Scientists Create Pizza That Can Last Years 225
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the US Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center have created a pizza that can be stored for up to three years while still remaining edible. 'It pretty much tastes just like a typical pan pizza that you would make at home and take out of the oven or the toaster oven,' said Jill Bates who heads up the lab. 'The only thing missing from that experience would be it's not hot when you eat it. It's room temperature.'"
Re:Three Years? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Spaghetti MREs are pretty good after three years.
I know guys who actually like MREs, and bought their own supply for hunting trips after the left the service.
Many sporting-goods stores stock MREs. Not bad compared to a lot of camping food.
I went on a field exercise in 1961 with K-Rats packed in 1943...I'd have been delighted to have MREs.
Re:Three Years? (Score:5, Interesting)
My cousin owns a surplus store. I have recently eaten K rations from WW2. The sponge cake wasn't bad.
Re:Reminds me of something like this in the past.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Past experience in the military has taught me that when they start experimenting with field rations, nightmares frequently result. In my day, fights over the few edible entrees packed in the C-rations resulted in more severe(and numerous) casualties than accidents, Acts of God/Nature, poor planning, and Demon Murphy taking over, than all of 'enemy action' casualties combined during the 'Reign of the C-Rats'. If you were the unfortunate troop to find 'beef stew' in you ration pack WITHOUT a p-38 to defend your life, it turned gruesome quickly!(p-38's were only included in one out of five ration packs, and were highly coveted items.)
20 years ago, when i was serving in the Greek marines (as a conscript - a requirement for all capable male Greeks), in an joint exercice taking place in Italy i had the opportunity to experience the field rations of several NATO allies. The -unfortunate- USA marines and British royal marines were eager to trade their rations with us Greeks (in the begining we were curious about their "edible thing" -i am not calling it food... sorry!- so we always agreed happily, later we just took pity on them and gave them our rations without demanding theirs), but everyone (including us Greeks) were admiring the Italian ones (almost restaurant level quantity and -more important- quality) - of cource i understand the logistic reasons for that "edible thing" and i even accept that the quality of it was inversely proportional to the fighting ability...
Re:Nutritional value ? (Score:5, Interesting)
The pasta dishes were by far the tastiest. The chicken cacciatore in particular was quite good. The tomato based sauces were all pretty ok, but they just tasted a little off. Metallic, maybe. The meat entrees suffered a little bit more by the processing. Anything beef was better by than anything pork. The "pork ribs" was a large piece of jerky-style pork pressed into a childs rendition of a Mc-Rib and stored in this weird transparent BBQ sauce preservative. Ewwww. The crackers and packets of peanut butter and jelly were completely normal. The "bread" depended on where the MRE was manufactured. The ones that came from the midwest were better. The bread was a thick fig-newton shaped bar of pressed bread. Ugly as sin, but it tasted OK. The MRE's that were made in the east had bread that was shaped like a bread icon but tasted like cardboard. The only thing that was truly inedible was the omelette. Trust me, trade the omelette for an extra pack of the sport-drink.
The chemical heaters didn't really do that good of a job heating the food. I suspect that with time, the aggressiveness of the reaction fades a bit. I'd just boil a pot of water and drop the whole entree packets in to heat them up.