What is vital for a good lightweight MRE?

[Gustinas]

Hello members of the forum I want to introduce myself a little bit before asking questions. I'm last course food technology student in Kaunas University of Applied Sciences. I've fell in love with MRE's when doing my basic military training. I also love experimenting with food, so that's why I chose to study food technology. While doing my military training I've noticed, that the MRE's our military is using are good, but not quite compact, in my opinion a soldier needs to keep his backpack as light as possible while still having good functionality and contents. For my thesis and final work I've decided to work on a lightweight ration, similar to a LRP, since our university has decent freeze drying equipment I'm planning to do a freeze dried main, beef stew with white milk sauce and vegetables (carrots,onion,sweet pepper), and this is why I'm here. Most of you are really experienced in the field of military rations, so I'm here to ask you what would make a great lightweight ration? Thank you for your anwsers in advance!

[carlosflar]

With the freeze dried rations you have to keep in mind that you are trading weight for increased water needs and preparation time...
With a regular retort pouch you can eat it cold and quickly in a hurry, it will not be the best meal of your life, right, but it's better to be able to eat "wet" food than to have to munch on freeze-dried beans because you don't have the time to reconstitute them... So because you need to be able to eat something on the go and in a hurry I'd design the ration in a way that it will allow you to do that, that means having food that you can eat both ways, hidrated or dry or having things that don't need preparation like chocolate and other snacks.
Keep in mind there are some foods that hidrated really well and others that are horrible to rehidrate, like punto beans, they take a really long time to rehidrate...
If you are trying to minimize the size of the packages aside from making the packaging better etc, you can store part of the food directly as powder, it will reconstitute faster that way, ocupy less space in comparison to a freeze dried equivalent that is not pulverized and it will alow the user to eat quicker... Something like this can be for example potato flakes to make mashed potatoes, they ocupy little space, you can make the same with other foods, like powdered pudding, eggs, soup/purees, formula etc...
But you have to keep in mind morale too, probably it's better to have a ration that weights a little more but it's more palatable and practical than to have a little less weight and eating mashed potatoes every day...

[Gustinas]

With the freeze dried rations you have to keep in mind that you are trading weight for increased water needs and preparation time...
With a regular retort pouch you can eat it cold and quickly in a hurry, it will not be the best meal of your life, right, but it's better to be able to eat "wet" food than to have to munch on freeze-dried beans because you don't have the time to reconstitute them... So because you need to be able to eat something on the go and in a hurry I'd design the ration in a way that it will allow you to do that, that means having food that you can eat both ways, hidrated or dry or having things that don't need preparation like chocolate and other snacks.
Keep in mind there are some foods that hidrated really well and others that are horrible to rehidrate, like punto beans, they take a really long time to rehidrate...
If you are trying to minimize the size of the packages aside from making the packaging better etc, you can store part of the food directly as powder, it will reconstitute faster that way, ocupy less space in comparison to a freeze dried equivalent that is not pulverized and it will alow the user to eat quicker... Something like this can be for example potato flakes to make mashed potatoes, they ocupy little space, you can make the same with other foods, like powdered pudding, eggs, soup/purees, formula etc...
But you have to keep in mind morale too, probably it's better to have a ration that weights a little more but it's more palatable and practical than to have a little less weight and eating mashed potatoes every day...

Thank you for your informative reply, and i really apreciate it. Few months ago I've tried making 3 kinds of cerial bars in a tight vacuum square package, inside was protective foil, outside was dark plastic, so with low moisture content it would be quite shelf stable. One was type was with dark chocolate chips, other one with dried cranberries, other with freeze dried cheese chips and natural bacon flavouring. 2 of them were perfect to eat as it is or rehydrated (cheese and bacon and cranberry) the chocolate one when rehydrated had a unpleasant colour I still find it important when it id possible to be able to warm up the food either by rehydrating with hot water or heating up a can or with a frh, and still be able to eat it straight out of the box without heating. In cold weather conditions like here in Lithuania it is really important to have a possibility to have hot food or drinks. I'll look into what I can do with mashed potatoes, to make them more interesting.

[housil]

Check out the Epicenter channel, they do a lot of freeze drying

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQFf6Z ... YxivHR-oKA