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Why are MRE's NOT irradiated ????? The shelf life would be unlimited, if I understand correctly.

Could you specify "irradiated" for me?
Do you mean
- the MRE itself is emitting Radiation
- the MRE was sterilized by Y-Radiation

If you mean to sterilice by radiation, there is a common misconception about that procedure, radiation, using UV light for example, only sterilices as far as the ray of light goes, so on opaque surfaces, you only sterilice the most outerns layer of the object, that type of procedure is usefull for when you have surfaces you cant put into a sterilicer, like lab tables, fume extractors and things like that or you have objects you cant sterilice with heat, like plastic test tubes and similar. For the rest of things, the best sterilisation method it to heat with steam up to 121º C and 1 atm of pressure, that is the gold standard for sterilisation, and its what is used on most of the steriliced equipment like the tools for surgery and things like that...
Its also posible to use liquids and gasses to sterilice, but they hare really niche uses...
As for sterilicing a mre and making it last for ever, that is a misconception... when you sterilice you kill all baterias, but the food will still decay from natural processes and turn rancid from the naturaly ocurring chemical reactions from the compounds in the food. In fact, mre are mostly sterile, if you see canned food, even from the supermarket, its sterile, the diference is that mre are made to last longer, and will have better cans, and better preservatives...

i hope the info was usefull!


Source: i study medicine and worked for a couple of days at stem cell research lab

carlosflar wrote:If you mean to sterilice by radiation, there is a common misconception about that procedure, radiation, using UV light for example, only sterilices as far as the ray of light goes, so on opaque surfaces, you only sterilice the most outerns layer of the object, that type of procedure is usefull for when you have surfaces you cant put into a sterilicer, like lab tables, fume extractors and things like that or you have objects you cant sterilice with heat, like plastic test tubes and similar. For the rest of things, the best sterilisation method it to heat with steam up to 121º C and 1 atm of pressure, that is the gold standard for sterilisation, and its what is used on most of the steriliced equipment like the tools for surgery and things like that...
Its also posible to use liquids and gasses to sterilice, but they hare really niche uses...
b

I assume he was referring to more aggressive sterilization techniques. A while ago now some food manufacturers have been using Gamma Radiation to post-sterilize some commercial foods (irradiated after final packaging).

For MRE thermal stabilized pouches, this could actually be detrimental. Gamma radiation can be destructive to some polymeric materials with which the packaging is made. Also, thermally stabilized pouches are sterilized via temperature quite effectively. I can't imagine adding a gamma radiation step would be of any value.

there are levels of ''purity'' we could say... from example when we used glassware and tools for to use with stem cells, not only they had to be steriliced (no living organisms there) but also free of any remain of any cell component, to do that, you have to heavily radiate the tools to clean them to a perfect state... but if you only want to kill bacteries and any living organism, you use heat, 121ºC and 1atm, that is confirmed to kill every single cell if done properly, and its not hard to do, on the other hand, radiating, i think for food is useless and could mess up the taste really bad... just imagine how the light afects beers and wines and worsens the taste...