I retired before MREs came around although I did buy one once at the commissary. This picture doesn't exactly make them look yummy: This from France seem a bit more appetizing: See the rest @ http://www.businessinsider.com/military-rations-2015-1
Currently there are 24 MRE Menus, and of the ones I've tasted, most are fairly OK. Some are better than others, but the problem with them is that you get sick of eating them pretty quickly. If that's all you have for two or three weeks, that's going to be real unappetizing. MRE Menus for 2014 The ones they had when I first joined the military were not nearly as good. They've made a lot of improvements since then.
There isn't much nutritional value in maintaning a steady diet of MREs. Their primary purpose is to give the soldier a consistent caloric intake. They are not meant as long term substitutes for fresh food like fruits and vegetables.
Actually, I thought the earlier ones were the best. The only problem is that the menu was so damned limited. For 14 years we had only a choice of 12 items, that almost never changed. Spend 2 weeks in the field eating the same 12 meals and anything gets worn out. It was not really until after the Gulf War that they really tried to change the meals. Today we have 24 different meals, 2 boxes with 12 different meals each. But while pretty much all of the old ones were edible, some of the more recent ones have been outright atrocious and nobody wants to eat them. Cheese & Veggie Omelet Jambalaya Sloppy Joe (which should be "Sloppy Jose", it comes with Tortillas not Bread) Buffalo Chicken (commonly called "Barfalo Chicken") Beef & Black Beans (only good if you are constipated - tastes like crap) Maple Sausage Ratatouille (leftover Jambalaya) Vegetarian Taco Pasta (not even sure how to describe this train wreck) I readily admit, I loved all of the original 12 meals. I loved the Chicken A' la king. I loved the dehydrated items (light to carry, did not take up much room, just take a swig of water with every bite). I think the "Ground beef with spiced sauce" was the only one out of the first decade that a lot of people did not care for. But all had fruit, and a lot of other things. Today, your fruit is "Cranberry Applesauce", or "Sunmaid Rejected Raisins". And so many of the items are "Vegetarian" that you are guaranteed to get one of the really crappy meals every day. Several years ago I did a 3 month mission at White Sands. Out in the middle of nowhere every day for months, 2 meals a day were MRE, Dinner was at a chow hall. And towards the end we were so sick of many of the meals that we would strip out the goodies and leave the main meals. My dog afterwards ate really good though when we got back. A lot of them went straight to him.
MREs were never intended to be the main source of food for people in the military. It is a field ration (like the K Ration was a survival ration). You eat them when field mess facilities are not available, not as your only source of food. Now when I was in the grunts, we lived off of them. A Marine Infantry Battalion really does not have a "Field Mess", maybe 1 or 2 times in a 1 week training exercise we would get food trucked to us from mainside from the kitchen. The rest of the time we ate MREs (I still remember eating cold spaghetti from a paper plate in the pouring rain in North Carolina in 1987). But a Marine Battalion really does not have a field mess like the Army does. I was shocked when I joined, and saw that they had actual mobile kitchens, with stoves, sinks, fridges, and cooks to make everything for us. In my Battalions in the Army, we ate MREs only for lunch, Breakfast and Dinner were always hot chow. And for most people in the military, the MRE simply has to many calories. It is designed to meet the needs of an Infantryman in combat conditions. Not somebody who is riding a desk or doing less physical labor. There was a report a while back of a Navy unit where almost everybody who had returned from a posting overseas was severely overweight and they blamed the MREs. But the problem really is in their command, for not arranging for them to get proper food facilities instead of relying on MREs only for 6 months.
I had canned rations on FTX (field training exercises) in ROTC. I enjoyed them but a bit on the salty side. We used the throwback P-38s to open them, I don't even know if they issue those anymore. The vast majority of my meals while actually in the service were at dining facilities which offered a wide array of hot entrees, cold sandwiches, fountain soda, salad and dessert bars. Those under 35 hit the burgers, fried foods and sodas, if you were over 35 you hit the salad bar. While actually on the job, we had box lunches, pre-made "grab n' go" meals which were usually cold sandwiches, candy bars and chips; maybe an orange or apple thrown in. We'd grab a couple cans of soda to go with it. As you say, the vast majority of jobs in the Air Force require sitting in a chair; even many of the combat jobs require sitting in a chair, meeting your daily caloric needs could be done with crackers and peanut butter. Nobody went hungry, look at it that way.
They do not have P-38s any more, but I have carried mine on my key ring for decades. It is a can opener, screwdriver, box opener, and a dozen other tools. But yea, I miss the Grab N Go. I used to walk by the one at Al Udeid every morning after finishing a 24 hour shift and grab something to eat for when I woke up after sleeping for the next 6 hours. I can honestly say that I probably ate more GNG meals then I did chow hall meals when I was there.
You spelled out the main difference between your World as a combat infantryman and that of the peripheral support teams where physical labor is less a part of the job requriements. We were encouraged to go for nutrient-dense foods with fewer calories overall as compared to calorie-dense foods. A nutri-grain bar rather than a bagel and cream cheese. Specific to MREs, these were designed for the caloric needs in your Worlld. To sustain a soldier/Marine in the field where access to field kitchens was temporarily limited.
Actually, my time as a grunt was long past when I ate at the GNG regularly. But the meal I always got there was the Tuna pouch (sometimes ham or chicken spread with crackers), low in calories and able to eat any time anywhere. Mostly I liked that I could grab something after getting off shift, and then have something ready to eat when I woke up in my room, instead of having to make the 1 mile walk to the chow hall in 130 degree weather. But I also know to vary my intake depending on what I am doing. Field ops doing recon missions, intake increases. At a maintenance phase where I am just taking care of location and equipment, goes down a lot.
My 1st duty station was at Ft Ord. My PSG had been in for 21 years and was a unique man. I thought he was crazy. Being a support unit (Medics) for the 7th Infantry we spent a serious amount of time in the field. My 1st instruction by my PSG was to stock as many oranges from the mess hall the week prior to going to the field. The day before movement he would have me at the medical warehouse with 3-4 bottles of vodka. I would shoot up the oranges with vodka with my syringe. He would have me aspirate the oranges prior to injecting them with vodka to maximize the benefit. Some he would sell out of our Field Hospital and other times he would supply them for free if he knew you long enough. At that time C-rats was still the main source of food and I liked them. Nothing like having a screwdriver with C-rats being all of 18 years old and dumb.
In India it is a simple thing known as Chikki and very simple food, no options just enough to survive everything is high in fats and carbs though http://i34.tinypic.com/infmz5.jpg I think they forgot India
MRE's have gotten "better" over the years but it's still not something anybody would voluntarily eat unless they had to. It's not uncommon to find guys hauling huge coolers full of food around in the back of their trucks during field training exercises and whatnot trying to avoid eating an MRE. Plenty of people tend to buy a few loafs of bread and a few jars and peanut butter and jelly and live on that for the time being. Chef Boyardee, canned goods, Hillshire Farm sausage and cheese etc, pretty much anything that they can eat cold and won't spoil too quickly. I literally laughed out loud the other day when watching that tv show called Bizarre Foods where the host goes around the world eating the most disgusting things imaginable such as brains and testicles and half fertilized duck eggs etc. On this particular episode he was given an MRE by some military contractors or something and he almost gagged trying to eat it. That made me laugh. This guy eats eyeballs and raw cow guts but he choked trying to eat a standard MRE. That just shows you how bad some of the stuff in those MRE's taste. Some of them are actually decent tasting such as the Beef Stew. Many of them are horrendous though. It's always funny to see a palate full of like 50 MRE boxes and all of them are opened and missing like 1 or 2 from inside the case, the ones that people actually like. It's called "Rat (*)(*)(*)(*)ing" in military jargon lol.
Ah, good 'ol C-rats. Nothing like a meal of Beans and Motherfu*()rs on a cold, wet day at Hunter Liggett. But not all the C-rats were bad. I actually like the green tinted ham and eggs(I was probably the only one who did), so if I got stuck with the aformentioned "beans" or the spaghetti with beef chunks, I could always find a trade.
