MRE
stands for ‘Meals Ready to Eat’. They are a modern staple of the military
world-wide, and they are an invaluable asset to your emergency preparedness
template.
Before
we discuss the background and mechanics of MRE’s, we want to encourage you to
insure your family’s safety and health by dealing only with authorized and
reputable MRE dealers. We recommend you use hikingware.com for all your MRE needs and
questions, as they are a recognized leader in the emergency preparedness
field.
Of
course, MRE’s are not just for emergencies. They can really turn a normal
hiking and camping trip into a smooth and convenient event, saving you lots of
trouble and heartburn.
History.
Armies
and navies have been traveling for centuries with prepared and preserved
rations, when they weren’t looting the unfortunate local people who were in
their military path. Dried and salted meat and vegetables was the
standard ration for centuries. It would feed a soldier or sailor, but it
made them awful thirsty!
In
1799 Napoleon Bonaparte asked the members of the Institut de Science to come up
with a feasible way to carry rations that would not cause his soldiers to
suffer so much from thirst. They were able to come up with canned meat
and vegetables, which Napoleon’s armies soon began carrying with them from
Egypt to Sweden.
Other
countries began using the process, and soon the civilian population saw the
benefits of it as well. Today the manufacture and sale of canned food is
a multi-billion dollar business.
The
two problems with canned food, of course, are its weight and bulkiness, and the
fact that unless you have a way to heat the canned food you will have to eat it
cold.
In
a pinch, when hungry enough, a cold can of pork and beans can taste mighty
good. But a steady diet of cold canned food won’t keep an army going for
very long.
The
invention of dehydrated rations, beginning with the Korean War, did away with
the problem of too much weight. But how to heat the rations was still a
conundrum.
The FRH.
FRH
stands for ‘Flameless Ration Heater’. The Pentagon funded research into
ways of providing soldiers in the field with a safe way to heat their
dehydrated packaged rations during the Vietnam War. The result is that a
small packet of magnesium metal, with some other minerals, was invented to heat
food; you simply added water to the packet and it would heat the rations in
under twelve minutes. It is still the standard way to heat an MRE today,
for both the military and civilian population.
Today’s MRE’s.
There
are a wide variety of meal menus to choose from when you buy MRE products. You
can get everything from chili to spaghetti & meatballs to turkey with
mashed potatoes & gravy, and many other ethnic and mainline meals.
Make
sure you know the expiration date of your meals. They are usually
considered in prime condition for the first three to five years. After
that period they may still be eaten in complete safety, but some of the flavor
and nutrition does tend to diminish.
If
you are buying MRE’s for your food storage/emergency preparedness program you
should have a rotation schedule so you make use of them before they begin
losing their potency.
Visit us at www.hikingware.com
Email: sales@hikingware.com
Telephone: (703) 496-5500
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https://twitter.com/Hikingware
written by Tim Torkildson
Email: sales@hikingware.com
Telephone: (703) 496-5500
www.facebook.com/pages/Hikingware/183290271848107
https://twitter.com/Hikingware
written by Tim Torkildson
