Food Preservation with MREs and Combat Rations in General

I've always been fascinated by the science of preserving food so that it can be eaten at a later date.  In southern Chinese cuisine there are the black 1000 year old eggs from China, dried shrimp and scallops, salt fish, or tasty salted duck eggs, etc.  In Europe you have bacon, ham, sausages, etc.  The Native Americans had pemmican and smoked meats too.  While these old food preservation techniques are no longer needed, they are still used today to preserve food and to provide great variety for eating.  Who doesn't like bacon if they are allowed to eat it!  I can't believe they have bacon jerky now too!

Food preservation technology via canning took a big advance in the 18th century if I recall from watching the show Connections.  Napoleon was concerned about feeding his army and a man named Nicolas Appert figured out that he could preserve food in bottles if the food was cooked and sealed in an airtight container.  Canned rations followed later in the 19th century.  Military needs basically produced an innovation in food preservation.  On an interesting side note, this also means that making jam and other fruit preserves didn't exist until after these innovations, so the techniques are only a few centuries old.  Before canning, you had drying, smoking, salting, and pickling as methods of preserving meat and vegetables.

Skipping ahead a couple of hundred years, past WWII K-Rations, then C-Rations, you now have MREs or meals ready to eat.  So rations were bottled, then canned, and now they are stored in retort pouches made out of laminated foil and plastic.  MREs were a big improvement on previous types of military field rations that existed even in the 1970s.  These days, they would be compared against other types of dehydrated or retort packaged foods and they hold up pretty good against the competition.

It turns out there is a community of military ration enthusiasts and I watched bunch of unpackaging videos on Youtube.  You could spend hours viewing a variety of military rations from different countries and be impressed.

It was pretty interesting watching as you can see what different countries consider essential to their soldiers in the varieties of food and amenities packed. Some of the European rations like the ones from the French and Italians were pretty fantastic looking as it was almost like having a picnic, the Japanese ones were pretty darn cool for their food and contents, and the American MREs had to be the best designed.  I was really impressed with how you could eat the contents right from the pouches, mix your drinks in the pouches, only need to use a spoon, and generally eat without camp stoves and such with the flameless ration heaters.  Some of the other nations needed little stoves to boil water or to heat their canned meals.

Gundam Cup Noodle

Instant ramen is another advance in food preservation technology.  I blog about instant ramen on my Japanese Pop Culture blog, particularly cup noodles from Japan as they are far superior to the regular cup noodles you can get over here (it is more about quality in Japan than value).   It is interesting that the Japanese Self-Defence Forces actually issue cup noodles and the government over there keeps cup noodles stockpiled for emergency preparedness.

Cup Noodle cutaway

 Instant Ramen 

• Nissin Pop Culture (The Fame of Cup Noodles) 
• The Original Chicken Ramen - A Taste of History 
• Nissin Big Cup Noodle Extravaganza 
• Nissin Kitsune and Tempura Instant Ramen + King Chicken Cup Ramen
• Tasty Nissin Instant Ramen - Deluxe Versions
• Nissin Cup Noodle Shio Ramen and Big Cup Chicken Ramen with Summer Curry Tomato
• Nissin Cup Noodles for 7-11, Italian Curry, and Kalbi Garlic Flavours!
• Donbe Big Tempura Udon and Nissin Instant Chicken Ramen Bowl 
• My Travelogue Post To The Yokohama Nissin and Ramen Museums. DIY cup of noodle!
• Menraku Instant Bowl Ramen
• Brazilian Cup Noodle and the World Cup
• Nissin Deluxe Instant Ramen Bowls
• Nissin Craftsmen Instant Ramen Bowls
• Nissin Curry Meshi (Instant Rice Bowls)
• Japanese Emergency Rations 

• Interesting post about Japanese military rations here.

Back to the MREs now.  I finally bought a box of civilian MREs from Meal Kit Supply via Costco Canada (thanks Costco for carrying these at a reasonable price), and I'll try a bunch of these over the year just for the sake of trying them.  The box of 12 meals I received contained a variety of meals and they actually look pretty cool packed in their tough plastic bags. 

• Spaghetti with Meat Sauce, Potatoes au gratin
• Chili with Beans, Fried rice
• Vegetarian Ratatouille, Potatoes au gratin
• Chicken with Noodles, Fried rice
• Beef Ravioli, Potato cheddar soup
• Chicken Fajita, Fried rice
• Meatballs in Marinara Sauce, Potato cheddar soup
• Vegetable Lasagna, Zapplesauce
• 2 Apple Maple Oatmeal, Brown sugar toaster pastry
• 2 Sausage Patty with Hash Browns, Hash brown with bacon

There is a great deal of stuff packed into each one of these, and they are heavy, but you'll get a ton of calories from them.  If you can carry the weight, they are definitely good for rations on the go, and the variety of items inside is a nice plus.

I've only tried one MRE so far, a Meatballs in Marinara Sauce and a Potato Cheddar Soup with Bacon meal.  It was actually pretty good overall and I'll comment about the meal in the pictures below.  A meal works out to cost less than $10 Canadian if you take out the shipping cost.  They last a long time too, up to five years with regular cool storage.

The MREs come in tough plastic packages within a sturdy cardboard box and are tightly fitted inside.  You'll need  a lot of muscle or a cutter to open the tough bags.

The large amount of contents in an MRE.  You get drink mixes, instant coffee, suger, salt/pepper, spoon, napkin, hot sauce, two main entrees, nice big package of crackers, peanut butter, and a flameless ration heater.  The two dull olive green packages in the top right are the main entrees in their retort pouches.

Flameless ration heater wrapped around my soup and meatballs.  It didn't heat as much as I thought it would, but I don't think I measured the water right and I'll have to try again with the next meal.  It was cold outside, so we'll see.

The meatballs in a tomato sauce.  The small meatballs were quite firm, but I enjoyed it.  It is probably better to have a firmer meatball than a squished on in my opinion.

Chedder and potato soup.  This was pretty good too and it went down real easy.

I was quite impressed by these crackers as they were crisp, had a good texture, and were fresh.  Went real good with the peanut butter.

When I write some more stories, some MREs need to factor in somehow to add good background for them!  Other than space gruel out of a tube, food synthesizers, or the little brick of miracle food (like Elven bread), science fiction MREs should be pretty darn interesting.  This is something that isn't really written about all that much, but maybe space marines will still be complaining about their field rations anyhow as it is a common thing to complain about.

As a parting shot, here is a picture of space instant noodles (ramen) that I shot when I was in Tokyo.  It was developed by Nissin for the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA).

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