MRE Review: First Strike Ration Menu 2 (Part 2)

I usually start these reviews with some background information, but I used up all the background material in the first part of this review, so... umm...

Hey, did you know the First Strike Ration, unlike a regular MRE, comes with a resealable bag that you can use for trash? Because, ummm, all that trash might attract bears or something. Or possibly because dropping loose trash creates a perfect trail for the Predator to follow. You know, on your way back to the choppa.

I really should have planned this better.

MRE Review: First Strike Ration Menu 2 Review (Part 1)

As convenient and useful as MREs are for supplying nutritional needs in the field, they're not actually great combat rations. The standard-issue MRE contains excess packaging and convenience items that are nice for morale, but which take up space and weight that you just can't afford when you're behind enemy lines, marching across country, and/or hunting orc.

So what do you do when you need to travel light? You ditch all the shit you won't be using anyway, of course. To see how much a typical MRE can be slimmed down, check out this video from a graduate of Marine Corps Officer Candidate School. But it's a bitter compromise, isn't it? Without the flameless ration heater, that potato cheddar soup just isn't going to reach its full, delicious potential.

Enter the First Strike Ration (or FSR.) The FSR is designed from the ground up to put the maximum number of calories into the smallest possible space, with foods that taste good cold and can be eaten on the go. One FSR packs an entire day's worth of food into a space that's not much larger or heavier than an unstripped MRE. To accomplish this, FSR menus features some classic, high-calorie MRE items, as well as some new friends, specially tailored for highly mobile units operating far from any commissary.

MRE Review: Menu 18, Chicken with Noodles

Bread and the military go way back, but it hasn't always been a happy relationship.

Hard breads have gone by a few different names through the ages. The Egyptians made theirs out of millet and called it dhourra. The Romans called theirs buccellum. British sailors called the stuff “hard tack,” a name that spread to America and is still used today.

MRE Review: Menu 13, Tortellini Vegetarian

You’ll recall that we've been exploring the problem of under-consumption in early MRE’s. According to a scientific report, the top three reasons for troops not cleaning their plates were:

1. The food was shit
2. Field conditions are not conducive to eating
3. People are fucking stupid

We've already tackled the first two, so let’s finish this sucker off, Thanksgiving style, with an essay I like to call…

Dude? People Are Fucking Stupid

MRE Review: Menu 19, Beef Roast

In the last couple reviews, we’ve been exploring the problem of MRE under-consumption. According to research commissioned during and after the first Gulf War, the primary problems were:

1. The food is shit
2. Field conditions are not conducive to eating
3. People are fucking stupid

Today, we’ll look at the second item on the list, in an essay that I like to call…

It Ain’t Easy to Eat Dinner When You’re Posted Downwind of a Latrine

MRE Review: Menu 20, Spaghetti with Beef and Sauce

Last time, we told the story of how the Pentagon took a hard look at their field rations and identified, in a scientific report, three critical flaws that were leading to underconsumption:

1. The food is shit
2. Field conditions are not conducive to eating
3. People are fucking stupid

Today, we’ll look at the first item on the list, in an essay that I like to call…

Your Food is Shit, G-Man

MRE Review: Menu 8, Marinara Sauce with Meatballs

Getting soldiers, sailors, and marines to eat their rations is not as easy as you might think. Well, for soldiers and marines, anyway. Getting sailors to eat is as easy as serving food that actually tastes good. Crazy concept, but it works.

For the rest, under-consumption was a major problem in the first decade after MRE introduction, but a problem that went unnoticed by the top brass. Then, in 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, hundreds of thousands of American troops were flown off to remote stations guarding the Saudi-Kuwaiti border, and the ration issue came to a head. Stuck in these desert outposts, without regular resupply, troops had to subsist on nothing but MREs for months at a time.

MRE Review: Menu 15, Southwest Beef and Beans

In a previous review, we sat down and had an awkward talk about where MRE's come from. (Remember, kids: the only surefire way to avoid buying a civilian MRE is to wait until you're married to someone who works in the packaging plant.) Now let's dive into the contentious issue of whether an MRE's nutritional value begins at conception.

Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) R&D takes place at the Department of Defense (DoD) Combat Feeding Directorate (CFD) at the Army Soldier Research, Development, and Engineering Center (NSRDEC) in Natick, MA.

In other news, Pentagon bureaucrats now being paid by the acronym.

Candidate menu items are developed by food science chefs and designed to meet nutritional guidelines provided by the Surgeon General. Whatever dishes the chefs come up are first evaluated in the food lab by “sensory panelists" who, I'd like to think, are moderated by Dana Carvey playing John McLaughlin. Anything that makes it past the panelists is then submitted to a full field test and sampled by actual soldiers, sailors, and marines.

MRE Review: Menu 14, Ratatouille (Vegetarian)

Originally, there were no vegetarian MRE options. Because who gives a crap if people who are different than me starve to death in the field, amiright? The U.S. Military: Okay but Not Great at Keeping Our Troops Alive, Since 1775.

Finally, in 1996, the Pentagon expanded the selection with not one but two vegetarian menus: Cheese Tortellini and Pasta with Vegetables. Half-starved vegetarians rejoiced, but they were in for a nasty surprise: when they went into the field, the veggie MREs were already gone.

Where did they go?

Ration Mini-Review: Fresh Hardtack

A proper MRE review is coming on Wednesday but, in the meantime, let me give you a taste of the original meal ready to eat: hardtack.

Historically, most hardtack has been made with exactly two ingredients, flour and water. You'll see recipes with salt, baking powder, and even oil, but the soldiers and sailors of yore ate hardtack that was unadulterated by those luxury ingredients. Aiming to approximate their experience, I made the hardtack above by mixing a dough of whole grain flour and water, cutting it into roughly 3"x3"x1/2" squares, poking holes, and baking for 30 minutes per side at 350F. I then allowed the hardtack to cool and baked it 225F for another 30 minutes, to get the last of the moisture out. Some "ship's biscuit" hardtacks were baked a third or even a fourth time, to better survive months at sea, but let's not go overboard here (maritime pun!).

MRE Review: Menu 23, Pasta in Pesto

But seriously Robyn, I hear you asking, why the hell are you writing comical-in-quotation-marks reviews of MREs?

I’ll tell you why. I write them because, as a child, it was my dream to become the funniest person ever to review video games.

That dream was shattered when Gael Greene's hilarious review of GTA: Vice City set the bar impossibly high. But I'm plucky in defeat, and consoled myself by resolving to become the funniest person to ever review combat rations. It has the same number of syllables, but it's a much less competitive category. I have a chance to pull it off, assuming I can keep The Spoony Experiment's Noah Antwiler off my turf.

This man is too dangerous.
He cannot be allowed to learn of MREs.

And now to address the second most common question I receive (by exactly a 1 to 2 ratio): How did I manage to get my hands on these combat rations?

MRE Review: Menu 22, Sloppy Joe

After last month's MRE review, some of you wrote in to ask why a science/nerd blog is reviewing military rations. Allow me to answer your question with a question of my own: Why do you hate our troops so much?

Ahem.

The modern combat ration would not be possible without an unassuming little technological marvel called a

MRE Review: Menu 16, Pork Rib

 
I was never in the military.

I tried to enlist, but the doctors at MEPS said my feet were too flat, my vision was too blurry, and that I was, quote, “too ugly for the Marines.” So they slapped a baloney sandwich into my hand, tossed me out, and left me to hitch a ride home any way I could.

You think I’m lying about the sandwich, but it’s true. I'd missed lunch, because it takes longer to fail a MEPS physical than to pass it. Those doctors search long and hard for any excuse to let you through. When they finally gave up on me, late in the afternoon, the last lady to leave the cafeteria took pity and made me a sandwich, just as the other staff were shoving my ass out the door.

Still reeling from the shock, my face a mask of pathetic rejection, I walked listlessly through the streets of Tampa, clutching a baloney sandwich to my chest. It was not a pretty sight.

But don’t weep for me. I bounced back from that disappointment and managed to pay for college without the military's help. And, just recently, I ordered a case of MREs, for reasons that have no connection whatsoever to any of the events I’ve just described. (At this point, you may be asking, “Then why the hell did you write all that shit about MEPS and paying for college?” Allow me to address your question with a question of my own: “Why the hell did you read it?”)

MREs are Meals Ready-to-Eat, the military’s solution for feeding hungry soldiers deployed