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Zeiti wrote:They should include some REAL toilet paper, or even better some wet toilet paper , single packed ( THIS was my most favorated item in the field )

LOL, either that or disposable underpants!

Especially if you've just been delpoyed and haven't yet adjusted to eating MREs fulltime.

I take MREs backpacking and I use almost every component. One and a half meals usually gets me through a day. I spread them out throughout the day. I ate them for four days straight on one trip. I just love the idea of having perfectly portioned meals with everything you need in one bag.

MREs are given to everyone from line troops to REMFs and civies. They cover alot of different nationalities and ethnic backgrounds. I think they do a good job. Not perfect ,but its pretty tuff being a jack of all trades.

Isnt Natick addressing the field stripping issue and working on meals that are more suited to field use.


Its good all the other countries use cans still,now even us low tech types will be able to find you .

That's not really a valid excuse - as there are so many MRE variants now that trying to make the main MREs a "jack-of-all-trades" is not really true anymore. Granted there may be shortages of some variant at certain times, but that still doesn't take away from the fact that they are over-packaged.

What do you mean by overpackaged? That the retort pouchs are in cardboard?

As you mentioned Natick is working on stripping the MREs down to reduce the bulk they represent. There is the box around each pouch, plus the small plastic pouches that hold the various other items which in turn are packaged and then the main plastic pouch.

As I noted above during the Nato forces evaluation of various rations the US rations were tops in sheer quantity of garbage after use.

It's not a real problem at home as we have access to garbage disposal but in the field it's too much additional bulk.

k man makes a great point. The old MCI was actually a pretty good, pretty basic ration. If the contents of a C ration were put into retort pouches, that would be the perfect ration, weight and garbage wise. Now I dont for a second recomend that the old C ration menus be ressurected, because they were pretty bland(the chocolate toffee discs were pretty bloody good though!), but maybe back to the future is the way to go.

The US Armed Forces are the best, strongest and richest in the world. So everybody expects their rations to be of the same high quality as all other US made stuff. It just doesn't make sense to send the wealthiest soldiers to combat with only a simple, meager combat ration. That's the reason your MRE's are so luxury, compared to others.

I agree that almost all military rations have too many components when you're in the field, or waging a war. But when a soldier has to kill many hours of waiting and hanging around, then these over loaded rations make sense. Unpacking all the nifty items can be fun!
Another reason is that a certain percentage of the items are not liked by soldiers. But other items are more popular with soldiers. Nobody is the same, so you can trade or just throw away the things you do not need.
(BTW: I do not like the coffee in any ration.)

Do MRE's produce too much waste? I do not think so. It may look like the new rations produce more waste than the old ones, but probably that is only a matter of false interpratations of the waste piles!
Tin cans are more expensive to produce, very hard to get rid of (they will not burn), they weigh much more and are "form stabile", which means the do not adept to the form of your spare space of your combat troucers!!
Who has ever tried to store a tin can together with an rifle magazine in the same pouch? You surely will understand that a MRE main entree is easy to store together with a magazine. BTW: The plastic MRE pouches have to be thick and strong to withstand the forces that they have to cope with... (No one likes a main entree emptied in his rucksack.)

Conlusion: I like C Rat's with lots of items, especially the MRE's.

Rations serve one purpose. To feed infantryman. They are not cereal boxes with decoder rings inside. They need to stuff 3000 calories into an individual who has more on his mind than haute cuisine. Being Dutch, and not having fought a war that lasted more than 4 days, you would not understand. Rations need to be simple, filling, palatable, and most of all, LIGHT.

3000 calories? Where do people get this information from? The average MRE has between 1200-1300 calories in them.

No offence but it seems this myth has taken on a life of it's own even among servicemen.