I was an intern in that lab more than 20 years ago. I have lots of cool stories from there. The people I worked with were AWESOME! This really surprised me how much they cared about their work with minimal salary and funding.
At the time, one project was to simulate a 30 year shelf life by storing food in a 100 deg F “heat room” for 10 years. Periodically a sample would be taken out for testing (chemical, mechanical and taste). Imagine the taste! The samples were full size recipes but only a small portion of the food was used. The rest was put out on a table just before lunchtime and was available for anyone on the campus to eat. Needless to say, I made it a rule to never eat anything I didn’t prepare myself or whitnessed being prepared!
One project I really liked was the desert dehydration project. One scientist was testing how frozen yogurt and ice cream could be dehydrated. Again a full industrial size was made with a soft serve dispenser but only a small portion was used for the tests. All summer an new variety was tested each week. So the scientist incharge scheduled the “sample preparation” every Wednesday at 2pm. There would be a long line ready for the leftovers. Let’s just say I whitnessed these being prepared.
There's no need to be a jerk. It is easier to just move along if you think a personal anecdote isn't unique. After all, HN is chock full of personal anecdotes, none of which are unique.
"Given enough eyeballs, all anecdotes are shallow"
Basically when you have an audience as big as HN, even the most unique anecdote will seem completely obvious and ordinary to someone (and that someone will usually feel the need to comment)
That’s one of the things I like about HN, there is always someone with an anecdote about some subject that I thought was super obscur. For once _i_ was able to offer the anecdote!
Thanks, that's interesting and useful addition to the parent comment. (I'm not being sarcastic, just trying to counter balance other comment with honest opinion).
I have wasted more time than I care to admit watching that guy eat all the different MRE's. I think the Canadian MRE's definitely looked like they tasted the best.
Not related to the pizza version but to all MRE's - what if you have a broad food allergy, like lactose or gluten intolerance / allergy? Seems almost impossible to not have those present in these types of food.
> During a draft they would, but right now in times of "peace" the military can be choosy.
No, even when there's a draft they don't accept people with certain medical problems. Someone who requires special meals to get enough calories to do his job would more than likely tax military logistics more than his labor is worth while deployed.
Edit: I guess people don't like the above idea, but it's true:
> Michael was a young man during the era of the Vietnam War. He was given the lottery draft number nine and had to get a physical to proceed with the draft process. Michael attempted to use an allergy to wool as an excuse to get out of the draft. He was told to wear wool socks to see if the allergy was true. Under the socks, Michael used a solvent to create a rash to the wool. He tried several times before an Army doctor issued him as medically ineligible for service.
As an example, during the surge volunteers could get enlistment waivers for almost anything except Celiac disease or peanut allergy. Minor felonies, not so minor felonies, fat, ASVAB test results worse than filling out the score sheet randomly, school dropout, addiction history, well, OK if you really want, but no food allergies.
Do you by any chance have a reference for how much standards were lowered during the surge? I knew they were lowered some, but I thought it was a little bit, not a huge amount.
A single example of this was Bo Bergdahl. Generally speaking, washing out of another branch of the service for psychologcial reasons like Bo did (coast guard) is a huge red flag and would have disqualified him at another time.
This is a personal ancidote from my experience only, but it was generally understood that during the Iraq period circa 2003 If you have a pulse, you were qualified to enlist.
USAREC works in mysterious ways. The exact legal definition of waiver vs standard vs requirement is complicated and fuzzy. This link from NYT (a fake news source, but sometimes accidentally factual) gives some insight in that the number of waivers roughly doubled.
The effect on the army is unclear. Note that even during the surge more than ninety percent of recruits required no waivers. So you can spin the story as the number of recruits with clean records dropped from 98% to 96% which doesn't matter, or its a crisis that the number of troublemakers doubled.
Then you don't eat the main item, and you go hungry. That's about how it goes. I got vegetarian omelet all the time, it's notoriously gross and runny. You typically don't get to swap if you're less than an E-5. So you just eat the other stuff in the meal or go hungry.
Honestly Basic training with a food allergy, sounds like hell. You're pretty much starving for a month, and you don't get the luxury of choice while eating.
I was a smaller guy when I went through in 2009, and I was required to eat every last thing. I can now eat 3 full meals in less than 2 minutes. But I feel bad for someone who's got an gluten intolerance, because a DS isn't going to take that as an excuse.
I’m going to guess that food allergies is something MEPS would catch. As a former grunt I can’t see how having a major food allergy would work. There’s too much to worry about to also make sure your supply lines also have just the right amount of xyz food intolerant meals. Food prep for patrols was “throw a box of MRE’s in the truck and let’s go”.
I don't recall any other soldiers in basic with me having any food allergies for what it's worth(this was back in 2002). I'm not sure if that was just coincidence, or if that allergy disqualified them from my branch(army).
Soldiers have always groused about their chow, of course. Generations of generals have repeated the adage that armies march on their stomachs, but few ever mentioned taste buds.
Adding to the anecdotes here:
My dad was an E-8 in the army. He told a lot of stories about cutting through the bureaucratic BS to look out for the welfare of his people. He was very savvy about the fact that simply being in charge actively created obstacles to him knowing what was really going on at the lower levels.
One of his stories that sticks with me:
He inspected the chow hall by walking in unannounced and taking the tray from the guy coming off the line, then telling the staff to get the guy a replacement tray post haste so he wasn't unduly screwed over in the process. This meant they couldn't set aside any special cuts of meat or whatever just for The Sarge. He knew he was eating what they ate because he was eating a tray prepared for one of the troops, not for him. He gave them no warning so they couldn't have this day be the day everything was better or whatever.
I'm not convinced MREs are an improvement over the old rations. I've eaten MREs. They are pretty bad. I've heard stories from my dad about the old rations and some of it was apparently okay.
I'm not a fan of microwave meals either. MREs strike me as sort of like that. It is some new fangled means to do x, y or z that actually lowers food quality. Though I have read that in WW2, there were two different bugs that so regularly infested the flour with which biscuits were made for soldiers, that soldiers could tell you which bug they preferred to end up eating because one of them made the biscuits very bitter. So maybe it isn't quite as simple as I like to imagine.
Anyway, this looks like a good thing to me. The article mentions that pizza is "ubiquitous" in the US. That's actually understating it's popularity. From what I gather, it is actually the most widely eaten food globally and they do things like put fish on it in Japan.
I recently tried a bunch of knock-off MREs sold to civilians. As far as I could tell the contents of the kits were the same stuff as in real MREs, but packaged a bit differently.
My take is that the components that are naturally dry work best. Cookies, crackers, raisins, nuts: all of these are fine. Things get weird and unappealing once the components have to be wet, which is a problem because most of the main dishes are basically stews of various sorts.
I can appreciate that the MRE designers are facing a hard problem: making food that is shelf-stable for years yet palatable enough to be eaten for weeks on end. But the results really aren't very good.
My recollection is that the MREs did weird things like included veggies as an ingredient in crackers to help add variety nutritionally, which did weird things to the taste.
I'm fine with eating dried fruits and roasted nuts. I don't see why there isn't more of that type thing in military field rations. Isn't that a tried and true means to preserve food for long periods while still being nutritious and delicious?
It's surprisingly difficult to produce combat rations that can provide enough calories for wartime activities. The (civilian) 2000 calorie diet on the side of the box now is already a joke for anybody reasonably active, but when you're humping a third to half your bodyweight through rough terrain, it's downright ridiculous. WW2 K-Rations (approx 3000 kcals daily), when not supplemented with anything better, frequently led to malnutrition, scurvy and other similar ailments, not to mention that troops on them for extended periods of time in a warzone lost so much weight and muscle mass that they were ineffective for months afterwards.
"I don't see why there isn't more of that type thing in military field rations." does not mean "Let's feed troops exclusively dried fruit and nuts and nothing else."
Re expense: They spend millions on research to develop new MREs. If "Healthy, palatable food that already exists costs too much" is a primary basis for rejecting it, something is wrong with this picture.
Dried fruit and nuts ARE a significant part of many different Country's soldier meals. The problem is that it just doesn't do for a soldier's morale what something like pizza or chili does. A soldier doesn't want health food, he wants comfort food
The British and other European ones do. Things like a pack of mixed nuts and raisins, or a pack of fruit rather than just in snack bars.
I've used MREs quite a few times, as they used to be much cheaper in surplus stores and handy for camping. There seems to be a fundamental difference in approach between Europe and the US.
The US seems to value longevity most (10 year shelf life rings a bell, I could be mistaken), and it's reflected in the taste, with sawdust flavoured crackers etc. European ration packs are much shorter shelf life (2 or 3 years, again not certain), but are much tastier as a result. The European ones have a lot more in the way of known brands with decent tea, coffee, chocolate etc.
The French are most adventurous with things like rabbit, duck, pate, venison etc. British had the best curry and puddings. Also seemed the most generous - something like 4,000 calories a day. Lots of snacks and sweets too, I guess to bump the calorie numbers.
I paid attention to the part of the article that mentioned that the pizza slice comes packaged with a protein shake. That sounds just like veggie crackers to me.
> I'm not convinced MREs are an improvement over the old rations. I've eaten MREs. They are pretty bad. I've heard stories from my dad about the old rations and some of it was apparently okay.
I'm not military nor have a military family, but I was under the impression that the main problems with the pre-MRE rations was that they were heavy and lacked variety, so you'd get sick of the good stuff pretty fast.
I have a few years experience with MREs admittedly some decades ago, between the two gulf wars.
1) On a short term subjective individual basis anything mom didn't put in your lunch will be defined as awful, such that if you swap lunches with the kid next to you in grade school you'll hear plenty of complaining about lunch is inedible, even if every individual loves their own mom's cooking. This goes away after some weeks.
2) Most eating is about social signaling, virtue signaling, conspicuous consumption. So the stereotypical "first day pass" every new private passes up an objectively better free meal at the DFAC for an icky greasy chezburger at the on post Burger King and claim its the best food they've ever eaten. Likewise in the field you're issued an MRE that tastes pretty good and you'll hate the lack of choice no matter how good it tastes; offer soldiers their choice of cardboard flavored instant Ramen and they'll declare that a culinary masterpiece. Imagine the reaction if a Michelin Star restaurant refused any serving choices at all; here's your drink and meal chosen by us; no matter how good the food is, the complaints would be deafening.
3) Sometimes the food is objectively bad in taste or texture or consistency from pack to pack. The famous vegetable omelette can be delicious or randomly they include too much soggy woodchip-like "mystery fiber" and thats just disgusting although I generally like that MRE. Also the Italian sausage MRE sandwich, which has been around at least a decade and is essentially a rolled up pizza, gives me and every other soldier I've asked, heartburn, and essentially no other food gives me heartburn (whiskey shots, but only sometimes). On the other hand we had a running joke / research project in my platoon along the lines of the army counts every meatball in the spaghetti entree, expect a hand receipt for nine serial numbered meatballs with every entree, or whatever.
4) Sometimes the system is subjectively inconsistent across the system. Almost everyone in the army ate a chef boyardee ravioli or spaghetti with meatballs or salisbury steak meal when they were kids, and the army has produced MREs that are consistently indistinguishable from the kid dining experience to the point of generating homesickness. MREs contain (used to contain) a poundcake that was indistinguishable from an flat unstuffed twinkie. And of course a pack of M&Ms for desert is literally a civilian pack of M&Ms making it very consistent with civilian life and everyone likes those. On the other hand, something like the famous omelette is very binary, almost political, in that about half of soldiers will trade it for anything and refuse to eat it, and the other half think its pretty tasty when warmed up. I have no idea what the army was thinking shipping something half the troops will hate.
5) If your chain of command suck or for whatever other reason your morale is low, its totally socially acceptable in the Army to complain about the food. Yet going the other way if field conditions are so rough you'd eat anything "SERE course style" then lack of complaining also worries leadership. Basically leadership operates under the model that if the worst thing the troops are doing is complaining about the food, then the leadership is probably doing mostly well.
I suspect in the long run once the PR dies down the pizza MRE will be hated by the troops because everyone has their own ideal mental model of a pizza and "one size fits all" isn't going to work for anything thats not a mass produced kid food (like chef boyardee ravioli). Also if its essentially an unrolled italian sausage MRE sandwich, almost everyone is gonna get heartburn.
> Imagine the reaction if a Michelin Star restaurant refused any serving choices at all; here's your drink and meal chosen by us; no matter how good the food is, the complaints would be deafening.
A large number of Michelin starred restaurants actually do give you no choice, and have no menu available. At most I've heard of you can have something removed from the standard meal, but not added. Drinks are usually a different story, but sometimes there is only one wine available, prescribed by the chef.
Have you actually eaten at a Michelin-starred restaurant? Many, many of them don’t give you any choice: “here’s the sequence of plates for today, here’s the wine(s) to go with them; if you have allergies or don’t drink, here’s a replacement”. You don’t go there to eat your favorite food, but to taste something that only that chef can concoct. Obviously you actively chose to go there in the first place, but that’s it.
> Imagine the reaction if a Michelin Star restaurant refused any serving choices at all; here's your drink and meal chosen by us; no matter how good the food is, the complaints would be deafening.
This really isn't true! Set menus are quite common at the Michelin-star end of restaurants, at least in Europe. Here's one near me [0] serving "a seasonal no choice set menu...we cannot cater for dietary choices". They do allow you to diverge from their wine pairings, but there certainly wouldn't be outrage if they didn't and you can probably find a comparable restaurant that does not offer a choice of wine.
Many of the US Michelin restaurants are tasting menus only, though they'll always adjust for real allergies. Few will accomodate vegetarian or vegans though.
Very informative, and I get the point about choice. There is certainly less complaining when customers have choice, which is why 99.999% of restaurants have a multi-meal menu.
To your critics: Yes that’s true, many top restaurants offer only one tasting menu, but I have never encountered a top restaurant that forces you to eat there. You have a lot of choice but you made your choice when entering the restaurant. On the other hand the classic French nouvelle cuisine restaurants will always have a menu that offers various choices.
Actually, regarding the m&m’s they may look the same but Army Natick worked hard with Mars to develop m&ms that wouldn’t melt in ambient conditions just after the start of the first gulf war.
The trick with MRE's is to go vegetarian. Penna pasta 2-3 times a day for ~2 months. I didn't eat pasta for about 3 years after that. I should say, meals wern't great, but they weren't bad.
Ideally soldiers get whatever's easily sourced locally, but I can imagine most current warzones aren't really bountiful enough to support thousands of troops in addition to the local population.
Still, canned vegetables go a long way and they have a shelf life of at least a year. I don't see a need for food with a shelf life of years for the current wartime situations.
Canned food is heavy and bulky (mostly from the extra water, not the can itself). Normal canned vegetables aren't very calorie-dense either, which is one of the criteria MREs are trying to hit.
Canned food also isn't as resistant to damage as a flexible bag of odds and ends can be, and more importantly tends to harbor bioweapon-tier food poisoning when it does get damaged
I remember reading in one of the Wikipedia articles on US Military mess kits that the United States is the only military that doesn't expect troops to forage at least some of their food. (This was relevant to the article because that resulted in some of the mess kit designs being optimized for cafeteria style serving) Of course normal considerations about the accuracy of Wikipedia may apply.
I was just at a resort hotel in Japan and went over to the pizza bar for some sausage pizza (hopefully) only to find pizza with varieties of fish :( it’s actually kind of hard to find really good American style pizza here. The same goes for burgers - everything has weird ingredients, sauces or the meat is not 100% (mixed with some other stuff). Don’t get me wrong, the food is amazing, but once in a while I just want some ham and pineapple or meat lovers shitty papa johns, ya know? I would choke a child over some Chicago deep dish right about now.
> it’s actually kind of hard to find really good American style pizza here
And when she was good, she was very, very good,
But when she was bad she was horrid
I have to admit Japan is weird like that. Food is either world class (when they "get it") or it's simply awful (when they don't). There's no good Thai in Tokyo, no good hamburgers, no good Mexican, not even much decent Italian (Saizeriya. Dear God). Not really even any good bread, if you like crusty sourdough.
There's a complicated calculus at work between what the market wants, its expectation when it gets it, and what it will pay. When those factors align you will get absolutely world class food. When they don't, for whatever reason, you get absolutely nonsensical garbage. The best Thai that I know of in Tokyo, a city of 30+ million people, I would equate to a 3rd rate strip mall takeout place in my home country. And yet the crappiest 5-for-100¥ gyouza in Tokyo is better than any gyouza in Australia.
The market drives everything, and the japanese market knows nothing about pizza. I've felt your pain. Eat a lot when you get back home.
update: just noticed that you wanted ham and pineapple pizza. I withdraw my sympathetic remarks. I consider fish pizza an appropriate punishment
I had great burgers in Shibuya. Good Pizza in Koenji. Great Italian in Asagaya-kita. McDonalds Roppongi: not so great, but then .. low expectations there. I think it depends where you get out - these are not tourist-type restaurants, but rather novelties for the neighbourhoods.
For sure, stay the heck away from Japanese bread. Worst experience ever: biting into a nice freshly baked roll, to find fish paste where I thought would be some kinda jam. Gross.
Traditional Japanese food, and all the fixings in between, can be very, very good. I loved my Ramen days, my Korean BBQ too. Tokyo food was good for me after a year.
You've gotta get out into the neighborhoods. Same as anywhere, really.
There are videos on youtube and elsewhere of people eating the military field rations of their country. Pretty interesting stuff. Some even had packs that would "cook" the food.
You’ve tried the rest, now try the longest-lasting: M.R.E. pizza, developed at an Army laboratory in Natick, Mass., is designed to remain fresh in storage for up to three years.
Fresh? Yah, a lot of words can be used to describe MRE’s but “fresh” is not one of them. Even mundane, seemingly easy to store foods, end up tasting terrible and have horrible texture. Most of HN couldn’t finish a slice of MRE bread with MRE peanut butter or cheese spread (oh yes we do) on it.
When I got back from Iraq I tried Jiffy for the first time in over a year and couldn’t believe how amazing it tasted. I think the words I used to describe MRE peanut butter included “tire rubber”.
>“You have to remember, these were designed to be eaten when you are wet, cold and hungry,” said a spokesman for the Combat Feeding Directorate, David Accetta. “They taste better then.”
My Dad used to work for the army as a civilian lorry driver, and frequently brought home the UK 24 hour ration packs (although this is 30 years ago now).
A lot of the stuff in the packs was not too bad. The interesting thing though is the "recipes" that the soldiers come up with by combining items from different packs.
I do know that posts solely for humour are not really well accepted here but I have to admit that the title really begs to bring up a reference to "Dwarf Bread" from Discworld.
Is there a place you can buy MRE's as a civilian? Are they available at any typical military surplus store? I've always had a thing for utilitarian food, I was big into Soylent for a while, and will gladly eat PB&J for lunch every day for months. I'll often ponder that if I could get my energy from a USB charger overnight, I'd prefer to just never eat.
I've always wondered if all the complaints MRE's get are actually because they taste bad, or if most the hate is in the principle of such a food (or the monotony and lack of choice, etc.)
Some Amazon sellers carry them. There's also brands like Mountain House that are specifically geared towards campers and don't have the little kick-knacks with them, just the entrees.
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 85.4 ms ] threadAt the time, one project was to simulate a 30 year shelf life by storing food in a 100 deg F “heat room” for 10 years. Periodically a sample would be taken out for testing (chemical, mechanical and taste). Imagine the taste! The samples were full size recipes but only a small portion of the food was used. The rest was put out on a table just before lunchtime and was available for anyone on the campus to eat. Needless to say, I made it a rule to never eat anything I didn’t prepare myself or whitnessed being prepared!
One project I really liked was the desert dehydration project. One scientist was testing how frozen yogurt and ice cream could be dehydrated. Again a full industrial size was made with a soft serve dispenser but only a small portion was used for the tests. All summer an new variety was tested each week. So the scientist incharge scheduled the “sample preparation” every Wednesday at 2pm. There would be a long line ready for the leftovers. Let’s just say I whitnessed these being prepared.
"Given enough eyeballs, all anecdotes are shallow"
Basically when you have an audience as big as HN, even the most unique anecdote will seem completely obvious and ordinary to someone (and that someone will usually feel the need to comment)
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/war-and-pizza/
FYI it's spelled 'witnessed', no 'h' :)
Thanks for the ‘h’ call out. I’m lousy at spelling. :(
This guy's channel is quite entertaining. He eats really odd stuff, like WWII-era rations.
No, even when there's a draft they don't accept people with certain medical problems. Someone who requires special meals to get enough calories to do his job would more than likely tax military logistics more than his labor is worth while deployed.
Edit: I guess people don't like the above idea, but it's true:
http://aaugusti.umwblogs.org/hist-375-military-history/#_ftn...
> Michael was a young man during the era of the Vietnam War. He was given the lottery draft number nine and had to get a physical to proceed with the draft process. Michael attempted to use an allergy to wool as an excuse to get out of the draft. He was told to wear wool socks to see if the allergy was true. Under the socks, Michael used a solvent to create a rash to the wool. He tried several times before an Army doctor issued him as medically ineligible for service.
This is a personal ancidote from my experience only, but it was generally understood that during the Iraq period circa 2003 If you have a pulse, you were qualified to enlist.
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/us/14military.html
The effect on the army is unclear. Note that even during the surge more than ninety percent of recruits required no waivers. So you can spin the story as the number of recruits with clean records dropped from 98% to 96% which doesn't matter, or its a crisis that the number of troublemakers doubled.
https://www.military.com/join-armed-forces/disqualifiers-med...
Honestly Basic training with a food allergy, sounds like hell. You're pretty much starving for a month, and you don't get the luxury of choice while eating.
I was a smaller guy when I went through in 2009, and I was required to eat every last thing. I can now eat 3 full meals in less than 2 minutes. But I feel bad for someone who's got an gluten intolerance, because a DS isn't going to take that as an excuse.
https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/9gl5vt/celiac_disease...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_chocolate_(Switzerlan...
> Sugar, cocoa butter, Powdered milk], cocoamass, cornflakes 7.5% (corn, sugar, salt, barley malt, emulsifier sunflower lecithin, cola extract caffeine with dye Caramel color, Emulsifier sunflower lecithin, flavor vaniline), Cocoa bean at least 35% (skimmed milk chocolate
Adding to the anecdotes here:
My dad was an E-8 in the army. He told a lot of stories about cutting through the bureaucratic BS to look out for the welfare of his people. He was very savvy about the fact that simply being in charge actively created obstacles to him knowing what was really going on at the lower levels.
One of his stories that sticks with me:
He inspected the chow hall by walking in unannounced and taking the tray from the guy coming off the line, then telling the staff to get the guy a replacement tray post haste so he wasn't unduly screwed over in the process. This meant they couldn't set aside any special cuts of meat or whatever just for The Sarge. He knew he was eating what they ate because he was eating a tray prepared for one of the troops, not for him. He gave them no warning so they couldn't have this day be the day everything was better or whatever.
I'm not convinced MREs are an improvement over the old rations. I've eaten MREs. They are pretty bad. I've heard stories from my dad about the old rations and some of it was apparently okay.
I'm not a fan of microwave meals either. MREs strike me as sort of like that. It is some new fangled means to do x, y or z that actually lowers food quality. Though I have read that in WW2, there were two different bugs that so regularly infested the flour with which biscuits were made for soldiers, that soldiers could tell you which bug they preferred to end up eating because one of them made the biscuits very bitter. So maybe it isn't quite as simple as I like to imagine.
Anyway, this looks like a good thing to me. The article mentions that pizza is "ubiquitous" in the US. That's actually understating it's popularity. From what I gather, it is actually the most widely eaten food globally and they do things like put fish on it in Japan.
My take is that the components that are naturally dry work best. Cookies, crackers, raisins, nuts: all of these are fine. Things get weird and unappealing once the components have to be wet, which is a problem because most of the main dishes are basically stews of various sorts.
I can appreciate that the MRE designers are facing a hard problem: making food that is shelf-stable for years yet palatable enough to be eaten for weeks on end. But the results really aren't very good.
I'm fine with eating dried fruits and roasted nuts. I don't see why there isn't more of that type thing in military field rations. Isn't that a tried and true means to preserve food for long periods while still being nutritious and delicious?
Probably because dried fruit and roasted nuts are both pretty expensive compared to normal rations.
Also I’m pretty sure my digestive system would be pretty unhappy if I were eating primarily nuts and dried fruit for days or weeks on end.
Re expense: They spend millions on research to develop new MREs. If "Healthy, palatable food that already exists costs too much" is a primary basis for rejecting it, something is wrong with this picture.
I've used MREs quite a few times, as they used to be much cheaper in surplus stores and handy for camping. There seems to be a fundamental difference in approach between Europe and the US.
The US seems to value longevity most (10 year shelf life rings a bell, I could be mistaken), and it's reflected in the taste, with sawdust flavoured crackers etc. European ration packs are much shorter shelf life (2 or 3 years, again not certain), but are much tastier as a result. The European ones have a lot more in the way of known brands with decent tea, coffee, chocolate etc.
The French are most adventurous with things like rabbit, duck, pate, venison etc. British had the best curry and puddings. Also seemed the most generous - something like 4,000 calories a day. Lots of snacks and sweets too, I guess to bump the calorie numbers.
I'm not military nor have a military family, but I was under the impression that the main problems with the pre-MRE rations was that they were heavy and lacked variety, so you'd get sick of the good stuff pretty fast.
1) On a short term subjective individual basis anything mom didn't put in your lunch will be defined as awful, such that if you swap lunches with the kid next to you in grade school you'll hear plenty of complaining about lunch is inedible, even if every individual loves their own mom's cooking. This goes away after some weeks.
2) Most eating is about social signaling, virtue signaling, conspicuous consumption. So the stereotypical "first day pass" every new private passes up an objectively better free meal at the DFAC for an icky greasy chezburger at the on post Burger King and claim its the best food they've ever eaten. Likewise in the field you're issued an MRE that tastes pretty good and you'll hate the lack of choice no matter how good it tastes; offer soldiers their choice of cardboard flavored instant Ramen and they'll declare that a culinary masterpiece. Imagine the reaction if a Michelin Star restaurant refused any serving choices at all; here's your drink and meal chosen by us; no matter how good the food is, the complaints would be deafening.
3) Sometimes the food is objectively bad in taste or texture or consistency from pack to pack. The famous vegetable omelette can be delicious or randomly they include too much soggy woodchip-like "mystery fiber" and thats just disgusting although I generally like that MRE. Also the Italian sausage MRE sandwich, which has been around at least a decade and is essentially a rolled up pizza, gives me and every other soldier I've asked, heartburn, and essentially no other food gives me heartburn (whiskey shots, but only sometimes). On the other hand we had a running joke / research project in my platoon along the lines of the army counts every meatball in the spaghetti entree, expect a hand receipt for nine serial numbered meatballs with every entree, or whatever.
4) Sometimes the system is subjectively inconsistent across the system. Almost everyone in the army ate a chef boyardee ravioli or spaghetti with meatballs or salisbury steak meal when they were kids, and the army has produced MREs that are consistently indistinguishable from the kid dining experience to the point of generating homesickness. MREs contain (used to contain) a poundcake that was indistinguishable from an flat unstuffed twinkie. And of course a pack of M&Ms for desert is literally a civilian pack of M&Ms making it very consistent with civilian life and everyone likes those. On the other hand, something like the famous omelette is very binary, almost political, in that about half of soldiers will trade it for anything and refuse to eat it, and the other half think its pretty tasty when warmed up. I have no idea what the army was thinking shipping something half the troops will hate.
5) If your chain of command suck or for whatever other reason your morale is low, its totally socially acceptable in the Army to complain about the food. Yet going the other way if field conditions are so rough you'd eat anything "SERE course style" then lack of complaining also worries leadership. Basically leadership operates under the model that if the worst thing the troops are doing is complaining about the food, then the leadership is probably doing mostly well.
I suspect in the long run once the PR dies down the pizza MRE will be hated by the troops because everyone has their own ideal mental model of a pizza and "one size fits all" isn't going to work for anything thats not a mass produced kid food (like chef boyardee ravioli). Also if its essentially an unrolled italian sausage MRE sandwich, almost everyone is gonna get heartburn.
A large number of Michelin starred restaurants actually do give you no choice, and have no menu available. At most I've heard of you can have something removed from the standard meal, but not added. Drinks are usually a different story, but sometimes there is only one wine available, prescribed by the chef.
That's precisely what most tippy-top-tier restaurants do :)
This really isn't true! Set menus are quite common at the Michelin-star end of restaurants, at least in Europe. Here's one near me [0] serving "a seasonal no choice set menu...we cannot cater for dietary choices". They do allow you to diverge from their wine pairings, but there certainly wouldn't be outrage if they didn't and you can probably find a comparable restaurant that does not offer a choice of wine.
Perhaps it wouldn't be viable in the US.
[0] https://www.heronandgrey.com/menu/
Still, canned vegetables go a long way and they have a shelf life of at least a year. I don't see a need for food with a shelf life of years for the current wartime situations.
You monster! (Kidding, although I don't think I'll ever understand Hawaiian pizza)
There's a complicated calculus at work between what the market wants, its expectation when it gets it, and what it will pay. When those factors align you will get absolutely world class food. When they don't, for whatever reason, you get absolutely nonsensical garbage. The best Thai that I know of in Tokyo, a city of 30+ million people, I would equate to a 3rd rate strip mall takeout place in my home country. And yet the crappiest 5-for-100¥ gyouza in Tokyo is better than any gyouza in Australia.
The market drives everything, and the japanese market knows nothing about pizza. I've felt your pain. Eat a lot when you get back home.
update: just noticed that you wanted ham and pineapple pizza. I withdraw my sympathetic remarks. I consider fish pizza an appropriate punishment
For sure, stay the heck away from Japanese bread. Worst experience ever: biting into a nice freshly baked roll, to find fish paste where I thought would be some kinda jam. Gross.
Traditional Japanese food, and all the fixings in between, can be very, very good. I loved my Ramen days, my Korean BBQ too. Tokyo food was good for me after a year.
You've gotta get out into the neighborhoods. Same as anywhere, really.
Why do you mention that? Aren't anchovies a universal staple of pizza toppings?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18033318
(get it? Army’s Combat Feeding Directorate, hawwww)
"refers to the process of opening a case of MREs, opening up individual MRE packages, removing the desired items"
I'd like to know if it pre-dates the political meaning.
Fresh? Yah, a lot of words can be used to describe MRE’s but “fresh” is not one of them. Even mundane, seemingly easy to store foods, end up tasting terrible and have horrible texture. Most of HN couldn’t finish a slice of MRE bread with MRE peanut butter or cheese spread (oh yes we do) on it.
When I got back from Iraq I tried Jiffy for the first time in over a year and couldn’t believe how amazing it tasted. I think the words I used to describe MRE peanut butter included “tire rubber”.
Hunger is the best spice, as they say.
A lot of the stuff in the packs was not too bad. The interesting thing though is the "recipes" that the soldiers come up with by combining items from different packs.
http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Dwarf_Bread
I've always wondered if all the complaints MRE's get are actually because they taste bad, or if most the hate is in the principle of such a food (or the monotony and lack of choice, etc.)