One of my students brought an MRE, or Meal, Ready-to-Eat, to class yesterday. I don’t mind telling you I was more than a little intrigued. A couple of years ago I watched something (I think on PBS) about MRE’s and I have wanted very much to give one a try ever since.
Here is the explanation of an MRE that I got off the web:
The Meal, Ready-To-Eat (MRE) is designed to sustain an individual engaged in heavy activity such as military training or during actual military operations when normal food service facilities are not available. The MRE is a totally self-contained operational ration consisting of a full meal packed in a flexible meal bag.
So there I am, a class full of hungry looking 3rd and 4th graders with a MRE in my hand. What would you have done?
We broke it open, baby!
Ours was menu no. 2, Barbeque Pork Rib.
We pulled out the different components, spread them out on the table and started looking for directions. At first, I thought this was going to be a major pain. However, I was quickly impressed with not only its simplicity, but how truly self-contained the whole meal was. The only thing we had to provide was water, but if push came to shove, the only things you had to have water for were the two beverages. The rest could be eaten cold and dry.
Here’s what we had:
· Pork Rib
· Clam Chowder
· Cheese Spread
· Wheat Snack Bread
· Cookie
· Powdered Beverage (a lot like Gatorade)
· Hot Beverage (coffee)
· Hot Sauce (Tabasco)
· Accessory Packet (salt, pepper, sugar, coffee creamer, and hand towel)
· Spoon
· Flameless Heater * this was really amazing
Each food item was vacuum-sealed in its own little bag. And then there was the flameless heater. It’s inside a long pouch and it generates some kind of chemical reaction with water to create heat. You open one end of the pouch, put whatever you are cooking in the pouch with the heater, add less than a cup of water and presto, you’ve got an oven! And I’m here to tell you it gets really hot!
We added the water, and in a few moments we could not only see steam coming from the bag, but we could hear and smell things cooking as well. I was quite impressed.
The pork rib looked like something you might get on a McRibb sandwich at McDonald’s, but it smelled and tasted much better. I cut it into half-inch bites and used toothpicks to serve the class. Only about 6 students turned it down and everyone who tried it wanted more.
My teaching partner and I split the clam chowder, because none of the students really wanted any…BIG SHOCK! As far as clam chowder goes, it wasn’t the worst I’ve ever had, but it did taste a little fishy.
We all shared the wheat snack bread and the cookie as well. The bread reminded me, and several of the students, of a big communion wafer. The cookie was a molasses cookie and it was pretty dense, if you know what I mean. However, I can imagine if I was fighting somewhere like oh, say, Iraq…a dense cookie might just hit the spot.
I’m standing there wondering how I can get some more of these little goodies for things like lunch each day, when I notice the nutrition label. The pork ribs alone had 100 calories from fat! I may not be as nutrition savvy as I should be, but I think that’s high. After doing a little research, I discovered that MRE’s are designed to have 1300 calories per meal. That’s when I changed my mind about the whole MRE for lunch thing.
In the end, we all got to experience something new, be sufficiently impressed by a three-course dinner that came in a watertight pouch that weighed about a pound, and have a hands-on nutrition lesson. Then we all went back to our seats and wrote about what we had just experienced/learned…so I got to take a grade!
Not too bad for a “Just add Water” kind of lesson!
3 comments:
My daughter loves these things and buys them for various trips. The people who designed these for soldiers in combat made sure of two things. The first, which you noticed, is that they are high in calories... don't want the soldier to run out of gas. Second they have very little roughage, don't want the soldier to have to... well you get the picture. They were not designed for taste though my milatary friends say they have improved dramatically over the years.
Cheers Eric
Having eaten MREs in the field I can tell you that some components become like cash and can be used to acquire other luxuries in the field, like toilet paper.
We used to save the creamer, ketchup, salt/pepper and tobasco and make a rather tasty tomato soup as a late night snack with pulling guard duty.
After leaving the military and living up north, we kept them in the trunk for snow emergencies.
My favorite was the fruitcake and the dried peaches.
more mre goodness here: http://blog.myspace.com/jeepthing
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