MREs of the World

[Ben]

Or some of them anyway. I've never seen spiced apple cider on an MRE menu from any of the US manufacturers? The German one with liverwurst is classic. 

http://imgur.com/a/S3FA4

[Bigjake]

Or some of them anyway. I've never seen spiced apple cider on an MRE menu from any of the US manufacturers? The German one with liverwurst is classic. 

http://imgur.com/a/S3FA4

The cider is actually really good, compared to the rest of the random drink powders.

[Scout26]

Just like their "regular food", The German ones are pretty good (better than ours),  I'd cut your mother for French MRE.*  the British ones were much worse than ours, and the Canadian was pretty much the same as ours.

Now this was in the late 1980's early 1990's.  So things may have changed since then.


(The Frogs always loved to trade for our MRE's when we were out in the field.  I could never figure that one out.)

[Perd Hapley]

The Brits get Typhoo? That's good stuff.

[vaskidmark]

http://www.mreinfo.com/international/info/international-rations.html

Moar betterer site with full details of the contents.

Those Spanish bisquit packs look like condoms and reminded me of when my father tried to kill the Air Force.

Long story short - dad was a food chemist.  Task was to create a survival ration.  Parameters were weight, size and calorie content; taste be damned.  Product was composed of brewer's yeast, crushed Kellogs Sugar Frosted Flakes (brand specified), honey, and Tang powder all compressed into a disk about as big across as a silver dollar and about half an inch thick.  Directions read: "Chew with water".  Field test was a AF desert survival class that was also testing the then-new theory that it was better to drink what water you had in quantity at the beginning than to ration it out in tiny sips.  Group A (drink the whole canteen) was also instructed to eat 1 of the 3 ration "bisquits" before setting out to return to base.  They ripped off the wrapping, chewed and masticated and worked that stuff into a swallowable mass, washing it down with water as they went.  UNTIL everything started to swell up somewhere between the back of the mouth and the start of the esophagus.  Can you say "Death by choking"?  Fortunately the AF medics had not even left the area so nobody actually died but it was close for a few of them who had big globs of the stuff (truely biting off more than they could chew).  Dad's response?  "It met all the specifications they submitted.  Nobody said anything about teaching pilots to take small bites and not stuff their mouths."

stay safe.

[French G.]

I got my paws on an Italian one a few years back, would love to find a source to buy more. Different than the one pictured, came with 3 boxes inside, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Canned pasta, sausages, toothpaste tube of sweetened condensed milk paste, water purification tablets, hexamine and stove, all kinds of crap. Like a Macgyver Christmas. No damn wonder they lose every war, too busy eating.

[K Frame]

This pretty fascinating. I'd be interested in seeing the packages opened to see how the food looks, and also to have "taste test" information.

[lupinus]

Just like their "regular food", The German ones are pretty good (better than ours),  I'd cut your mother for French MRE.*  the British ones were much worse than ours, and the Canadian was pretty much the same as ours.

Now this was in the late 1980's early 1990's.  So things may have changed back then.


(The Frogs always loved to trade for our MRE's when we were out in the field.  I could never figure that one out.)

I'd take the French one.

Maybe they wanted ours for the same reason they'll willingly go to a McDonalds?

[Devonai]

I've never seen spiced apple cider on an MRE menu from any of the US manufacturers?

Oh, it's in a lot of them.  It used to piss me off, too, because they put it in there instead of instant coffee.  

Long story short - dad was a food chemist.  Task was to create a survival ration.  

That story reminds me of reading about NASA's astronaut food research in Mary Roach's book, Packing for Mars.  They had similar problems.

[vaskidmark]

Oh, it's in a lot of them.  It used to piss me off, too, because they put it in there instead of instant coffee.  

That story reminds me of reading about NASA's astronaut food research in Mary Roach's book, Packing for Mars.  They had similar problems.

Dad designed and packed food for the first space flights.  Thank $diety for test kitchens and the astronauts' willingness to try the packaging in the vomit comet before the real thing.  LOTS of kinks discovered.  SOME were worked out.  A few were allowed to remain because there was no way at that time to do anything else.  The biggest change was that meeting calorie count was assigned a lower priority and both palatability and ease of swallowing in safety were bumped way up on the list.

Trivia tidbit - sucking pureeed goo through a nipple on a rigid container does NOT work in weightlessness, regardless of how mant times a lab full of PhDs says it ought to.

stay safe.

[roo_ster]

Mmmm, liversausage.

The French & Italian rations sound like a nice dinner for me & the missus.

[Azrael256]

(The Frogs always loved to trade for our MRE's when we were out in the field.  I could never figure that one out.)

Since time immemorial it has fallen to the Gallic races to civilise their brutish and savage neighbors.


Yeah, you heard me.  Frog-man's burden.

[Perd Hapley]

So where's the Ethiopian MRE?

[Regolith]

So where's the Ethiopian MRE?

Found one:

[Scout26]

I got my paws on an Italian one a few years back, would love to find a source to buy more. Different than the one pictured, came with 3 boxes inside, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Canned pasta, sausages, toothpaste tube of sweetened condensed milk paste, water purification tablets, hexamine and stove, all kinds of crap. Like a Macgyver Christmas. No damn wonder they lose every war, too busy eating.

It wasn't that they always lost, the Italians never end a war on the same side that they started with.

[wmenorr67]

http://www.mreinfo.com/international/info/international-rations.html

 reminded me of when my father tried to kill the Air Force.

Long story short - dad was a food chemist.  Task was to create a survival ration.  Parameters were weight, size and calorie content; taste be damned.  Product was composed of brewer's yeast, crushed Kellogs Sugar Frosted Flakes (brand specified), honey, and Tang powder all compressed into a disk about as big across as a silver dollar and about half an inch thick.  Directions read: "Chew with water".  Field test was a AF desert survival class that was also testing the then-new theory that it was better to drink what water you had in quantity at the beginning than to ration it out in tiny sips.  Group A (drink the whole canteen) was also instructed to eat 1 of the 3 ration "bisquits" before setting out to return to base.  They ripped off the wrapping, chewed and masticated and worked that stuff into a swallowable mass, washing it down with water as they went.  UNTIL everything started to swell up somewhere between the back of the mouth and the start of the esophagus.  Can you say "Death by choking"?  Fortunately the AF medics had not even left the area so nobody actually died but it was close for a few of them who had big globs of the stuff (truely biting off more than they could chew).  Dad's response?  "It met all the specifications they submitted.  Nobody said anything about teaching pilots to take small bites and not stuff their mouths."

stay safe.

Can we leave a few million of these along the borders sans H2O?

[vaskidmark]

Can we leave a few million of these along the borders sans H2O?

But it is the addition of H₂) to the brewers yeast that brougt about the magical transformation.  Otherwise you are merely holding a sticky-sweet prototype Tang-flavored power bar.

While it may not be rocket surgery, it is still science! 

stay safe.