A Breakthrough for U.S. Troops: Combat-Ready Pizza
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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.
FYI it's spelled 'witnessed', no 'h' :)
Thanks for the ‘h’ call out. I’m lousy at spelling. :(
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.
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.
I'm fine with eating dried fruits and roasted nuts. I don't see why there isn't more of that type thing in military field rations. Isn't that a tried and true means to preserve food for long periods while still being nutritious and delicious?
Probably because dried fruit and roasted nuts are both pretty expensive compared to normal rations.
Also I’m pretty sure my digestive system would be pretty unhappy if I were eating primarily nuts and dried fruit for days or weeks on end.
Re expense: They spend millions on research to develop new MREs. If "Healthy, palatable food that already exists costs too much" is a primary basis for rejecting it, something is wrong with this picture.
I've used MREs quite a few times, as they used to be much cheaper in surplus stores and handy for camping. There seems to be a fundamental difference in approach between Europe and the US.
The US seems to value longevity most (10 year shelf life rings a bell, I could be mistaken), and it's reflected in the taste, with sawdust flavoured crackers etc. European ration packs are much shorter shelf life (2 or 3 years, again not certain), but are much tastier as a result. The European ones have a lot more in the way of known brands with decent tea, coffee, chocolate etc.
The French are most adventurous with things like rabbit, duck, pate, venison etc. British had the best curry and puddings. Also seemed the most generous - something like 4,000 calories a day. Lots of snacks and sweets too, I guess to bump the calorie numbers.
I'm not military nor have a military family, but I was under the impression that the main problems with the pre-MRE rations was that they were heavy and lacked variety, so you'd get sick of the good stuff pretty fast.
1) On a short term subjective individual basis anything mom didn't put in your lunch will be defined as awful, such that if you swap lunches with the kid next to you in grade school you'll hear plenty of complaining about lunch is inedible, even if every individual loves their own mom's cooking. This goes away after some weeks.
2) Most eating is about social signaling, virtue signaling, conspicuous consumption. So the stereotypical "first day pass" every new private passes up an objectively better free meal at the DFAC for an icky greasy chezburger at the on post Burger King and claim its the best food they've ever eaten. Likewise in the field you're issued an MRE that tastes pretty good and you'll hate the lack of choice no matter how good it tastes; offer soldiers their choice of cardboard flavored instant Ramen and they'll declare that a culinary masterpiece. Imagine the reaction if a Michelin Star restaurant refused any serving choices at all; here's your drink and meal chosen by us; no matter how good the food is, the complaints would be deafening.
3) Sometimes the food is objectively bad in taste or texture or consistency from pack to pack. The famous vegetable omelette can be delicious or randomly they include too much soggy woodchip-like "mystery fiber" and thats just disgusting although I generally like that MRE. Also the Italian sausage MRE sandwich, which has been around at least a decade and is essentially a rolled up pizza, gives me and every other soldier I've asked, heartburn, and essentially no other food gives me heartburn (whiskey shots, but only sometimes). On the other hand we had a running joke / research project in my platoon along the lines of the army counts every meatball in the spaghetti entree, expect a hand receipt for nine serial numbered meatballs with every entree, or whatever.
4) Sometimes the system is subjectively inconsistent across the system. Almost everyone in the army ate a chef boyardee ravioli or spaghetti with meatballs or salisbury steak meal when they were kids, and the army has produced MREs that are consistently indistinguishable from the kid dining experience to the point of generating homesickness. MREs contain (used to contain) a poundcake that was indistinguishable from an flat unstuffed twinkie. And of course a pack of M&Ms for desert is literally a civilian pack of M&Ms making it very consistent with civilian life and everyone likes those. On the other hand, something like the famous omelette is very binary, almost political, in that about half of soldiers will trade it for anything and refuse to eat it, and the other half think its pretty tasty when warmed up. I have no idea what the army was thinking shipping something half the troops will hate.
5) If your chain of command suck or for whatever other reason your morale is low, its totally socially acceptable in the Army to complain about the food. Yet going the other way if field conditions are so rough you'd eat anything "SERE course style" then lack of complaining also worries leadership. Basically leadership operates under the model that if the worst thing the troops are doing is complaining about the food, then the leadership is probably doing mostly well.
I suspect in the long run once the PR dies down the pizza MRE will be hated by the troops because everyone has their own ideal mental model of a pizza and "one size fits all" isn't going to work for anything thats not a mass produced kid food (like chef boyardee ravioli). Also if its essentially an unrolled italian sausage MRE sandwich, almost everyone is gonna get heartburn.
A large number of Michelin starred restaurants actually do give you no choice, and have no menu available. At most I've heard of you can have something removed from the standard meal, but not added. Drinks are usually a different story, but sometimes there is only one wine available, prescribed by the chef.
That's precisely what most tippy-top-tier restaurants do :)
This really isn't true! Set menus are quite common at the Michelin-star end of restaurants, at least in Europe. Here's one near me [0] serving "a seasonal no choice set menu...we cannot cater for dietary choices". They do allow you to diverge from their wine pairings, but there certainly wouldn't be outrage if they didn't and you can probably find a comparable restaurant that does not offer a choice of wine.
Perhaps it wouldn't be viable in the US.
Still, canned vegetables go a long way and they have a shelf life of at least a year. I don't see a need for food with a shelf life of years for the current wartime situations.
You monster! (Kidding, although I don't think I'll ever understand Hawaiian pizza)
And when she was good, she was very, very good,
But when she was bad she was horrid
There's a complicated calculus at work between what the market wants, its expectation when it gets it, and what it will pay. When those factors align you will get absolutely world class food. When they don't, for whatever reason, you get absolutely nonsensical garbage. The best Thai that I know of in Tokyo, a city of 30+ million people, I would equate to a 3rd rate strip mall takeout place in my home country. And yet the crappiest 5-for-100¥ gyouza in Tokyo is better than any gyouza in Australia.
The market drives everything, and the japanese market knows nothing about pizza. I've felt your pain. Eat a lot when you get back home.
update: just noticed that you wanted ham and pineapple pizza. I withdraw my sympathetic remarks. I consider fish pizza an appropriate punishment
For sure, stay the heck away from Japanese bread. Worst experience ever: biting into a nice freshly baked roll, to find fish paste where I thought would be some kinda jam. Gross.
Traditional Japanese food, and all the fixings in between, can be very, very good. I loved my Ramen days, my Korean BBQ too. Tokyo food was good for me after a year.
You've gotta get out into the neighborhoods. Same as anywhere, really.
Why do you mention that? Aren't anchovies a universal staple of pizza toppings?
This guy's channel is quite entertaining. He eats really odd stuff, like WWII-era rations.
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/#_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.
This is a personal ancidote from my experience only, but it was generally understood that during the Iraq period circa 2003 If you have a pulse, you were qualified to enlist.
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/us/14military.html
The effect on the army is unclear. Note that even during the surge more than ninety percent of recruits required no waivers. So you can spin the story as the number of recruits with clean records dropped from 98% to 96% which doesn't matter, or its a crisis that the number of troublemakers doubled.
https://www.military.com/join-armed-forces/disqualifiers-med...
Honestly Basic training with a food allergy, sounds like hell. You're pretty much starving for a month, and you don't get the luxury of choice while eating.
I was a smaller guy when I went through in 2009, and I was required to eat every last thing. I can now eat 3 full meals in less than 2 minutes. But I feel bad for someone who's got an gluten intolerance, because a DS isn't going to take that as an excuse.
https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/9gl5vt/celiac_disease...
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”.
(get it? Army’s Combat Feeding Directorate, hawwww)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_chocolate_(Switzerlan...
> 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
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.)
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.
Hunger is the best spice, as they say.