In which I eat REALLY OLD FOOD. For fun!

I’d never eaten an MRE in my life. So it was about time, I think.

MRE stands for, obviously (not) enough, “meal, ready-to-eat.” If that doesn’t convince you that the military is awesome, I don’t know what will. Because HELLO? MEAL, READY-TO-EAT? What?!

Anyway. My dad rolled into town yesterday, and when my brother and I were over visiting him he produced a couple of vegetarian MREs from the case of meals, ready-to-eat that my uncle had given to him. I immediately freaked right out with joy because I’d had no idea there was such a thing as a vegetarian MRE, and I pretty much wanted to eat one on the spot except I’d just had a Gardenburger.

Behold! Two vegetarian MREs of my very own! They’re adorable, dense little aardvarks of beige-colored food goodness, OMG would you just LOOK AT THEM:

MREs are irradiated and VERY well-packaged (read: you could probably store one under water for a year), so they last a disturbingly remarkably long time. People have been known to eat them five, ten, even fifteen (or more!) years after they were manufactured without dying.

Each meal contains about 1,300 calories (nearly an entire day’s worth of calories for me) and weighs probably 1-1/2 pounds.

I opened one of the packages on the spot and oohed and aahed over the contents, and then I got online and read about C rations (what grandpa ate in WWII), K rations, and MCI (what dad ate in Vietnam), (all of which came complete with four cigarettes at every single meal), MREs, FSRs (they have caffeinated gum in them, for reals) and other kinds of pre-packaged meals (like HDRs – humanitarian daily rations).

My dad, who couldn’t use his computer because I was in the way, commented that he could almost see the blog post taking form in my head. “You’ll have a few thousand words, probably,” he remarked.

“Oh, man! I totally want to try the Indian food meals!” I replied, apropos of nothing. “And look! Omelets! There’s no fuckin’ way those are edible!” I tried to get dear ol’ dad to give me all of the vegetarian MREs he had – apparently meal 12 is a rice and bean burrito! – but he would only part with the pasta dishes because he doesn’t like noodles.

Today, I decided to go ahead and eat one of my precious veggie MREs. It was labeled “Meal, Ready-to-Eat, Individual, Vegetarian, Menu No. 14,” and contained the following items:

Pasta with Vegetables in Alfredo Style Sauce
TS Fruit (Pineapple)
Granola Bar
Peanut Butter
Crackers
Fruit Filled Bar
Hot Sauce
Accessory Packet D (Lemon Tea w/Sugar, Apple Cider, Salt, Chewing Gum, Matches, Toilet Tissue, Towelette)
Spoon
Flameless Heater

Yay! Science! Quite possibly fatal science! Let’s rock this project!

I opened the granola bar first. It was technically edible, but the oils in it had gone rancid some years ago. I ate about 20% of it, but the smell bugged me. If I was truly hungry, though, I would have eaten it anyway. It may not have contained all the nutritional value it once did, but I’m sure it was harmless.

The fruit bar didn’t smell or taste bad, but it did look a little weird – the fruit had turned black, and the bar was kinda smashed. I took a couple of nibbles, but didn’t finish it.

The accessory pack is the best part because it not only has salt, matches, and toilet paper, but it also contains the famous tiny glass bottle of Tabasco sauce that MREs are famous for:

The crackers also smelled just slightly rancid, but were certainly edible. I put some of the fortified peanut butter on them. I was certain the peanut butter would smell off because it contains so much oil, but it didn’t. I ate one cracker and about a third of the peanut butter.

Then, feeling a little nervous, I turned to the most foreign and interesting part of the MRE: the flameless ration heater. I read the directions twice, grabbed my water bottle and pouch of pasta, and proceeded to “cook” my dinner.

The directions have you open the heater bag, insert your entrée, and add a few ounces of water. Then you fold the bag over and put the whole thing back into the entrée’s box. Let it sit horizontally for a minute, then prop it on a “rock or something” (that’s verbatim from the instructions, I kid you not) for another eleven minutes. Apparently the heater is non-toxic and can safely be thrown away.

I nuked a mug of hot water, poured the apple cider mix into it, and drank it while my entrée was heating. The cider tasted just fine.

The heater bag emits steam and makes homey little gurgling noises while it heats your food. It’s SO FREAKING COOL. It’s charming as hell because it’s warm, food-oriented, and a bitchin’ use of science. I can imagine it being really pleasant if you were somewhere cold and/or dark, because you could hold the thing while your food was heating and feel good for a few minutes.

Lacking a rock in my bedroom, I leaned mine against a wooden asana next to my yoga mat. I’m such a fucking hippie.

The entrée, when I opened it, was definitely hot. It was, I think, supposed to resemble shells and cheese, but I don’t know if the sauce was actually supposed to be cheddar-colored or if it had discolored with age. It had virtually no aroma. I tentatively took a bite.

Amazingly enough, the peas were still pea-shaped and had even retained the slightest amount of texture. I can’t recall what other vegetables were in there… carrots, maybe? The dish was much more palatable after I salted it, and that’s saying something since I never salt anything.

About an hour after I ate the entrée, I mixed up the lemon iced tea drink mix. It tasted just like instant iced tea. I don’t know that I’ve ever drunk two instant drink mixes in one day before in my life!

The pineapple and the gum remain unopened. I’m definitely curious to see how the pineapple will look. I expect that the gum will be indistinguishable from new gum.

I learned how to date the meal, and it turns out that the components were packed sometime in late 2000, making the meal just shy of a decade old. The Tabasco has 1008 stamped on it, which means it was packaged on January 8, 2001.

I saw nothing that would make me suspect the safety of the food – no bloated packaging, no spores or mold on the food – but its age makes me wonder if I should really be eating it. (Hah! Too late!) Plus my dad has eaten some out of the same case and he didn’t drop dead, so it’s not like I’m undertaking a dangerous activity.

All in all, a really fun and weird experiment, and I pretty much haven’t had to leave my room all day.

In conclusion, the heaters are AWESOME, the food is probably meh if you ever have to eat it for any reason other than for fun, the technology that allows this stuff to still be edible after a decade is AMAZING, and the fact that I actually ate it means I’m crazy brave and fierce!

Want more pics? View my goofy MRE gallery.

Update: The gum was hard but otherwise totally fine.
Update: The pineapple smelled like pineapple and was juicy, but it was also brown. I didn’t eat it.
Update: MREs can be purchased on eBay. There’s a bunch of people out there who apparently collect them, and others who stock them in case of The End Of The World, and others who stock them In Case Of Emergency and others who take them camping and still others who are clearly batshit insane militia people. Point is, the vegetarian MREs are often sold separately! Yay!
Update: Now that I’ve eaten two of these things, I can probably go the entire rest of my life without needing to eat any more of them. They’d make killer diet food, I think.