MRE means "Meals Ready to Eat."   

     The US military's food scientists came up with this great little high tech food kit, using the best of several new food preservation technologies, and named the kits "Meals Ready to Eat," because of their pre-cooked condition and their easy-open packaging.

     "Meals Ready to Eat" soon became simply "MREs."  (Americans certainly like to shorten and simplify their language!)

     Oh, but we're getting ahead of ourselves in the "Meals from Outer Space" story!

     MREs were born on Earth, but grew up on Apollo flights to the moon, in Skylab floating workshops and on every US space Shuttle flight from Enterprise to challenger.

     In the 1970's retort pouches (the popular name for thermo stabilized, laminated food pouches named after the retort steam cooker) were put the their first real test by the US space Program. The Space Program was looking for delicious, easy to prepare, "normal" food that wouldn't increase human stress the way that freeze dried food and "toothpaste tube food" sometimes did.

     More than any other technology, retort pouches have satisfied the program's needs. And so, over 30 years ago, retort pouches found a home at NASA, where all their unusual characteristics were much appreciated. They have been successfully feeding astronauts on the moon and in flight ever since.

     In the 1980's the US military research labs, which had hatched the pouch technology in the first place, took the lead in its use and development. The new pouches enabled the Defense Dept. to upgrade its entire field ration program to retort pouches, from the earlier, less workable technologies of canning and freeze drying.

     Over the past 20 years the same research labs which invented them, have continually upgraded the taste and nutritional profile of the pouched meals, which have become better known as "MRE pouches" than as "retort pouches."

     Also over the past 20 years, our military has come to depend on the MRE Full Meal kits (made up of MRE pouches) for most of their operations. Hundreds of millions of MRE Full Meals have been produced and eaten. They have gone to Grenada, to the war on drugs, to fight forest fires in Alaska and bring relief after hurricanes. They fed Desert Shield and Desert Storm and they've just done the job again in Afghanistan.

MRE Shelf Life:

    A main concern in the development and testing of rations for our armed forces has always been SHELF LIFE. An amazing amount of research has been done in the development of the retort pouch and the MRE to determine the exact length of time and the exact conditions under which it is safe to store the entrees and the side dishes.
    The main thing we have to work with is the shelf life chart (shown below) compiled by the Army's Natick Research labs. This gives a very good overview and summary of all the findings gathered from all the testing of MRE products. However, it leaves many questions unanswered. Here are additional facts and observations we have gathered about MRE shelf life:

    1) The shelf life ratings shown in the chart below were determined by taste panels, panels of "average" people, mostly office personnel at the Natick labs. Their opinions were combined to determine when a particular component or, in this case, the entire MRE ration, was no longer acceptable.

    2) The shelf life determinations were made solely on the basis of taste, as it was discovered that acceptable nutritional content and basic product safety would extend way beyond the point where taste degradation would occur. This means that MREs would be safe and give a high degree of food value long after the official expiration of the products as determined by taste.

    3) MRE pouches have been tested and redesigned where necessary according to standards much more strict than for commercial food. They must be able to stand up to abuse tests such as obstacle course travers field clothing pockets, storage outdoors anywhere in the world, shipping under extremely rough circumstances (such as by half track over rocky terrain), 100% survival of parachute drops, 75% survival of free-fall airdrops, severe repetitive vibration (1 hour at 1 G vibration), 7,920 individual pouch drops from 20 inches, and individual pouches being subjected to a static load of 200 lbs for 3 minutes.

    4) Freezing an MRE retort pouch does not destroy the food inside, but repeated freezing increases the chances that the stretching and stressing of the pouch will cause a break in a layer of the laminated pouch. These pouches are made to withstand 1,000 flexes, but repetitive freezing does increase the failure rate by a small fraction of a percent.
 

How to Heat MREs.

U. S. soldiers and thousands of Emergency Relief workers around the world have been forced to eat MREs cold. They weren't intended to be eaten cold exactly, but one of their great advantages is that they can be.

MREs have served their purpose well with no reheating in personal emergencies, family emergencies, and city or state emergencies (earthquakes, toxic spills, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, floods, etc.).

In most situations, however, there is time and opportunity to heat this food. Here are the best ways:

1) Boiling for 3-5 min. - take the pouch from outer carton and place it in clean boiling water heated from available sources: fire, heating tabs, or stoves.

2) Placing next to a non-liquid heat source: radiator, engine block, or even the human body. Be careful of burning or melting the pouch if the heat source is too hot.

3) Placing in a chemical, non-flame heater. There are a couple kinds of civilian market heaters for retort pouches. One of these, Zesto therm, has even been adapted to Olive Drab format for military use and officially called the "MRE Heater". We sell these in bundles of 12 and also sell a version of our MRE Full Meals which includes an MRE Heater Pouch in each meal.

4) Microwave 2-3 min. after removing from the pouch. The pouch contains an aluminum, non-microwaveable layer which gives the pouch such a long shelf life.