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A Breakthrough for U.S. Troops: Combat-Ready Pizza
- matt_the_bass 8y agoI was an intern in that lab more than 20 years ago. I have lots of cool stories from there. The people I worked with were AWESOME! This really surprised me how much they cared about their work with minimal salary and funding. At the time, one project was to simulate a 30 year shelf life by storing food in a 100 deg F “heat room” for 10 years. Periodically a sample would be taken out for testing (chemical, mechanical and taste). Imagine the taste! The samples were full size recipes but only a small portion of the food was used. The rest was put out on a table just before lunchtime and was available for anyone on the campus to eat. Needless to say, I made it a rule to never eat anything I didn’t prepare myself or whitnessed being prepared! One project I really liked was the desert dehydration project. One scientist was testing how frozen yogurt and ice cream could be dehydrated. Again a full industrial size was made with a soft serve dispenser but only a small portion was used for the tests. All summer an new variety was tested each week. So the scientist incharge scheduled the “sample preparation” every Wednesday at 2pm. There would be a long line ready for the leftovers. Let’s just say I whitnessed these being prepared.
- chaosbutters 8y agoThis is all pretty standard in R&D at food companies
- freddie_mercury 8y agoThere's no need to be a jerk. It is easier to just move along if you think a personal anecdote isn't unique. After all, HN is chock full of personal anecdotes, none of which are unique.
- Bjartr 8y agoI'm not getting a jerk vibe, merely support that the anecdote generalizes.
- umvi 8y agoSeems like a natural extension of Linus's Law: "Given enough eyeballs, all anecdotes are shallow" Basically when you have an audience as big as HN, even the most unique anecdote will seem completely obvious and ordinary to someone (and that someone will usually feel the need to comment)
- matt_the_bass 8y agoThat’s one of the things I like about HN, there is always someone with an anecdote about some subject that I thought was super obscur. For once _i_ was able to offer the anecdote!
- tudelo 8y agoThere is nothing wrong with an experience not being unique? If anything, he is adding validity to the anecdote.
- golergka 8y agoThanks, that's interesting and useful addition to the parent comment. (I'm not being sarcastic, just trying to counter balance other comment with honest opinion).
- matt_the_bass 8y agoWhat parts on particular? Don’t eat what you didn’t see or 30 year testing?
- joezydeco 8y agoThere's a really good 99% Invisible podcast episode about Natick. Have you heard it? https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/war-and-pizza/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/war-and-pizza/
- matt_the_bass 8y agoNo I’ve been behind on my podcasts. But 99pi is in my rotation and I have a long flight ahead of me soon. Thanks!
- Dennip 8y agoDo you know if anything fruitful ever came of the dehydration experiment? FYI it's spelled 'witnessed', no 'h' :)
- matt_the_bass 8y agoNo idea about the results of that dehydration experiment. Thanks for the ‘h’ call out. I’m lousy at spelling. :(
- aptwebapps 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeze-dried_ice_cream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeze-dried_ice_cream
- drewg123 8y agoThere is a great review of the Pizza MRE here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_sY-nJ179U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_sY-nJ179U This guy's channel is quite entertaining. He eats really odd stuff, like WWII-era rations.
- compton_effect 8y agoI have wasted more time than I care to admit watching that guy eat all the different MRE's. I think the Canadian MRE's definitely looked like they tasted the best.
- sillyquiet 8y agoiirc, he most approves of some of the Australian rations, particularly the CR1M rations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z8_Xf5tZ5k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z8_Xf5tZ5k
- ataturk 8y agoLet's get this onto a tray.
- stef25 8y agoNot related to the pizza version but to all MRE's - what if you have a broad food allergy, like lactose or gluten intolerance / allergy? Seems almost impossible to not have those present in these types of food.
- lightbyte 8y agoI don't think the US military accepts people with food allergies like that.
- umvi 8y agoDuring a draft they would, but right now in times of "peace" the military can be choosy.
- ardy42 8y ago> During a draft they would, but right now in times of "peace" the military can be choosy. No, even when there's a draft they don't accept people with certain medical problems. Someone who requires special meals to get enough calories to do his job would more than likely tax military logistics more than his labor is worth while deployed. Edit: I guess people don't like the above idea, but it's true: http://aaugusti.umwblogs.org/hist-375-military-history/#_ftn1 http://aaugusti.umwblogs.org/hist-375-military-history/#_ftn... > Michael was a young man during the era of the Vietnam War. He was given the lottery draft number nine and had to get a physical to proceed with the draft process. Michael attempted to use an allergy to wool as an excuse to get out of the draft. He was told to wear wool socks to see if the allergy was true. Under the socks, Michael used a solvent to create a rash to the wool. He tried several times before an Army doctor issued him as medically ineligible for service.
- VLM 8y agoAs an example, during the surge volunteers could get enlistment waivers for almost anything except Celiac disease or peanut allergy. Minor felonies, not so minor felonies, fat, ASVAB test results worse than filling out the score sheet randomly, school dropout, addiction history, well, OK if you really want, but no food allergies.
- sschueller 8y agoBest thing about the Swiss military is the caffeinated chocolate and cookies [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_chocolate_(Switzerland) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_chocolate_(Switzerlan...
- xellisx 8y ago"Caffeinated Chocolate"... But doesn't chocolate already contain caffeine?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- detaro 8y agoYes, but this is has additional caffeine added.
- refurb 8y agoYour link mentions nothing about the chocolate being caffeinated.
- DanBC 8y agoThe ingredients list in the link says this: > Sugar, cocoa butter, Powdered milk], cocoamass, cornflakes 7.5% (corn, sugar, salt, barley malt, emulsifier sunflower lecithin, cola extract caffeine with dye Caramel color, Emulsifier sunflower lecithin, flavor vaniline), Cocoa bean at least 35% (skimmed milk chocolate
- DoreenMichele 8y agoSoldiers have always groused about their chow, of course. Generations of generals have repeated the adage that armies march on their stomachs, but few ever mentioned taste buds. Adding to the anecdotes here: My dad was an E-8 in the army. He told a lot of stories about cutting through the bureaucratic BS to look out for the welfare of his people. He was very savvy about the fact that simply being in charge actively created obstacles to him knowing what was really going on at the lower levels. One of his stories that sticks with me: He inspected the chow hall by walking in unannounced and taking the tray from the guy coming off the line, then telling the staff to get the guy a replacement tray post haste so he wasn't unduly screwed over in the process. This meant they couldn't set aside any special cuts of meat or whatever just for The Sarge. He knew he was eating what they ate because he was eating a tray prepared for one of the troops, not for him. He gave them no warning so they couldn't have this day be the day everything was better or whatever. I'm not convinced MREs are an improvement over the old rations. I've eaten MREs. They are pretty bad. I've heard stories from my dad about the old rations and some of it was apparently okay. I'm not a fan of microwave meals either. MREs strike me as sort of like that. It is some new fangled means to do x, y or z that actually lowers food quality. Though I have read that in WW2, there were two different bugs that so regularly infested the flour with which biscuits were made for soldiers, that soldiers could tell you which bug they preferred to end up eating because one of them made the biscuits very bitter. So maybe it isn't quite as simple as I like to imagine. Anyway, this looks like a good thing to me. The article mentions that pizza is "ubiquitous" in the US. That's actually understating it's popularity. From what I gather, it is actually the most widely eaten food globally and they do things like put fish on it in Japan.
- johan_larson 8y agoI recently tried a bunch of knock-off MREs sold to civilians. As far as I could tell the contents of the kits were the same stuff as in real MREs, but packaged a bit differently. My take is that the components that are naturally dry work best. Cookies, crackers, raisins, nuts: all of these are fine. Things get weird and unappealing once the components have to be wet, which is a problem because most of the main dishes are basically stews of various sorts. I can appreciate that the MRE designers are facing a hard problem: making food that is shelf-stable for years yet palatable enough to be eaten for weeks on end. But the results really aren't very good.
- andrew_ 8y agoIt's Not Delivery, It's... Directorate. (get it? Army’s Combat Feeding Directorate, hawwww)
- aaron695 8y agoWord of the day Ratfucking "refers to the process of opening a case of MREs, opening up individual MRE packages, removing the desired items" I'd like to know if it pre-dates the political meaning.
- qubax 8y agoThere are videos on youtube and elsewhere of people eating the military field rations of their country. Pretty interesting stuff. Some even had packs that would "cook" the food.
- ryanmarsh 8y agoYou’ve tried the rest, now try the longest-lasting: M.R.E. pizza, developed at an Army laboratory in Natick, Mass., is designed to remain fresh in storage for up to three years. Fresh? Yah, a lot of words can be used to describe MRE’s but “fresh” is not one of them. Even mundane, seemingly easy to store foods, end up tasting terrible and have horrible texture. Most of HN couldn’t finish a slice of MRE bread with MRE peanut butter or cheese spread (oh yes we do) on it. When I got back from Iraq I tried Jiffy for the first time in over a year and couldn’t believe how amazing it tasted. I think the words I used to describe MRE peanut butter included “tire rubber”.
- module0000 8y agoIf you got the sugar packet, dump it in the peanut butter packet. Made it go down easier for me, YMMV.
- hugs 8y agoIf you're really curious and want to try it, you can buy online the same exact pizza portion that's available in the full MRE. https://www.cabelas.com/product/BRIDGFORD-PEPPERONI-AND-CHEESE-PIZZA/2785435.uts?slotId=0 https://www.cabelas.com/product/BRIDGFORD-PEPPERONI-AND-CHEE...
- minikites 8y ago>“You have to remember, these were designed to be eaten when you are wet, cold and hungry,” said a spokesman for the Combat Feeding Directorate, David Accetta. “They taste better then.” Hunger is the best spice, as they say.
- gadders 8y agoMy Dad used to work for the army as a civilian lorry driver, and frequently brought home the UK 24 hour ration packs (although this is 30 years ago now). A lot of the stuff in the packs was not too bad. The interesting thing though is the "recipes" that the soldiers come up with by combining items from different packs.
- nf05papsjfVbc 8y agoI do know that posts solely for humour are not really well accepted here but I have to admit that the title really begs to bring up a reference to "Dwarf Bread" from Discworld. http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Dwarf_Bread http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Dwarf_Bread
- ninkendo 8y agoIs there a place you can buy MRE's as a civilian? Are they available at any typical military surplus store? I've always had a thing for utilitarian food, I was big into Soylent for a while, and will gladly eat PB&J for lunch every day for months. I'll often ponder that if I could get my energy from a USB charger overnight, I'd prefer to just never eat. I've always wondered if all the complaints MRE's get are actually because they taste bad, or if most the hate is in the principle of such a food (or the monotony and lack of choice, etc.)
- herpes 8y agoSome Amazon sellers carry them. There's also brands like Mountain House that are specifically geared towards campers and don't have the little kick-knacks with them, just the entrees.