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John Lindsey
5th July 2003, 23:19
By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes

ARLINGTON, Va. — “Field stripping” MREs — harvesting favorite items and
chucking the rest — is an art quickly mastered by every servicemember who humps
his own supplies in the field.

The practice saves weight, the Holy Grail for field troops. But along with
rejected entrees, servicemembers are tossing critical nutrients that give them
strength to fight.

Recognizing the dilemma, defense food experts have come up with new combat
ration that provides the best of both worlds: “First Strike,” a package of food
that weighs half as much as an MRE, but includes enough nutritionally
enhanced, tasty fare to sustain a servicemember through 72 hours of high-intensity
combat.

And perhaps the best news of all is that the new ration includes only those
foods which troops say they like the best, according to Janice Rosado, a
physical scientist in the Department of Defense Combat Feeding Directorate at the
U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Mass.

Even though the new ration isn’t due to hit the field until 2007, it is
already a huge hit with the special operations community, which was group chosen to
begin field-testing the prototype meal last September.

Now special operations commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan are calling and
e-mailing the directorate with a single request.

“Send us thousands” of First Strike rations, Rosado said in a Tuesday
telephone interview.

What makes the new rations so popular with testers?

To begin with, there’s “the backbone” of First Strike, a trio of
shelf-stable pocket sandwiches that can be held in one hand and consumed on the go.

Flavors include barbecue chicken, barbecue and a new bacon-cheddar “that’s
more like something you would eat for breakfast,” Rosado said. (The same
sandwiches are also scheduled to make their way into regular MREs in the next two
years).

Next, the new rations feature two different kinds of food bars: miniature
Army HooAH! sports bars, which come in chocolate, peanut butter, apple-cinnamon,
raspberry and cran-raspberry flavors; and a creamy, milk-based, dessert-like
treat bar that comes in chocolate, peanut butter, mocha, banana nut, vanilla
nut, vanilla and strawberry flavors.

The Hooah bars (each ration has two) provide carbohydrates and vitamins,
while the single dairy bar adds protein and calcium to the ration.

First Strike rations also include cheese spread, in one of three flavors:
plain and jalapeno, which troops now savor in MREs, and brand-new bacon-cheddar.

Cheese spread is something of a fetish among deployed servicemembers, who
have been known to come to blows in the field over who will get one of the prized
MRE meals that include it.

“We certainly did get the hint that [TROOPS]wanted more cheese” while
looking at soldier feedback on MREs, Rosado said. “We’ve heard of soldiers who say,
‘I’ll take a bullet for you, but don’t take my jalapeno cheese spread’.”

Other First Strike items include a sports drink powder called ERGO, for “
Energy Rich, Glucose Optimized;” “Zapplesauce,” which is applesauce fortified
with energy producing maltodextrin; two beef jerky strips, crackers or bread,
dried fruit, mixed nuts, and an accessories packet with a zip-lock baggie and not
one, but two wet wipes — another soldier request.

Researchers are considering adding additional performance foods to the First
Strike package, including caffeinated chewing gum (which will be field tested
this fall); packets of sports energy gels like the kind now used by
long-distance runners; or protein drinks or bars.

Feeding directorate officials decided to unveil the new ration first to the
special operations community, whose personnel are constantly in the field.

The first servicemembers to field test the new ration was Army Special
Forces, some of whom who took First Strike to Afghanistan in September 2002.

In April, Navy SEALs took First Strike test meals on a “black operation,” or
classified mission to an unspecified part of the world.

The feedback from all of the commando units “has been excellent,” Rosado
said.

In fact, the special operators are so entranced with the rations that the
U.S. Army Special Operations Support Command has asked for a regular supply for
Rangers deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

But full production is four years down the road, and there’s no way the
feeding directorate can produce the rations in such large quantities without help
from outside manufacturers, Rosado said.

“Everything we’ve field tested [to date], we made in-house,” in the
directorate’s Food Engineering Lab, Rosado said.

Rosado said she did not know if the ration’s instant popularity might prompt
defense officials to speed up DOD’s time-consuming product development and
procurement process.

“I guess anything can happen,” Rosado said. “But we can only control our end,
”’ which is product development.

“Then it’s really up to industry and the [defense] procurement agency to
take it from there

A. M. Jauregui
5th July 2003, 23:39
Cool, it is like a super lunchable (sp - the lunches that little kids take to school).

Maybe they should consider adding a chewable multivitamin or a hard candy like one that can be sucked on.

David T Anderson
6th July 2003, 16:06
Food science is an interesting field...

I've often noticed the 'Batchelor Chow' ad that pops up in the intro to the Futurama animated TV series. I bet something like that would sell very well...

Juan Perez
7th July 2003, 05:16
Not too long ago, while planning for a special reconaissance training mission we came to the crucial moment of weight management for our gear. Our first consideration was our hide site material, terminal guidance, photographic and night vision equipment, weapons, and then everything else.

I remember all of us stripping down all the MREs to the basic necessities for this very reason. You try to bring the least amount possible, but, the normal MREs just are not very conductive to this process. Some guys went with very little; other's went with almost all of the MRE contents. The Long Range Patrol (LRP) MREs are an improvement, but you need to have plenty of water on hand since the whole thing is freeze-dried "space food". That can conflict with the situation on the ground if you plan an extended stay, and it turns out that the best vantage point on your target / objective is not near water. So ... this new MRE might seem trivial to some, but when you are jumping in all your gear, shovels, chicken wire, "Realtree" camouflage, terminal guidance equipment and photo equipment, those pounds sure add-up.