What are MRE’s?

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

www.facebook.com/pages/Hikingware/183290271848107

https://twitter.com/Hikingware

written by Tim Torkildson