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thedrifter
05-11-05, 11:06 AM
Soldiers still barter for the best bits of MREs

By Terri Sapienza
The Washington Post
Published May 11, 2005


Chief Warrant Officer John Cantrell has torn into roughly 500 MREs--Meals, Ready to Eat--during his 20-year Army career, and he knows what to do when he gets one. He starts dealing.

"Everyone wants the Tootsie Rolls," said the Kansas native, 45, who has served in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia and Hungary. The chewy candies are in four of the current 24 MRE selections, and they hold up indefinitely.

"I'll trade any of the fruit or any cakes or cookies for them," he said.

"A strawberry shake can usually be traded for a whole meal," e-mailed Marine Cpl. Richard Wade, 21, from Ramadi, Iraq. As "soon as a group of Marines opens up MREs, you'll start hearing them yelling out trades. Everyone has their own recipes. Some guys get pretty religious about it."

More than a million troops have been sent to Iraq and Afghanistan since terrorists struck New York and the Pentagon in 2001. Plenty of them have subsisted at least some of the time on MREs, the portable chow eaten in the field, although many day-to-day meals are prepared and served in mess halls.

Built to last

MREs don't get a lot of respect from the troops, who know them all by number. But today's descendants of canned rations are a technological wonder.

They must be able to hold up for three years at 80 degrees or six months at 100 degrees, withstand airdrops from thousands of feet and fit into a rucksack.

MREs have changed significantly even from those of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Spaghetti with meat sauce has remained a constant, but vegetarian and lacto-ovo options (with dairy, but no animal or alcohol products) have been around since 1996. A wider range of ethnic entrees, such as this year's chicken fajitas, goes far beyond the pork chow mein offered in 1993.

They deliver at least 1,200 calories per meal (50 percent carbohydrates, 35 percent fat and 15 percent protein), or 3,600 per day for those who eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Complete menus range from 1,200 to 1,350 calories per meal, formulated to fuel troops who operate in high gear.

MREs contain a full meal, including a cardboard-boxed entree and side dish, dessert, and cracker or snack bread. Condiments, seasonings, utensils and flavored drink mixes are also included. And since the early 1990s, each one comes with a flameless ration heater.

Input from the troops

MRE menu planning starts at the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Mass., part of the Defense Department's Combat Feeding Program.

The program decides what rations to keep and which to toss, based on surveys from soldiers.

Although some menu items never really find a following, Judith Aylward, senior food technologist and dietitian with the Combat Feeding Program, said, "Comfort foods like beef stew have been enduring favorites since the beginning."

A current soldier favorite is Menu No. 8: hamburger patty with Mexican macaroni and cheese, bacon-cheese spread, barbecue sauce and wheat snack bread.

Troops are nothing if not ingenious when it comes to doctoring MREs. Cantrell said a combination of the instant coffee and cocoa mixes makes a "good-tasting flavored coffee."

He has also experience in the making of the "Ranger cookie": Pour the sugar packet into the powdered creamer packet, seal it and heat with an entire book of matches. The sugar and creamer crystallize into a white mass, resembling "a big piece of Alka-Seltzer," Cantrell said.

But in the end, the cooking process is more appreciated than the taste: "They're something you make if you're bored."

A perennial favorite for troops is hot sauce, Aylward said. The 0.12-ounce, mini-bottle of Tabasco (good for 45 drops) is a must-have, and a big trading item.

Though candies, shakes and doctored entrees may please the palates of some members of the military, others say they would rather live on peanuts. Lots of them would like a few good slices of pizza.

Pizza "is not out there yet," Aylward said. "But we're working on it."


Ellie