New Army Rations?

[Ian]

Seven days worth of rations are reported to weigh about 10 pounds.

https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/10/07/the-plan-to-give-soldiers-a-days-worth-of-mres-in-one-ration-seven-days-of-food-weighing-less-than-10-pounds/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Socialflow+ARM

[HkNewman]

Looks like some new technologies, such as

“…vacuum microwave drying [which],uniformly removes water with both vacuum and microwave techniques, similar to freeze drying without the cold, and then physically compressing the food that remains somewhat moist.  That’s one way they’ve created a lemon cheesecake bar that looks, smells and tastes like actual cheesecake, just a bit crunchier.

 

Another process is called sonic agglomeration technology. It uses vibration to instantly compress food without fillers or binders, reducing the same meal by 50 to 70 percent of its original size with the same ingredients and nutrition.”

Could be useful in entree, energy bars which may actually be edible, or the dessert realm.

.

“And they’re not doing that by dropping ..jalapeño cheese packs, either.”

Let’s hope not.  Mutiny would be ugly

[Roger Caffin]

20 oz (566 g) dry wt per day. This is not going to go well.

Cheers

[Ian]

Your response got BPL’d but I picked up what you’re throwing down.

If my math is correct, big if, then it works out to about 12 ounces / 340 grams of food per day.

If it was a solid brick of fat, that would be about 3061 kcal per day.

48 hour foot patrols without sleep were relatively common.   Add cold temps and these soldiers will be in some serious caloric deficit.

Maybe they’ve got it worked out where the macros actually weigh less than 4, 4, and 9 grams?

I’m interested to see how this pans out

 

[Ian]

Oops my math is very wrong.   Good catch Roger.

[Ian]

So that’s more like 22.9 ounces per day, not quite 650 grams per day.

So if they were to allocate a third to each macro

864 kcal carbs

864 kcal protein

1944 kcal fat

3672 kcal total which is still pretty low for a soldier

[Jerry Adams]

shouldn’t food also include some fiber?  so the kcal would be a bit less

for 48 hours you can have a calorie deficit.  you could even eat no food, but maybe performance would be degraded?

maybe there’s a psychological aspect – to make people happy and focused on the mission maybe you need some food to eat.  If that was the case then you’d want to design the meal differently

[Ian]

Correct Jerry.   I was calculating for best case caloric scenario but expect that it’s much less.

My guess is that they plan for a deficit and recovery cycle.   The longest I ever had to live off of MREs without a break was thirty days.

Ranger school, SERE-C and other courses would put soldiers in a much higher deficit.  In SERE we weren’t given any food at all and had to forage.   It was the winter time so I’m guessing I had fewer than a thousand calories for the field and RTL portion total over several days.

Ranger school is 60ish days long but there are cycles where you spend a portion of it in garrison, another portion in the field, and some time in transit between the different phases, so you may starve for a couple weeks but then you get a window of opportunity to gorge and recover some before the next phase.

Historically we’ve had hundreds of POWs suffer massive neglect and make it home alive.

Obviously there are huge gaps in nutrition from what will keep you alive, what will maintain minimal acceptable mission capability, and optimal health.  I think the Army is trying to find the sweet spot where the soldiers aren’t beat down with starvation but not carrying a 100lb ruck either.

[Ian]

But I am interested to see if they’ve figured out something to make nutrition even more condensed and lighter than what we’re seeing in  freeze dried foods.   MREs are pretty heavy compared to backpacking food so my guess is that they are trying to lighten the load but still provide food that can be eaten without boiling water.

[Ian]

”Let’s hope not.  Mutiny would be ugly“

LOL true!

[Jerry Adams]

yeah, if they produced some new way to make food that could be used by backpackers that would be good

hard to get around the calories per gram for the three macro nutrients and it’s pretty easy to find “natural” foods that come pretty close to optimizing

[Geoff Caplan]

Wow – they’ve been forcing the poor squaddies to carry 4.6 lbs of rations per day. That’s insane. Looks as if this is a long-overdue innovation.

Hopefully the final product will be available to the public as well – after all, it’s your tax dollars that have paid for the research…

[Roger Caffin]

On the other hand, there could be some evil genius at work here.

80% of Americans are now either overweight or obese (according to public records), and this extends down to children. Perhaps this is the DoD’s way of getting their troops back into some semblance of fitness? Burn off some excess body fat?

Cheers

[Ian]

”Wow – they’ve been forcing the poor squaddies to carry 4.6 lbs of rations per day. That’s insane. Looks as if this is a long-overdue innovation.“

This is where I get skeptical.   Unfortunately I don’t have an intact MRE to weigh but here are my thoughts.

The packaging of the MREs when I was in added quite a bit to the weight and bulk.   Once we received our rations, the first order of business was to remove all the unnecessary packaging and to only pack what was absolutely necessary.

There wasn’t much motivation to weigh it in the Army since there wasn’t much in the way of options.   We would throw in some Jolly Ranchers and other snacks to supplement it but it was MREs or MREs.

I’d really like to measure the new rations and compare them to the current MREs, and see if they are including the packaging of it or not when they talk about the weight.

I’ve never heard squaddies before but google tells me it’s British slang for private.

[Ian]

Roger,

I do realize that you’re a troll and not actually trying to contribute to the conversation, and I should know better than to respond, but did you serve in the Australian military?

[Roger Caffin]

@Ian

Not sure how my career affects the statistics I was quoting, but no matter. We have all read reports of someone losing 1 lb/day while walking with inadequate food supply. A few have even mentioned that it is a good way to get their weight down.

For the record: no, I have not been in the Oz military, but I have eaten a few ratpaks. All made to the lowest tender price.

Cheers

[Ian]

Just wanted to confirm.

Moving on.

[Adam Kilpatrick]

I suspect there could be some logistical planning involved. Its pretty common for modern soldiers to deploy with pretty regular resupply. Sending in extra rations every now and then doesn’t take much when we are talking 10 pounds for a week, compared to the weight of ammunition that’s also sent in, or water. Quite easy to do a resupply and tell troops they have an extra day in there that they can eat up immediately.

Compactness is also interesting. Things are moving towards drone-resupply in the field in the right circumstances. Volume is just as important as weight if you want to build an efficient fixed wing resupply UAV.

[Roger Caffin]

Resupply?
It was common knowledge in the Vietnam war that the US troops were supplied hot meals each day by helicopter while in the field. This told the VC where they were each day.

Cheers

[Ian]

Good points Adam.

Grunts win battles.   Logistics win wars.

[Nick Gatel]

Resupply?
It was common knowledge in the Vietnam war that the US troops were supplied hot meals each day by helicopter while in the field. This told the VC where they were each day.

Are you sure?

[Roger Caffin]

As reported by returning Australian troops who had observed this in the field.
I was not there.

Cheers

[Ian]

“I was not there.”

You don’t say

[BlackHatGuy]

“Depending on the tactical situation, fresh food cooked in unit kitchens – Type A Rations – could sometimes be sent forward to feed field units. (See “Vietnam War-era U.S. Army Rations,” p. 23.) This “hot chow,” transported by jeep, truck or helicopter, was served from three-compartment, insulated, mermite containers that each kept about five gallons of food hot (or cold) for extended periods. But for most GIs serving in the bush, “Meal, Combat, Individual” (MCI) field rations – still universally known by their World War II predecessor’s designation, “C rations” – were the order of the day … every day.”

(Boldface mine)

Gourmet Grunts – 1968-70

[Ian]

I’d say that one thing that’s true with the US military regardless of time and location is that experiences will vary greatly.  Thousands of soldiers will deploy to a combat zone without ever having their lives endangered, and I’ve seen soldiers cut in half training in 1990s Germany.
Without ever stepping foot in Vietnam, any seasoned vet would laugh at a statement that would imply that soldiers were flown hot meals every day.   Are we talking a fire base or patrol base?  Two very different tactical scenarios.   Even then, different assignments have different challenges.   Base 1 might have a movie theater.   Base 2 you might find yourself burning barrels of human feces with 30 of your best buds.

Sweeping statements like “vets experienced X” are rarely accurate or helpful.

[Author]

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