Showing posts with label MRE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MRE. Show all posts

Friday, August 26, 2016

Review: MRE review 1/2 day's rations


I had the opportunity to take a pile of Australian issue MRE components to work to test out, following on from a small selection of them falling in my lap from more than one undisclosed source. I will not be on-selling these, they're for my own entertainment and preparedness.

I wanted to give myself a good trial, so selected a full menu to replace what I would normally eat during the day at work. It is common to see "8,700kJ" as the average recommended intake and I have breakfast, lunch and two breaks at work, so I selected accordingly.


For breakfast I had a brown of muesli/porridge, which I mad with boiling water and a sachet of instant creamer. It made a solid, heavy and hearty porridge, which was flavoursome and had enough variety of ingredients to have a good and palatable consistency.










I had the "blueberry and apple" cereal bar for my mid-morning snack, it was again, dense and for all intents and purposes, could have come out of any kids

Interestingly when I looked up the nutritional content of current US issued MRE kits, they suggested that service-members (who were classified as highly active men between the ages of 18 and 30) typically use about 4,200 Calories a day. The conversion is  1 kJ = 0.2 Calories (Cals)or 1 Calorie = 4.2 kJ, giving a figure of 17,640 kJ a little over double the "average adult intake diet". Bear that in mind later.

Lunch was a bit more involved; a sachet of freeze-dried rice, beef and onion stew, a can of "diced two-fruits in syrup" with a sachet of tropical flavour Thorzt sports drink powder to drink.

The dehydrated rice was reconstituted with a canteen cup's worth of boiling water, and once ready, I simply upended it into a bowl, and added the cold stew to it. I could have tried reheating the stew, either by suspending its retort in a bowl of boiling water, or throwing it all in the microwave, but this would totally have been cheating.
It was a pretty decent meal, there were enough chunky bits of meat and onion to make it more than just thick gravy, but it was hardly a hefty chew. The stew itself was quite palatable cold, but a quick mix with the hot rice made it all the better.

Obviously you have to reconstitute the rice to make it in any way enjoyable, but it will reconstitute in cold water, if you don't have a source of heat, or are under restrictions.



I finished off my lunch with the can of fruit in syrup, which I popped open with my trusty EDC P-38 opener, and tucked into the just-as-off-the-shelf canned fruit. Nothing special to report there though.












For my afternoon break and to snack on in e afternoon, I had selected the chocolate drink, infamous canned cheese and even more infamous chocolate ration. Again, boiling water into the chocolate drink, which made a quite passable hot chocolate.

If I had wanted it to be extra creamy, I could have saved the instant creamer from breakfast and added it, but I think it didn't need it.





The Bega canned cheese, reported to me as a legendary constipation cause, appeared to be exactly the Kraft cheese stick cheese, in a can. It was firm but elastic, and "split" rather than crumbled. It was tasty enough, and reminded me of school-yard snack breaks for sure.

Lastly was the equally infamous legendarily laxative chocolate ration.  I don't actually enjoy milk chocolate, but I wanted the full experience, and even with all the food I'd included in my half-day's ration, I wanted to make a real showing of it.
I snacked on it throughout the afternoon and finished it just before going home, and suffered no ill effects.

Perhaps the cheese and chocolate battled each other into a stalemate, but I was the victor.

Adding up the constituents, I had had 8907kJ (2129Calories) in this selection, and this was just my daytime food.

All this, and I was pretty full, and certainly didn't feel that I had gone without. If anything, I felt I had wanted to eat the cheese or the chocolate, but not both.

It's also worth noting that this only made up a small portion of the full ADF ration-pack. Given that, and the full kJ load in that full pack, you could make one of these stretch a long way, or spread them out between a number of people to make a survival situation both more palatable, but also more secure.

If you can lay your hands on an MRE, you'd have to go a long way to find a better, more densely packed, supplied and readily consumable source of nutrition and energy than the ADF ration-pack. If you're in a position to lay hands on one, do it.

If you're in a field where you might be able to swap out, try swapping for an ADF rat-pack, you won't be disappointed.

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Home Front: survival nutrition


 Its always interesting to see how food and nutrition is handled in disaster situations in film and TV. From The Walking Dead's baby formula and prison storerooms  to The Day After Tomorrow's vending machines, not to mention ZombieLand's Twinkies and Bill the (delicious) Donkey in The Postman.

I did a little reading about the "average adult daily energy intake" which lead to some interesting findings.

It is common to see "8,700kJ" as the average recommended intake, usually quoted on fast food menu's and the like, (as seen here on this poster for some tasty poultry products seasoned with 11 secret herbs and spices, as devised by a well known Kentucky Colonel.)

This figure is based in part by the Food Standard Code as published by the Australia New Zealand Standards Code (FSC). The FSC lists that value for daily intake levels based on an average adult diet. It is interesting to note however, that this doesn't take into account activity levels, and lifestyle.

It is it seems, more of a "minimum level" for and it has been suggested that it is more suited to bed-ridden individuals, rather than active survivalists, running, ducking, dodging and weaving their way through the ruins of civilization.

Interestingly when I looked up the nutritional content of current MRE kits, they suggested that servicemembers (who were classified as highly active men between the ages of 18 and 30) typically use about 4,200 Calories a day. The conversion is  1 kJ = 0.2 Calories (Cals)or 1 Calorie = 4.2 kJ, giving a figure of 17,640 kJ a little over double the "average adult intake diet".

Lets assume that post-disaster, you will not be having a sedentary desk-job life, and will be a rugged, fighting, and self-reliant survivor, chopping wood for fire, hunting and foraging (or farming) for food, and perhaps battling off marauders, zombies, triffids or the elements.

According to the FSC, and "MyDailyIntake.net", a "balanced diet for an average adult" is made up of the following nutrients each day:



Nutrient
Quantity Per Day
Energy
8,700 kilojoules
Protein
50 grams
Fat
70 grams
Carbohydrates
310 grams
Sugars
90 grams
Sodium (salt)
2.3 grams
Dietary Fibre
30 grams
Saturated Fatty Acids
24 grams

To meet up with our projects "serviceman" levels, you basically have to double that. Obviously, people have done with much less, for millennia and still managed to fight, survive and prosper, till you now find humanity all over the world. 

These "USCG/ SOLAS standard exceeding" food-bars state on their wrapper that  A daily maritime diet (being stuck on a life-boat, i presume) equals 3,333kJ, and a similar land based situation (say, stranded on a desert island) equates to 5,000kJ. However this is a base-survival diet, and wouldn't be much fun, or enough on its own to keep you fighting-fit.

Again, looking around at the figures, I found the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council published this table.

The average amount of kilojoules required daily is represented in the following table:
Age
Male
Female
12-15 years
10 900 kj
9 550 kj
16-18 years
12 900 kj
10 200 kj
19-50 years
11 550 kj
9 300 kj
51-70 years
10 450 kj
8 800 kj
Adults over 70 years
9 450 kj
8 300 kj
Source: NHMRC, Canberra. These figures represent average requirements for the Australian population. Actual energy needs for individuals will vary considerably depending on activity levels, body composition, state of health, age, weight and height. 

This follows the same sorts of levels as I might expect of an average, active person, lying as it does between the "sedentary 8700kJ" and the "active serviceman 17,640kJ", and well above the "marooned on a lifeboat 3,333kJ" levels the USCG suggest.

So, how do you get that level of nutrition, and maintain it, with limited resources?

Prison-style nutra-loaf?

Stockpiles of MREs?

Mainstay Survival Rations?

Pemmican?
a truckload of 2280 kJ Quarter Pounders?


There are lots of choices out there, and it comes down to how you aim to prepare, what you are preparing for, and how you want to live, before and after a crisis comes.
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