa mixes makes a "good-tasting flavored coffee."

He's also experienced in the making of the "Ranger cookie." By pouring the sugar packet into the powdered creamer packet, sealing it up and heating it with an entire book of matches, a soldier can make the sugar and creamer crystallize into a white mass, resembling "a big piece of Alka-Seltzer," Cantrell said. But in the end, the cooking process appears to be more appreciated than the taste: "They're something you make if you're bored."

A perennial favorite for troops is hot sauce, specifically McIlhenny's Tabasco. A sauce like Tabasco, barbecue or picante "gives them the option, as Emeril would say, 'to kick it up a notch,' " Aylward said.

The 0.12-ounce, mini-bottle of Tabasco (good for 45 drops) is a must-have among troops in the field, and a big trading item. "I use two or three if I can get my hands on them," said Wade. "That's what makes the meal edible to me. I usually bring my own hot sauce when I'm stateside."

McIlhenny has been providing soldiers with its peppery condiment since the Vietnam War. The company even developed a "Charlie Ration Cookbook," later renamed "The Unofficial MRE Recipe Booklet," with recipes for menu items found in MREs. "The mini bottle is included in 20 MRE menus; in 2002, for variety, Tabasco was replaced in four menus with other spicy flavorings such as a salt-free season blend and ground red pepper.

Other soldier favoritesare the cheese spreads, which the troops add to almost everything: "They are very creative -- adding cheese to entrees and crumbling crackers over the top," Aylward said.

"You start crushing the crackers with a hammer, then add [them] to the Tuna Casserole and then [add] the cheese packet, and it makes it delicious," said Cantrell.

Though candies, shakes and doctored entrees may please the palates of some members of the military, others say they'd rather live on peanuts. Lots of them apparently would like a few good slices of pizza.

"It's not out there yet," Aylward said. "But we're working on it."

Terri Sapienza is the Food section's editorial assistant. She last wrote about private bartenders for hire.

[kman]

But back to MREs and HDRs and Haiti...

I noticed there were dropping a lot of MREs for the first few days and now they seem to be distributing more HDRs. I heard some commentary about how the HDRs are more like Haitian cuisine than regular MREs - but in an emergency like this, I suppose any kind of food you can get would be good.

I did see one Reuters article this morning about how MREs were being distributed as food relief but the military forgot to tell the Haitians they're supposed to mix the MREs with water. Yeah...right...good reporting there, Reuters.

[DangerousDave]

Look at the folks in the background. The ones that got a HDR and a bottle of water, have to fight off bigger men, to keep the goods. F---ing savages.

[kman]

I heard a quote in the news the other day - something about how we're only 3 missed meals away from being in a similar situation - fighting over airdrops of food. It's hard for me to look at this situation and not see the same thing happening to us if a disaster on a similar scale were to occur.

[biscuits brown]

_47136457_ussoldiers_getty.jpg (24.6 KiB) Viewed 9115 times

Marines carrying what appear to be HDRs and MRE cases?

Pic via BBC website