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You remember incorrectly, the average MRE only contains about 1500 calories. You have to realize the average person should consume around 1800 calories a day, the avaerage athlete around 4500 when he is in training and doing excessive excercise.

Either way my favorite was Chicken Tetrazini and the Enchilada, but way back when I loved egg omelettes with ham and the corned beef hash one.

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.

>>the avaerage athlete around 4500 when he is in training and doing excessive excercise.<<<

My favorite are some of the swimmers. Michael Phelps ate 8,000 calories a day training for the Olympics.

I remember those days. I had to take 2000 calorie shakes just to keep my weight constant. It's hard to make that adjustment once you hang up the ole Speedo. haha!