Unloved by generations of soldiers, the MRE finds a fan base | Hacker News Reader

Unloved by generations of soldiers, the MRE finds a fan base

nytimes.com

77 pointssystemvoltage102 comments

Steve1989MREInfo

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA

Nice!

I love this guy's channel. He's the only guy I've seen who has the guts to eat MRE's dated since WWII and perhaps older. The most recent I've seen was him comparing MRE's from the PRC (yes, China), Taiwan, USA, Russia, etc.

I remember Steve video about China's MRE where he had stomach problem after eating. Eat some biscuit from WW1-era: totally fine, eat some chow mein from PRC's MRE: instant diarrhea

I've had Chinese MREs, once. It was the worst food I've ever tasted. Someone in the family had a can from former prc military service.

I don't know what it is, but maybe the Chinese army deploys so infrequently (almost never?) that they place zero priority on their MREs.

I begrudgingly eat US MREs once every 3-5 years for about a week or so as I replenish my one case of MREs for earthquake supplies.

They're actually not as bad now as they used to be. The new replacement for thin wheat bread is like actually edible and doesn't break your teeth.

>> I don't know what it is, but maybe the Chinese army deploys so infrequently (almost never?) that they place zero priority on their MREs.

I don't know about the Chinese, but my poor army doesn't have an official MRE. On the rare occasion that they are deployed to where they can't setup kitchens, like disaster zones: storm, flooding, etc.., the soldiers typically make do with instant noodle or ration bar until a field kitchen can be established.

I was looking at steve's YouTube channel and there was a Honduran "MRE" which was similar to what you described: random off the shelf food with a long shelf life.

Same, what they give out to scouts and tiny units is essentially trekking food now. It used to be things like add water pasta or canned soup. Slight step down in my mind.

In Chechnya, the rebels have long used Snickers bars as their on-the-go food - apart from its good nutritious qualities as a trail bar, it's also easy to get in any convenience store, and doing so isn't suspicious (or wasn't until it became prevalent, anyway).

>I begrudgingly eat US MREs once every 3-5 years for about a week or so as I replenish my one case of MREs for earthquake supplies.

What's the TCO on using MREs for disaster prep? I did some light research a while ago and figured it was pretty pricey compared to buying traditional nonperishables (eg. instant noodles, canned vegetables, dried beans). Plus, those foods are easier to work into a conventional meal than MREs. Is there some advantage of MREs I'm missing?

MREs self-heat. Hot food is good for morale and in a disaster situation, instant noodles might be "noodle crackers".

A pocket rocket and canister of isobutane is cheap and will never expire though. Problem solved.

You'd better have good ventilation though which might not be the case in some kind of "bunker".

This is how nearly every conversation I have about sensible preparation eventually goes. It's a fun, but mostly person-specific set of assumed characteristics that each solution must satisfy, usually contradictory with the other persons assumptions.

I'd love to see some rigor to this study.

In that respect, I aim for 80/20: Some canned and dry goods, a good first aid kit, lots of water, a full tank of gas, and some backup power. My apocalypse model does not include zombies.

What study do you mean? Maybe you answered the wrong comment?

The study of "What the avg person should do to take reasonable precautions at the 80/20 level"

MRE's are self-sufficient packets (almost - you need water) that you can hand out to people who have no other supplies or tools or equipment or perhaps shelter after a disaster and they'll be able to feed themselves a hot meal. Like, if there's a dozen starving people, then throwing a MRE box and a water canister out of a truck (the original article includes a photo of such distribution - https://archive.md/lu4zn/eafd5ec61f35e3afe34d6f7eab59c6ee12e...) and driving away to the next location is sufficient logistics, which is why it works for quick military resupply.

Dried beans and canned vegetables are great if you have a kitchen - you need a stove, you need a pot, you need a can opener, you need a bowl and a spoon/fork. MREs have everything included and will work even if you have a bunch of people who have run out of a burning house naked. It's a very niche advantage, of course, but a niche that may be relevant in disasters.

Also, if you do have a stove and vegetables and a dozen people, they have to stay together or return to get fed; but you can hand out MREs and each can go on their own separate ways immediately afterwards. Again, a specific niche for unusual circumstances, but both military and disasters can have events where this helps a lot.

> you need a stove, you need a pot, you need a can opener, you need a bowl and a spoon/fork

For the military, I'm sure that's important. But surely anyone enthusiastic enough about prepping to stockpile MREs will already have a can opener and a camping stove?

Not necessarily. Not everyone who might stock some is a "doomsday prepper." They're handy if power gets knocked out for a week due to a natural disaster. A few years ago, we lost power for almost a week. We had a gas stove and could still cook; but, neighbors with all-electric kitchens could not.

Depends on what kind of disaster you're prepping for. In a severe disaster, you may not have power/gas for cooking, may not have much access to clean water, and may not be able to leave your home or have assistance come to you if roads are out. MREs don't require any water to prepare the main entrees, don't require any cooking, and have shelf lives of at least 5 years from the packing date (longer if stored at low temperature), and are meant to be easily transportable if you do have to evacuate in a hurry.

That being said, MREs are kind of overkill. The US military also uses called first-strike rations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Strike_Ration) each of which are half the weight of the 3 MREs they replace and that are mostly centered around stabilized sandwiches and wraps. The manufacturer of those sandwiches, Bridgford, also sells to the civilian market: https://www.bridgford.com/readytoeat/ If you don't mind the much more limited menu (it's a disaster after all), a case of those sandwiches will keep a person fed for a couple weeks for much less than the cost and space of MREs.

Not great. Aside from higher cost, MREs are heavy (because they contain their own water), and their shelf life is a couple of years. Freeze-dried canned food beats them for most prepping applications.

The point of MREs is to have a high-calorie hot meal that can be thrown into a backpack, and then prepared and eaten in the field with minimal fuss - i.e. no need to make a fire or mess around with utensils. But even the military doesn't rely on them as soldiers' primary source of food except when necessary.

My MREs are only to get me from point A of Seattle turned into an unnavigable pit of sludge post earthquake to point B somewhere that FEMA can get shit into.

If I didn't live somewhere where half the city isn't going to dissolve and/or get tidal waved, then I probably wouldn't have MREs. I didn't have any when I lived in the Midwest. Blizzards and tornadoes, not actually much travel needs to be done in case of a natural disaster.

They're contained enough that I can transport them along with water and water filtering/iodine.

I should note that depending on the distance I need to travel, I have even more contained dense rations which are basically, as far as I can tell, solid cardboard consistency... food stuffs. MREs weigh a bit more, so if I'm going farther, I wouldn't take too many.

For almost all other emergency I'm instead relying on staying put and eating stuff that sucks less.

The US military invests a lot of R&D in their MREs, and they have improved monotonically over the decades. Even a few decades ago they were actually pretty decent, aside from a couple famous outliers. A couple of the meals invariably are a total miss, and everyone avoids them, but that feedback gets back to the R&D center and they try something different.

Having the best possible food in the field, under the circumstances, is viewed as critical for morale as a matter of doctrine by the US military and they invest a lot in it. Soldiers, in turn, are pretty creative at getting the most out of the MRE contents.

In some parts of the world, MREs are recognized as currency.

The oldest ration — not MRE — I've seen him eat was from the Boer War; the oldest piece of food was from the US Civil War. Steve1989 is a treasure.

> MRE's dated since WWII

I may have looked into this during pandemic boredom. Ahem. Consensus seems to be that the biggest risk (as long as the can is normal) is metallic leaching from acidic foods.

Old canned fruit or tomato sauces? Maybe skip.

I remember watching one of his older videos where he zoomed in on a package as he was trying to open it. I couldn't help but notice the very bad tremor in his hands. Made me wonder if the toxins in old MREs he's been eating have somehow contributed to that. Nonetheless, a very interesting channel for sure.

No, not at all. Steve is just very excited. Most of the stuff that he eats is uncommonly hard to get and can cost upwards to hundreds of dollars, especially if its in any good shape.

I watch his videos they're great fun to watch especially the expired kits.

Your link to his channel makes more sense than the NYT article which picked one seemingly at random it is one of his videos from 2017.

And Emmymade: https://www.youtube.com/c/emmymade

Emmymade is a more general food/cooking channel though. I do enjoy it, mostly because she'll give anything a chance once and isn't dismissive of food she isn't familiar with or doesn't prefer.

His videos make me oddly happy

Came here to say as I was reading this I was thinking "They sure as hell better call out Steve1989MREInfo" and then I got so much joy seeing his photo in the middle of the article.

Nothing quite like eating food from the civil war.

Oh, and he loves to smoke old cigarettes. The joy is palpable.

let's get this out onto a tray

His Vietnam survival kit video is amazing

Steve is a national treasure, I've been a happy supporter on Patreon for years. I love how perfectly consistent he is with his catchphrases.

At some point in the very beginning of 199x the humanitarian aid of NATO MRE got distributed in our dormitories - it were kind of hungry years in USSR, empty store shelves, rationing of staples, and as a student i had at that time barely enough money only for cheap illegal vodka (highest bang for the buck) and hardly could even indulge in beer, let alone buy any food - and those MREs went down very nicely, 30 years later i still remember them as very tasty :)

The Night Watch series books talk about “fake vodka” which I found highly amusing. I assume it’s watered back industrial ethanol?

> it’s watered back industrial ethanol

usually that is what you hope for. Sometimes the seller would claim that it is off-book ethanol supply from the liquor or medical industry - no way to verify of course. On the very bottom of the range is pretty "dirty" ethanol and even occasionally methanol (couple months ago there were 2 clusters of 80+ such poisonings in the regional cities in Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_methanol_poisoning_inc...), though you usually don't venture that low. In a smaller cities and of course villages you'll also meet moonshine. Once back then we bought in a normal store in a small town several 1L jars of what happened to be moonshine which had their wide mouths capped with single use cap - i.e. you open the jar and consume it :) Which is what we (me and 2 crewmates) did with the head of local police and the driver of our loaded (~10 tons of construction supplies) truck while waiting for the ferry to take the truck and us across the river - to say honestly, as the jar at the ferry crossing wasn't the only one, we lost the truck that day and found it couple days later missing about 10% of the cargo :)

Where I went to college, moonshine is a big thing and is relatively easy to get once you know some locals. I've tried it multiple times and it was always absolutely vile. It would usually come in a reused plastic milk jug. There was nothing you could mix it with and not taste the horrible flavor. I had a friend who made his own stovetop still and despite it probably being slightly poisoned with methanol, it actually kind of tasted like a corn whiskey. I don't know how he was able to make something palatable but every backwoods moonshine maker in the area couldn't manage to make something that didn't taste like gasoline. Whenever I was going to a party where I knew there would be plenty of moonshine, I'd just bring my own legal liquor.

Depends on who makes it and their skill.

I've tried stuff from TN that's at or better than mid-tier commercially sold vodka.

I also have an undiluted jar from a friend as a birthday present at 180 proof. Surprisingly, it's entirely drinkable, with essentially no aftertaste.

I had some NC moonshine back when. The first sip was pretty intense, but I think it basically numbed the alcohol detecting part of my taste because after that it just tasted a little sweet.

Normal vodka is diluted industrial ethanol. A very diverse range of spirits are bottled from the same train tanker cars of industrial ethanol, optionally adulterated with flavoring and coloring. I used to have friends that ran a bottling plant for state-wide distribution of several hundred well-known brands. All of their alcohol came from ADM in bulk. Not all spirits are produced this way but the vast majority are. The quality of the ethanol stock is essentially identical.

where are you talking about? Russia? US?

U.S. of 'Murica. S.F. Bay Area, no less.

Frank-Lin Distillers.

Animats's description is a classic:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9059821

Several other times: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

I've dug into them as well:

https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/bztu6ot3xumpeiiiygdzaa

The US, but most other countries are similar.

Ah the venerable MRE. We had a nickname for these in the Army: Meals Refusing to Exit.

It was also fabled that the beans and weenies meal could transform any infantryman into an airborne through flatulence alone.

I mean, excessive regularity during combat could be a liability, couldn't it?

The opposite is also true and more dangerous: it means you'll need medical attention sooner or later.

Can't read due to pay wall but I'm kind of offended by the headline. MREs have gotten better over the years, give or take a few missteps, and haven't been anywhere near bad (yes, even veggie omelet can be salvaged) for decades. The current lineup[0] is downright decadent, at least in the US, and has been for longer than any writer at NYT has been alive.

[0]: https://www.mreinfo.com/mre-menus-2021/

Looks tastier and more varied than most school lunches I recall. Not a ton of vegetables unfortunately.

Some view that as a feature!

Don’t worry. The article is broadly complimentary to the scientific wonder which is the MRE, but does dutifully report several of the many less than complimentary nicknames they have acquired from their primary user base over the years.

I haven't tasted the delights of the veggie omelet yet. But the dried pork patty we had in the mid 1980's was horrific. This was before the flameless ration heaters, so your choice was to hydrate it with cold water, or break pieces off and place it in your mouth & allow your saliva to reconstitute it. It smelled like cat food, IIRC.

Cat food is a good sedative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSyqWbrxcG4

You gotta huff glue too

In the 90's they had the "Dehydrated Pork Patty". I am not surprised this set them back for the next 30 years.

Though the British troops near us had some kind of canned cod fish in tomato sauce that was worse.

Yeah, but how was that patty on a bun, dripping with barbecue sauce and maybe with some sliced onions on it?

Ah, you're saying that's now the McRib?

Unironically yeah, if you heat the pork rib, put it on the hardtack style bread, and pretend you have onion (take a deep whiff of your battle buddy for the pure essence) it's pretty close

I had one recently, IMO once you get past the sentimental aspect it tastes like a bunch of snacks you'd buy from a gas station. I think anything is good when you're hungry enough and at war...

I would only eat the veggie one except the dreaded veggie omelet. That thing was awful.

That pound cake that comes with many MREs is one of the best things I've ever tasted.

It actually has a kind of fakey/chemically flavor to it (if I remember it's usually apple flavor?), but for some reason it's still good, and the moistness and texture of the cake is exceptional. I wish they just sold those pound cakes by themselves.

My favorite is the "Bill's Brew" instant coffee. I spent a lot of time on Google trying to trackdown the supplier in a small town rural Texas, but no luck. It is the best instant coffee.

Lemon pound cakes were the best. Loved eating those as a kid, as well as the spicy cheese paste.

Another fun thing as a kid was lighting the gas on fire that was emitted by the chemical heaters.

Here you go: https://www.mredepot.com/MRE-Vanilla-Pound-Cake-p/aq0005.htm

Annoyingly expensive per-calorie, of course.

How the hell have they managed the supply chain such that they can sell a limited item like a specific MRE dessert for roughly the same price as a gas station muffin or sweet?

I would guess the manufacturer sells them individually, rather than MREdepot buying packaged MREs and breaking them up manually.

I've bought a few MRE components by the case (100 units per case, or thereabouts, IIRC) that were identical to what was in the contemporaneous MREs. I would assume that these are coming directly from the upstream vendors supplying the company with the MRE contract.

Out of a recent batch, I remember the lemon-poppyseed pound cake being amazing (as in, wouldn't have complained if I'd gotten it in a diner), a cookie that was rather good (actually moist!), and some really good cranberry mix.

Also, the First Strike apple cinnamon energy bar was just as good as top-tier civilian energy bars.

Entrees were a bit rougher.

But as my dad paraphrased re: Boy Scouts, 'Hunger is a helluva spice. Because I know none of us could cook worth a damn, but I don't remember a single bad meal.'

You're right: I have fasted for 15 days a couple years ago: after that everything tasted absolutely amazing!

Oh yeah, I had a whole c-rat can of pound cake once and it took me a week to eat. I kept it in a garbage bag in the fridge since I didn’t have a ziploc that big.

Wornick, which makes most of the real MREs, used to sell a civilian version. Their brand was "MIL-SPEC", and then "Eversafe". Now they don't seem to want to sell those at retail, probably because they normally ship by the shipping container load and the eBay resellers can't handle that much product.

Everybody seems to be out of stock on civilian MREs right now, except for resellers who are doubling the price. (Each meal is worth about $6.) The people selling "surplus" MREs are usually selling expired ones.

The chicken-based ones are usually pretty good. The pasta-based ones, not so much.

Chili Mac is the best flavor IMO, especially if you combine the cheese spread with it.

> expired

Was curious about this, as it's something of an open question as to the actual safe "absolutely-by" date (vs the standard date).

Turns out, they've been tested to degrade at a rate proportional to temperature.

The listed date (3 years?) is essentially 3 years at max temperature. Decrease the temperature (i.e. outside anywhere but the desert), and it stretches significantly. Actually store it somewhere cool (e.g. root cellar) and it goes even longer.

When I did my mandatory service in the German army, we were told that MREs don't have an expiry date - batches are simply inspected once a year or so.

Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20211221005034/https://www.nytim...

Who doesn’t love MREs? I remember them from as far back as the 80s and soldiers/warfighters loved them. Especially compared to the alternatives.

I hate this type of reporting where a few cases of people not liking something are generalized to an entire population.

They are pretty good. I think better than camping food sold at REI. They’ve sold well on eBay forever. The fan base is consistent.

Maybe I’m crazy but I loved a lot of MREs, even after eating them for weeks on end.

Stockholm syndrome maybe? Any chance you grew up on a diet of processed foods, so switching to the MRE wasn't that big of a switch?

Or, you're working your ass off in the field carrying a hundred pounds up and down hills, and suddenly everything tastes great.

Try eating them for six months straight…

Mostly, the cooks did their best to give us one hot meal a day for a good bit of that.

The first gulf war it was a couple months straight with no hot meals and the relatively bad older MREs, lots of fun.

My 5th grade class got sent some MREs from the first gulf war. Surviving on them was certainly a feat of bravery. I don't remember what they tasted like, but I knew I didn't want to go to war.

Oh the irony.

In the reserves for a given work weekend there is a budget to fund meals for soldiers. If a given unit has a meal preparation section there is also a budget to fund meal preparation, but if that given section cannot prepare meals they will just issue MREs for lunch.

The typical soldier would rather just go buy fast food. Those soldiers are required to pick up a MRE whether they want it or not to force them to sign for a meal which qualifies the meal budget. Unused money in the budget is not replenished in the next fiscal cycle so it must be spent to qualify it’s need. Then also for accountability and time limits many soldiers are not allowed to leave, depending upon unit leadership, to buy lunch if they have an MRE.

Officers, on the other hand, are required to buy lunch, because they make too much money. As a result they cannot sign for said MRE because they are not accounted for in the budget. This means officers must leave the unit to find lunch elsewhere.

The people with the most time flexibility who don’t MREs are forced to consume them. The people who are most busy and would prefer to eat them, so as to not waste the time driving around, are not allowed to have them.

Lived off the Canadian version of MREs for 2 weeks when I was in Haiti after the earthquake. Definitely not a fan. One of the things that always impressed me about the Canadian lunch ones is they had a chocolate bar (candy bar for the Americans) in them. It was 30+ C degrees during the day and as long as the chocolate bars stayed in the sealed packaging they were solid but but the moment you opened the packaging the chocolate would melt in 5 minutes. Not sure, what black magic made it possible to chocolate solid in 30 degree C weather.

Possibly related, Hershey was contracted to make a "chocolate" bar that was better suited to jungle weather: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_chocolate_(United_Sta...

Ahhh, brings back memories of ratpacks and “biscuits, brown”.

https://www.arrse.co.uk/wiki/Biscuits_Brown

Keep in mind that the US MREs are loaded in calories. Something like 1300 per MRE or somewhere around there. Might not be the best option if you're not highly active.

I wish companies offered canned versions of MRE entrees. Some of them are super delicious and you can't find anything like it offered in a grocery store.

Nothing sucked worse than being the last guy to the MRE box. But hey, making "MRE bombs" out of the heaters was always fun.

https://archive.md/lu4zn

in Russia military supplies for officers are pretty great. For example, the canned meat is much better than the one you can buy at a supermarket. For private soldiers the food selection is much worse I hear than for officers.

Charms, anyone? ;)

Why doesn’t the US military use Soylent now?

Morale. Not too many things upset people more than messing with the food. Upset soldiers means uncooperative, unmotivated soldiers. Yeah, MREs aren't great but at least they're warm and taste like something recognizable.

For example, NASA puts a lot of effort into making the astronauts' food things they actually want to eat. Another example, Ford tried to establish a city in Brazil for rubber plantation workers called Fordlandia. The breaking point that led them to revolt wasn't the horrendous working conditions, it was the food (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia#Revolts). Even old school emergency ration packs had candy in it.

You don't mess with the food.

Soldier morale is important and Soylent is not exactly morale boosting

this must explain why I can't keep up with my soylent routine

Even though I think some flavors nonironically taste good, the shelf life is pretty bad

Most of the MREs I've tried are surprisingly good. On par with most of the regular old microwave meals of about 15 years ago (newer microwave meals have gotten significantly better in my experience).

There's a few flops of course, but considering there's no chemical preservatives and they come with a heater, they're a goddamn miracle of modern technology.

Eating History involved eating decade/century old foods, including Civil War hardtack which is a MRE I guess - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12077068/

There's a lot of overlap once you realise food doesn't go off if it's not starting fresh, then who cares about years, decades, centuries. Technically MRE's are about weight and size, but people often see them as long lasting even though all processed foods are.

As we get shut into our homes more, it will be interesting to see if the tech gets used by civilians, cheap posted foods, compact and light weight.

Getting real tired of subscription based news sites making it to hacker news top all the time. I literally can't read these damn articles, please post an archived version or something

https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

Using duckduckgo, !ais https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/dining/mre-meals-ready-to... will pull up https://archive.md/lu4zn

Try turning off javascript

Reply on news.ycombinator.com