Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Thanks for the MREs: Soldiers digesting improved food rations

Don't be fooled by the plain brown wrapper.

A ready-to-eat military entree with a three-year shelf life is actually pretty tasty when boiled in water.

It can be dropped several hundred feet and sit safely for months in 100-degree temperatures. No chilling. No hydrating.

And word among the troops is that a vegetarian MRE (Meal, Ready-to-Eat) is worth hoarding.

"I love them," Staff Sgt. Dawn Brown said as she tore open Menu 11, a package of pasta with vegetables in tomato sauce, to demonstrate how an MRE is prepared.

"The vegetarian ones are usually the only ones I eat. The sauces are really good. The noodles come out great."

It's not a solitary claim. Loaded with corn, green beans, carrots, peas, celery and spices, the "lasagna" and other pasta dishes are a popular pick among soldiers in the field.

"It's almost like a can of ravioli or TV dinners," Air Force Sgt. Mary Mayer said. "When they (soldiers) get out in the field they all become vegetarians because they're the best ones."

But meat eaters are never left without. Meat dishes dominate the 24 entrees, which include beef steak with mushroom gravy, boneless pork chops and grilled chicken breasts. Kosher and Halal (Muslim) meals are available on request.

Sealed in plastic pouches and loaded with calories, MREs are what many U.S. troops moving across Iraq are eating when Unitized Group Rations are unavailable.

MREs are lightweight, easy to open and can be tossed into a backpack or the pockets of cargo pants.

"We can drop that pretty much anywhere," Brown said, pointing to a case of MREs. "You can take it out of there, put it in your pockets and be good to go."

Created in the 1980s to replace C-Rations -- canned meals that sometimes included Spam -- MREs were developed by the government for soldiers to eat in combat or field training.

Meals are heated with a Flameless Ration Heater -- a plastic pouch consisting of a magnesium pad, iron fillings and sodium. When water is added, a chemical reaction creates heat, boils the water and heats the pre-cooked meal.

Each MRE comes with a dessert, snack or candy and an accessory packet comes with a pack of matches, instant coffee, powdered beverage, chewing gum, seasoning, a moist towelette and toilet tissue.

"We try to use a lot of common snacks, M&Ms and Skittles," said Janice Rosado, a physical scientist with the Department of Defense's Combat Feeding Program. "If they see something like that, it's kind of familiar to home.

"A lot of these kids are very young and not used to being away from home. So it's real important to us. They're in our hands. We have to take care of them as best we can."

From the heartland

Located in Natick, Mass., the Combat Feeding Program researches and develops MREs based on soldier input.

"We have an ongoing improvement program," Rosado said. "We go out and survey the soldiers to find out what they like and what they don't like. Everything is from the request of the soldier and their approval of it through their ratings."

This could explain why MRE slang has gone from being labeled "Meals Refusing to Exit" or the more tasteless "Meals Refused by Ethiopians" to being labeled by some soldiers as "pretty good" or "not too bad."

"Based on feedback from Desert Storm, we decided we needed to do better. What was lacking most was soldier involvement," Rosado said.

Meal varieties have doubled since 1995 and have a shelf life of three years at 80 degrees Fahrenheit and six months at 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Meals are now field-tested by soldiers. Unsolicited comments from e-mails or other means are considered.

"One thing that's hard is coming up with something that the majority of the people will like the majority of the time," Rosado said. "People are typically looking for something they'd have at home. Tastes have changed. We have to reflect that.

"Chicken with salsa is popular. But back in World War II, people didn't even know what salsa was."

Among discontinued items, Rosado said, "Chicken a la King and tuna with noodles were the first to go."

The meals, she said, were more popular years ago and now are less familiar to today's soldiers. Dishes to be discontinued this year include an oriental chicken dish, beef teriyaki and a particular burrito.

"It's not that they were terrible," Rosado said. "We've just introduced things they like better. The newest items are usually the hottest items. We have a New England clam chowder coming out this year."

Changing menu

MREs are designed to help sustain energy. One MRE contains 1,250 calories, 13 percent protein, 36 percent fat and 55 percent carbohydrates.

But during wartime, when soldiers are concerned with issues other than their taste buds, variety is still essential, Rosado said.

"When you're eye to eye with the enemy, you don't care," she said. "You're just shoving whatever in your mouth when you have time.

"But in Vietnam, a lot of times soldiers were positioned somewhere and it was a hurry-up-and-wait situation. Boredom sets in. All of a sudden mealtime becomes the highlight of your day."

Longtime or former soldiers say they're grateful for the meal improvements.

"When I first came in everything was dehydrated," said Mayer, who lived on rations while stationed in Cuba, Germany and Florida (following a hurricane) during her 18 years of service.

"We had to hydrate everything. It was just dry, we'd add water and try to stomach it."

During Operation Desert Storm meals were often eaten cold or heated on engines. There was no Flameless Ration Heater, only a clunky nonportable stove that wasn't worth the bother.

With C-Rations, which during World War II included cigarettes and required can openers, soldiers carried small bottles of Tabasco with them because the food was so bland.

"It didn't taste that good, but you ate it anyway," said Army and Air Force veteran Herman "Rocky" Stone, who said he ate plenty of Spam and "what they called beef" during his service in World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam.

But, Stone said, C-Rations weren't his troops' only livelihood.

"Even during combat they'd bring up a hot meal. There were pretty heroic cooks."

Air Force Master Sgt. Richard Covington, a public information officer at Nellis, said there are not too many complaints about current MREs.

"If people complain about them, it's only because they're getting used to them," he said. "It only takes a day before you start bartering. Most people like the vegetarian ones. Once a Marine feigned vegetarianism and was hoarding them.

"If I had one complaint, it's that I wish they'd label it better. It may say Chicken a la King. But it won't say what kind of dessert is in it."

With a laugh, he added, "There are MRE connoisseurs who know what's in every package."

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