Recalling MRE-related Food Fights From Recent History

RallyPoint Shared Content — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 10:37:09 -0400

When Sarah Sicard of the Military Times reported in March that the mini, .125-ounce tabasco bottles would, after a 10-plus year absence, be reappearing in the U.S. military’s meals ready to eat (MRE), fans on service member chat forums rejoiced.

Even though Sicard noted that the switch to the baby jars of pepper sauce in the MRE was made by necessity — the military is no longer able to buy suitable plastic packet material — the hot sauce news mostly inspired warm reactions.

That’s not always the case when the topic is the MRE, a lightweight, self-contained meal of food averaging around 1,250 kilocalories. Introduced in the early 1980s to replace Meal, Combat, Individual rations, the MRE also has an accessory packet for items like coffee, salt and sugar. MREs can be consumed cold if necessary or warmed up using the MRE’s flameless heating device, according to the Department of Defense (DOD) Defense Logistics Agency, which spends about $420 million annually on MREs.

But let’s face it, MREs — mocked as “meals refused by the enemy” — contain processed, bland food. Options are limited in part because meals must have a shelf life of three years, they must be portable and indestructible, and their preparation can’t give away a soldier’s location.

Service members need to eat to survive on the battlefield, and rations have to be as healthy and appealing as possible. That’s why battlefield food testing and development, overseen by the Combat Feeding Directorate at the Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center in Massachusetts, are important. Important, but not easy.

There are currently 24 menus, and each one can spark polarizing taste debates. Soldiers want more flavorful foods, which might explain why tabasco sauce is so popular. The DOD has had to address or study MRE health concerns raised by Congress, the media and service members. And on and on.

Food fights over MREs

Take a look at a few MRE-related food fights from recent history, and share your favorite MRE anecdotes in the comments:

Pizza, pizza — at long last — pizza. Stephen Moody recalled his fellow soldiers asking for a pepperoni pizza MRE in the 1980s. Around four decades later, Moody, by then the director of the Combat Feeding Directorate, was there to make it happen.

It took years after break dancing and big hair were cool for the directorate to start tossing around the ingredients needed for a pizza MRE, Moody said in a May 30, 2018, Army blog post.

To retain the pizza’s quality and color over the 36-month shelf life, the directorate had to use a high-heat-tolerant mozzarella cheese and tinker with moisture, pH and oxygen levels, according to the blog post. And, Army Times reported Feb. 21, 2018, researchers used rosemary extract to solve an oxidation issue.

“The Combat Feeding Directorate has been working on it since 2012 and now it’s finally being packaged,” according to that 2018 blog.

Rolled out in late 2018, pepperoni pizza slice, with cherry blueberry cobbler, is currently on Menu 23.

The 21-day MRE diet and gut health. Could a 21-day diet of MREs cause stomach problems in service members such as bloating, cramps, gas, headaches and other “leaky gut” symptoms?

In 2016, the Army called for volunteers to help study the question. This was prompted by anecdotal reports that some service members were experiencing gastrointestinal issues after eating MREs in operational environments, according to an Army blog post.

That year, the publication Task and Purpose posted the video diary of civilian Independent Journal Review journalist Juan Leon unofficially undergoing the 21-day diet challenge, in which he subsists on just two MREs a day. In the video, Leon reports feeling miserable, experiencing stomach cramping and a depressed mood, symptoms that resolved only after he stops eating MREs.

Alas, the Army’s official study of the 21-day MRE diet, which involved around 60 adults, was published in 2019. The conclusion was that MREs cause no serious intestinal issues and just a slight change in lactic acid bacteria.

Researchers suspected the latter issue was due to the lack of fermented yogurts and cheeses in MREs, which the Natick team said they’d work to improve, according to the Army blog post, from Sept. 26, 2019.

“Meals ready to excrete.” That is the headline of a post by The Smoking Gun website of MRE evaluations submitted in 2005 by soldiers stationed at Fort Greely in Alaska.

In reality, the MREs were not universally panned. “Great MRE really enjoyed it,” said one soldier. “Meals are improving,” said another.

But the fickleness of opinion about MREs was apparent. Soldiers’ views diverged on taste, texture and even item names: “Chipotle bread leaves a horrible aftertaste for far too long.” “Good idea with the flavored bread now only if it was softer.” “Maybe change the name ‘chicken loaf’ (because it) scares me.” And at least one Fort Greely service member wanted more tabasco sauce.

Yet Slate writer and Iraq War Veteran Zachary Lunn insisted in his 2019 piece, “The legend of the vomelet,” that everyone agreed that Menu No. 4, the cheese and veggie omelet, was “legendarily” the worst MRE.

“Imagine,” Lunn wrote, “a gelatinous (yet somehow firm?) rectangular slab of yellowish-beige food matter.” (View it here if you dare: https://twitter.com/tlcplmax/status/ [login to see] 93514496.)

This may prove that some MREs are beyond redemption, even after a slathering of sauce from a tiny tabasco bottle.

Learn more

Sarah Sicard, “Tabasco bottles make a glorious return to the MRE,” Military Times, March 17, 2022: https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2022/03/17/tabasco-bottles-make-a-glorious-return-to-the-mre

Mallory Roussel, “Army researchers dug into the effects of MREs on gut health, here’s what they discovered,” Army blog, Sept. 26, 2019: https://www.army.mil/article/227225/army_researchers_dug_into_the_effects_of_mres_on_gut_health_heres_what_they_discovered

Zachary Lunn, “The legend of the vomelet,” Slate, May 6, 2019, https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/05/vomelet-bad-mre-omelet-military.html and “Veggie omelet MRE came from lab, not wet market: report,” Duffel blog, Sept. 17, 2021, https://www.duffelblog.com/p/veggie-omelet-mre-came-from-lab-not?s=r

Gary Sheftick, “Fueling soldier lethality: Pizza MRE, new performance bar to hit the field soon,” Army blog, May 30, 2018: https://www.army.mil/article/205936/fueling_soldier_lethality_pizza_mre_new_performance_bar_to_hit_the_field_soon

Chrissie Reilly, “History highlights: Good eats,” Defense Logistics Agency, April 20, 2016: https://www.dla.mil/AboutDLA/News/NewsArticleView/Article/752290/history-highlights

Caitlin Kearney, “Tabasco and the war against bland military meals,” National Museum of American History, April 30, 2015: https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/tabasco-and-war-against-bland-military-meals

About MREs, Defense Logistics Agency: https://www.dla.mil/TroopSupport/Subsistence/Operationalrations/mre.aspx

“Meals ready to excrete,” The Smoking Gun: https://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/meals-ready-excrete

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Response by SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL made Apr 22 at 2022 11:18 AM

SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 11:18:01 -0400

Thanks for sharing.

Response by CPT Lawrence Cable made Apr 22 at 2022 3:52 PM

CPT Lawrence Cable — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 15:52:12 -0400

Being around when the MRE was first introduced, the reason we all liked the hot sauce is that with enough hot sauce and cheese spread, you could eat a piece of wood. Wood would have been easier to eat and taste better than the Freeze -Dried Beef and Pork Patties. Enough hot sauce on the original omelet at least made it consumable.

Response by SFC Jaysin Smith made Apr 23 at 2022 12:27 PM

SFC Jaysin Smith — Sat, 23 Apr 2022 12:27:05 -0400

You guys are forgetting the core value of the MRE, to fuck with your buddies! THE MRE HEATER BOMB!!! I personally didn't mind the MREs all except the green eggs and ham. The rest was fine and some of the stews and pasta main courses were a fav of quite a few grunts I pounded ground with. The heater bomb though! Where do I begin? New guy in your unit, 100mph tape and some soda in the heater u der his bed when he's sleeping so nicely in his fart sack. Or one of your buddies out on a bivvy! Toss it into his hooch and he won't ever miss his fireguard detail again! And for added torment, and a flare of chemical warfare, add in a few of those baby tobacco bottles you've been saving Incase u get a shit meal and have to burn your taste buds off to get it down. Dump those cute little chemical weapons into your MRE bomb, seal it up nice and tight then throw it under the stall when a buddy is peacefully taking a nasty ass shit that smells so bad that his brown beast could make an onion weep! Ah, an ode to the MRE heater bomb, used in training sometimes because you wanted to ring the bells of a tanker friend. Dropped into an APC/MRAP or Stryker. Or simply because of our juvenile yet comical snese of amusement that kept us entertained for the life of our 3 min. Attention span. And the retort to the cries of some butthurt young soldier who complains about our juvenile antic's. "Suck it up fuckstick... If you don't like it you should have stayed the fuck home." And the wait... Always the wait for the retaliation and for someone to give you your very own heater bomb at the most unexpected of times. You can gauge how much your bros love you by the amount of burn you get in your eyes from the numerous bottles of tobacco they squirreled away (sacrificing a horrible taste) just to bring a tear to your eye and a laugh at your expense. R.L.T.W.

Response by SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth made May 3 at 2022 7:54 AM

SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth — Tue, 03 May 2022 07:54:25 -0400

Interesting article on MRE's , I liked the old C-Rations, that was where they should have started with the Tabasco sauce RallyPoint Shared Content

Response by Sgt Private RallyPoint Member made May 5 at 2022 10:47 AM

Sgt Private RallyPoint Member — Thu, 05 May 2022 10:47:08 -0400

They need to bring back the Five Fingers of Death.

Response by PO1 Gery Bastiani made May 6 at 2022 1:53 PM

PO1 Gery Bastiani — Fri, 06 May 2022 13:53:52 -0400

from Dec.26,1992 to April 1993 while I was with NMCB 1 in Somalia we ate MRE's for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. cruel and unusual punishment I'd say

Response by Sgt Mervyn Russell made Jun 5 at 2022 7:05 AM

Sgt Mervyn Russell — Sun, 05 Jun 2022 07:05:18 -0400

In My time we had C-rations, it was ham and lima beans, we had another name for them, which I will not mention here. We also had other choices, with which you didn't get a choice, it was what it was. There was no food truck that made it's rounds that you could buy from. And I'm sure it we had it better than the generation before us. I'm not coming down on the generations after myself, I'm very pleased that you have better food than we did or should I say better choices.

Response by MAJ Ken Landgren made Sep 28 at 2022 6:11 PM

MAJ Ken Landgren — Wed, 28 Sep 2022 18:11:19 -0400

Why did the little Tabasco sauce bottles disappear?

I have always been a stickler to fairness. For example, soldiers who worked weekends got a couple days off during the week. What was the result? We always had soldiers volunteering for weekend duty.

I told soldiers to grab an MRE and take off. There is no cherry picking. What was the result? The last soldier to pick up an MRE did not get screwed.

Response by Sgt Mervyn Russell made Sep 29 at 2022 6:01 AM

Sgt Mervyn Russell — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 06:01:16 -0400

Food fights, in my day, we had C-rations, No MRE's. Don't even know when the MRE's came out. can you imagine throwing a can of C-rations?

Response by SFC Allen Murphy made Apr 25 at 2023 5:01 PM

SFC Allen Murphy — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 17:01:19 -0400

I saw "MRE Food Fights" and my mind instantly went to the literal MRE food fight I was a part of during an NTC rotation back in, I beleive, 1998. We were doing the super police call of the entiore training area after our rotation in the box. Came across piles upon piles of MRE trash scatter all over the place by some shitbag Cav unit. Policed up all the trash into the back of LMTVs. As we were heading back to the rear someone in the LMTV in front of us lobbed an open sack of an unknonwn MRE at the truck I was in and it hit and spalttered a troop in the open back. Of coure we retaliate and got our driver to get along side the other truck and the slinging of MREs begins. Hands full of Chicken ala King, Spagetti, and who knows what eles. It was quite the mess. Good times!