Eating well under the gun

The Boston Globe ^ | 3/11/2003 | Beth Greenberg

[Radix]

Each single-meal MRE is targeted at 1,300 calories, and it's a challenge to get soldiers to eat all the nutrition they need.

[Leisler]

Hurmph! What kind of nephew of Uncle Sam are ya? Yes supposed to mix the peaches, with the pound cake and the powdered coffee dairy crap and make a cobbler! Some of the more effete would throw in the instant coffee and make some sort of hot bubbly peach thing( Hey, you're in the field, it's wet, cold and getting old, and what else can you do? You've done drank all the cough syrup.)

[Leisler]

I hate to say it, but Mum was such a bad cook, not that we knew as kids, that Army food was a step up and I almost always liked it.

[FreedomFarmer]

HA!

I thought they had a different name. Mealtime in the boonies, you could always hear "Ham and MOTHER..."something, which is why the NCO's alway opened the carton upside down.
(Those beans were almost always in the third box from the end.)

I've never seen an MRE, but I knew oldtimers that claimed to Love K rations. I really liked the freeze dried LRRP rats. Add water, roll the top, and stash it in your thigh pocket. I got a case of Airforce in-flight grub once. No taste in the air, but good in the mud.

The transdermal patches in the article sound nasty to me. Who wants to do PT down wind of someone wearing a Sour Beer and Pickled Pigs Feet patch.

[FreedomFarmer]

I know what you mean. In 10 years, I don't think I ever had a bad meal, (if a fella doesn't count the dock strike that got us powdered eggs every meal for a while..), and I did everything I could to look out for our cooks. Kept them ED from the duty roster, and sent them to any culinary school they wanted to attend.

[solzhenitsyn]

Thanks, andysandmikesmom, great story! Enjoy your retirement (won't those MREs be expired then?)

[cavtrooper21]

Yea, most of the senior NCOs in my first line unit called them by that indelicate name too, but since I did not want offend anyone (or bring back bad memories) I called them what it said on the side of the can!
MREs aint bad, I'm planning on getting 1 or 2 cases to keep around for emergency rations. Most surplus stores near a military post will have some lying around
Warning ! Make sure the case is glued shut... if it isn't, someone's been raiding the ol' cookie jar.
Scouts Out!

[andysandmikesmom]

They might be expired by then, tho I have heard some folks brag, that they will last forever....they are completely vacuum sealed, and I dont even know if there is an expiration date on them...I should go and check one of them, and see if they do expire....

I remember during the late 70s and early 80s, when my hubby was stationed at Ft. Bragg, he was still getting the rations in the cans, when they would have field duty...he would never eat those either...just brought them home....

But my dad, who was in WW11, always enjoyed those canned rations, I guess the C rations is what they were called...so we always saved them for when he came to visit us during the summer...he was a happy man, returning home to Chicago, with his box full of C rations...

Thanks for the good wishes for retirement...two years to go, and then we are outta here and on the road...

[Radix]

"The prisoners said it was cruel and unusual punishment, but the warden said that using MREs, were more cost effective, than prepared hot meals for the prisoners, and that this prison was saving money by serving MREs...he said if MREs were good enough for the military, they were good enough for the prisoners..."

Who gives a sheite about the prisoners?

According to the Boston Globe (and other icons of the left), if you read closely, they are all innocent!

I am sorry but I simply have no sympathy for these hoodlums.

[Myrddin]

My son is a Marine. He says MREs are "Meals Rejected by Ethiopians".

[philetus]

I'll eat any crat except ham and MF's

[fourdeuce82d]

The whole thing can be traced to the bizarre superstition that hot meals are inherently better than cold ones. It just isn't so.

Gotta disagree w/SnNC- brother, hot food is mighty good when it' mighty cold.

My point was we spent so much time making sure our cooks were getting hot chow to us when we could have been learnin' them to fight good.

some of y'all left out the pound cake can w/a lil' bit of sand and MoGas. Most excellent stove. Course if you were heating up spaghettie/noodles it might heat up from the bottom, and thrust the whole congealed mass out of the can and into the dirt. If you were hungry enough you'd stuff it back in and eat it anyway. *grin*

[cavtrooper21]

We used to wire the cans to the manifold of our gun jeeps. Had to poke a hole in the top though, or BANG went your dinner!
Ah, the good ol' days!!

[southernnorthcarolina]

Gotta disagree w/SnNC- brother, hot food is mighty good when it' mighty cold.

My point was we spent so much time making sure our cooks were getting hot chow to us when we could have been learnin' them to fight good.

In cold weather conditions, I can certainly understand that hot chow would be welcome, and might even provide a morale boost to troops in a sleet storm in Korea. Obviously, hot food can be, and is, provided in camp. And if it can be provided on the front lines without impairing mobility, great. But a good compromise might be lots of hot coffee, or hot chocolate (remembering that our forces are largely comprised of "kids"), or hot soup to supplement their cold rations, all of which could be prepared elsewhere, and brought to the front in insulted tankards. Setting up a mobile kitchen, though, seems to me an invitation to disaster.

[Rifleman]

I've never been in the military, but I have eaten some MREs. None of them are actually nasty except the "Ham and Mammies". Those things would gag a maggot.

I suspect what makes 'em repulsive after a few weeks in the field is bordom with the same old things.

[xsrdx]

The whole thing can be traced to the bizarre superstition that hot meals are inherently better than cold ones

There are a limited number of foods that taste good cold. Eating those same foods constantly gets monotonous in the extreme.

Hot food is a break, a psychological boost for deployed soldiers. It's maybe the ONE thing that reminds you of the "real world" that you can maintain with any predictability.

The two things soldiers crave after extended field time are decent food, and a hot shower - the shower can be tough, but if you can get even one hot meal a day it beats eating your fold cold at every single meal.

For me , the flameless ration heaters made a huge difference in the palatability of just about every MRE - esp in cold weather- would you prefer your spaghetti and meatballs hot, or cold, congealed and lumpy?

[xsrdx]

But a good compromise might be lots of hot coffee, or hot chocolate (remembering that our forces are largely comprised of "kids"), or hot soup to supplement their cold rations, all of which could be prepared elsewhere, and brought to the front in insulted tankards. Setting up a mobile kitchen, though, seems to me an invitation to disaster

What you describe is essentially the standard for mobile operations.

There are basically three tiers of field rations - cold and very portable (MRE w/ ration heater), hot and semi portable (The "T" ration - large tins of prepared food, heated by immersion in hot water), or the "A" ration, prepared either by a dining facility and trucked to the field in "Mermites" insulated containers, or prepared in the field using the MKT, or Mobile Kitchen Trailer.

The MKT is found at the Company level, and has the rudimentary facilites required to prepare a variety of hot meals.

The MKT typically cannot be utilized unless the unit is in place for at least 24hrs, and obviously unprepared food must be readily available from the local economy or supply chain in order to use it.

When the weather is cold, and no other options for hot meals are available, soup and coffee are usually hot button issues for the commander, right up there with ammo and fuel.

[ErnBatavia]

USMC messhall grease wasn't very good - I still remember seeing them prep the bacon at brekkies....big frozen blocks of 10 pounds or so just dumped into a vat of oil for "frying"....

I had good food twice, both compliments of the Navy....once on an old naval scow during wetnet training, and the other time during a stay at the Camp Pendleton hospital.

Far superior! (And all this just reminded me of "liver day"...gag)