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Politics & Government

Meal, Ready to Eat: Three Days' Worth of Eating Like I'm In Combat

How did the MREs stack up? Irene came and went, but I decided to try them anyway.

During the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, and during the extensive (and extended) BGE power outages, Howard County provided MREs to more than 400 citizens. My family received three of them.

On the Friday after the storm, day six without power, we stopped by the Senior Center in Ellicott City and picked up three MREs. Each MRE is a “Meal, Ready to Eat” as provided by the U.S. military for service members in combat and, apparently, Ellicott City residents tired of eating at Champps and Chick-fil-A.

The MRE is for use in combat or other field operations, according to the Department of Defense, and were once known as "Meals, Rejected by Everyone."

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Oooh, and I had three of them sitting on my kitchen counter.

About two hours after we got the MREs the electricity finally came back on. But not wanting to waste anything, I committed myself to having an MRE for lunch each day the next week until they were gone. 

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This was not a well thought-out plan. One look at the calorie count and one smell of the main meal should have made me rethink my plan, but I was committed to not wasting the county's generosity. 

Plus, I had already told my editor I would write this piece.

Day 1: Chicken and Dumplings, Mexican Corn, Crackers and “Cheese,” Raspberry White Chocolate Chip Cookie

First impression: smells like cat food. Second impression: tastes like cat food. 

Ok, so I’ve never actually tried cat food, but one can easily imagine that the chicken and dumplings is headed in that direction. I’ve also never had canned chicken, but marveled at it on the shelves of Costco. Although my MRE entrée came in a plastic pouch, the chicken had a metallic taste and the sauce a lengthy, tangy aftertaste that I associate with canned food. 

But on a bright note, the dumplings were actually fairly pleasant. 

The entrée had 190 calories. How fantastically diet-conscious! 

And yet … the instructions clearly told me to eat my entire meal. Out in the field I would require 2000 to 2800 calories per day, and this meal was going to give me a third of that. So I better eat it all. After all, “restriction of food and nutrients leads to rapid weight loss which leads to: loss of strength, decreased endurance, loss of motivation, decreased mental alertness” according to the entrée’s packaging. 

And I was going to need all the motivation I could get.

Next, the crackers and cheese. My kids wouldn’t touch them, but I thought they were delicious. The crackers were very crumbly, which I can imagine being a hindrance in the field (or without the use of electricity to run a vacuum cleaner), but the cheese was so fantastically naughty—like the processed cheeze in a can I won’t buy for my kids.

Sadly, you will be deprived of my review of the corn because that is the one vegetable I can’t stand. I tried to convince my husband to open the pouch (out of my presence) and review the side dish, but he backed out of the room and mumbled about being full from something or another. I didn’t quite catch it as he ran.

The thing is, I’ve heard people say they love MREs. When I was at the Senior Center I met a man with his two kids picking up their rations. They were a few days into eating them and still psyched. It was like camping out! It was fun! The meals were good! 

I’m thinking that they were too dazed from being one of the only houses in their neighborhood still without power at the time. Because there is no way, darkness or not, that I would have ever been able to convince my kids to touch these meals. They wouldn’t even come near the cookie. It smelled strongly of vitamins. I could only choke down one bite. And if you know me, you know that cookies play an important part in my life. I was crushed that this wasn’t even edible.

Day 2: Beef Roast with Vegetables, Cornbread Stuffing, Crackers and “Cheese,” Raspberry White Chocolate Chip Cookie

Honestly, the beef roast wasn’t terrible. Rather than cat food, today the smell was more along the lines of dog food, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought at first sniff. The veggies were firm and the sauce was pretty good. The meat was … preserved. I don’t know how else to describe it, but that is to be expected in a dish that needs no refrigeration and has a shelf life equal to that of a radioactive isotope.

And the stuffing was palatable too. 

I was looking forward to the cracker and cheese again after enjoying it the day before. I ate it rather quickly while reading CNN on my phone, distracted. Within seconds I was seriously grossed out. I LIKED this yesterday? It was terrible. It tasted just like vitamins and I could taste it for hours and hours. Gum didn’t help. Junior Mints didn’t help. (I ate a lot just to be sure.)

I did not even attempt the cookie. Let me know if you want it.

Day 3: Meatloaf with Onion Gravy, Mexican Corn, Crackers and “Cheese,” Raspberry White Chocolate Chip Cookie

Really? I’m not going to get even one decent dessert out of this? And corn again?  “I’m disobeying orders. I’m only going to eat the meatloaf,” I thought grumpily as I sat down to my lunch.

Um, no. I … just … couldn’t. I cannot even begin to describe the horror.  Look at the picture. Tell me you would eat that, even in combat.

MREs are intended to be eaten for a maximum of 21 days.  I couldn’t even do three. 

To be fair, there are a lot of restrictions for MREs, and I can only assume that affects taste. MREs must be able to withstand parachute drops, according to this Department of Agriculture site. The packaging can. If stored at 120 °F (which one would find on desert battlefields), the MRE will last for about a month. At 60 °F, an MRE can last seven years or longer, according to the Department of Agriculture's Food Safety Inspection Service.

So what else was in my MREs? Each also contained an accessory pack, with salt, pepper, coffee, creamer, a spoon and a moist towelette.  There was also a powdered high energy drink mix and what is called a flameless ration heater (FRH).

The FRH is actually pretty cool. It’s water activated and used to heat the food in the MRE. It’s capable of heating to 100 degrees F in 12 minutes and uses no flame. Rather, it generates heat through a chemical reaction. Watch a video of the FRH in action here

I didn’t use it—I used the microwave. I’m clearly not combat-ready in any sense of the word, and my experimentation with MREs showed that from start to finish. 

My respect and awe for the men and women in our military has increased even more after this past week. And I only tried three of the 24 flavors!

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