Meals Ready to Eat (Or 'Meals Rejected By Ethiopians'?)

Fox News ^ | 3/31/07

[Mr. Brightside]

Meals Ready to Eat

By David Mac Dougall

Fox News

Sadr City, Baghdad — This was the final day of our Sadr City embed, and we realized we've become experts on military rations, or MREs (Meals Ready to Eat). They're full of calories and carbs, a Dr. Atkins nightmare. But they do the job, sustaining soldiers (and journalists!) in tough times. Inside, there are usually crackers and peanut butter or cheese spread; a main dish; a cookie or cake; and powdered drinks. After just a week, we have already decided which MREs are our favorites.

I like the pasta. Cameraman Michael Pohl likes the spare rib (which curiously contains no actual ribs — just a meat patty). Producer Nicola Sadler likes the beef enchiladas. We do a lot of swapping. I take Nicola's peanut butter; she prefers the cheese spread. Michael swaps chocolate mint cake for strawberry milkshake powder. It's really obvious which MREs the soldiers don't like; Cajun rice with beans, and jambalaya remain unopened.

[Pox]

Edible and preferable to whatever it was they put in those first MRE's. And I used to eat vending machine creations such as a "Chili Cheese Loaf Hoagie"!

[wku man]

How about the dehydrated beef and pork patties? No amount of water could reconstitute those thing! We used to call 'em "track pads", because they were so hard they could be used on 113s and M-1s.

Then there was the Chicken ala King that had to be recalled because it contained botulism and was making soldiers sick.

I sure hope our guys are getting better MREs than the ones we used to be issued. Then again, my Dad told me about the old C-rats, with their "screaming green meanies", and maybe things weren't so bad in the 80s and 90s.

Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!

[Wonder Warthog]

"I lived in Cajun country for a couple of years. I had to get relatives to mail me food rations."

Bah--you don't know what's good. Having moved OUT of Cajun country, I still have food shipped in from there. The equivalent of Savoie's sausage is not to be found elsewhere. Fortunately, I brought along my own Cajun cook, so all that's needed are the more exotic items.

[Doc-Joe]

Chicken a la king - gag.

[Pox]

LOL, dammit, I tried so hard to forget those dehydrated imitation meat patties! And you're right, I don't care what the instructions said, you couldn't reconstitute those things in any way known to man, IMO.

There was one of them that wasn't too bad, some kind of beef chunks in gravy, but I really don't ever want to know what went into that concoction either.

[aft_lizard]

Hey now the early 90's had some good ones that I liked, omelettes with ham, corned beef and hash, spaghettit and meat sauce, the rest sucked IMO though.

[El Gato]

IIRC each MRE is somewhere between 5000 & 7500 calories.

According to the Army's Natick Labs, via Defense Supply Center, Philadelphia they contain 1,250 Calories (actually kilocalories, but dietary folks use Calories when they mean the physicist's (and engineer's) kilocalorie)

[BluH2o]

I'm old enough to remember the old C-rations.

Yeah ... me too. It didn't help they were left over from the Korean conflict, I served in the Marine Corps
during the Vietnam era. The least liked C-ration was by far lima beans.

[nopendejos]

Surely the MRE's have nothing to compare with the C-Ration meal of ham and lima beans which we lovingly called ham and m***erf***ers.

[AnAmericanMother]

Good grief! Ham and MFers . . . that stuff was so bad, even the dog wouldn't eat it.

Some things never change, the chicken was the best C ration too. Or maybe it was turkey . . . my memory's getting a little dim.

[AnAmericanMother]

Great minds think alike.

[skepsel]

Tell me about it! I tried to get my dogs to try them, they just wagged their tails and looked confused and these pups would inhale anything on the first bounce. On the other hand I had C-rations beans and weenies at Ft. Knox in 1980 that were stamped 1968 on the bottom, couldn't get the spoon into the petrified mass.

[nopendejos]

They not only think alike, but they remember long ago abuses of the digestive tract.

[nopendejos]

Funny you should get C-rats made in 1968. In 1968 we were eating C-rats made in the mid 1950's.

[El Gato]

It would seem that in extreme situations, dismounted infantry in rugged terrain, the 3750 calories in 3 MREs isn't enough. Troops in Afghanistan are losing weight, too much weight. Although, the linked story indicate that the troops "field strip" the MREs to cut weight and bulk when they go into the field, in the process perhaps starving themselves inadvertently. Or maybe only eating all of the MRE they can stand. Not having eaten any MREs, I can't judge whether that is a possibility or not. An other possibility is that while the standard methods of determining the caloric content of foods indicate that the MREs should provide sufficient calories, but somehow the processing makes some significant fraction unavailable for biological uptake. I've long been skeptical of the use of "bomb calorimetry" to determine the available energy in food, so that's probably my prejudices coming out.

[AnAmericanMother]

Amen!

[skepsel]

LOL, haven't heard that one in years!

[Plains Drifter]

Same here, I like the chicken and rice M R E.

[xVIer]

We received them after hurricanes from Fema... my kids liked them alot, they didn't flinch from any of it... I couldn't get them down except for the m&m's...I lost some weight...MRE's are diet food for me, this was mid to late '90's ... feel sorry for the soldiers every time I hear MRE , hope they are still improving.

[JDoutrider]

C-rats/K-rats...out in the bush just mix em up with a lil tobassco sauce and ketchup and you ate like a king!!!