[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]

Willie to Joe: "I coulda sworn some Krauts wuz usin' that cow for cover. Go wake up the cooks."

[aft_lizard]

The thing is that bomb calorimeters are a standard we have been using for measuring for awhile now so whether we used a different standard or not isn't really going to change consumption because the food itself doesn't change just how we would measure it.

[radiohead]

I guess those guys are busier than than my neice was in Tikrit. She gained 20 lbs on MREs.

[null and void]

I've long been skeptical of the use of "bomb calorimetry" to determine the available energy in food,

Yeah, a blend of hair, motor oil and sawdust would test out as just fine.