Jan 9, 2012

Hold the Mayo!

The Two-Year Sandwich via BBC
The military’s M.R.E.--the Meal Ready to Eat, or those air-sealed packages full of gummy pastes and freeze-dried dreck that soldiers carry into the field--is getting a much-needed upgrade. But it’s not in the form of better tasting dehydrated foods or better freeze-drying technology. Rather, the U.S. Army has developed the world’s most cutting edge sandwich, the BBC reports, one that can be served fresh after sitting on the shelf for a full two years.
When food breaks down--when it rots--it does so as a result of various chemical and biological processes. Some of these are inherent in the ingredients themselves, others are caused by bacteria. But almost universally, these processes require water and/or oxygen to transpire. So the Army didn’t need to reinvent the sandwich or its ingredients to create its long-duration lunch items. But they did need to figure out how to make a sandwich that eliminates water and oxygen from the equation.
Perhaps more difficult is keeping oxygen away from the sandwich. To do so, each one is packed in an air-sealed package with an oxygen scavenger--a small packet of iron filings that pulls oxygen from the ambient air and locks it up in a layer of rust. This keeps oxygen away from things like bread, where it could feed a reaction resulting in mold and decay.
Devoid of oxygen and water, a sandwich can last a long time--two years in this case. And, if the BBC video report is to be believed, the grunts seem to like the two-year sandwich. 

6 comments:

  1. I have a box of MRE's in the garage. Bought 'em back during Y2K. (Yes I believed some of the hype.) A sucker born every minute, that's me. This TWO YEAR OLD SANDWICH sounds like a WONDERFUL invention for our ladies and gentleman in uniform. Hope it tastes as GOOD as the BBC claims. It could revolutionize the culinary world.

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  2. Sounds a little like my grade school cafeteria lunches.

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  3. Reminds me of putting some rice in the salt shaker, or a piece of bread in the cookie tin. Yet I can't help but wonder if some of the iron isn't getting ingested somehow.

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  4. I have to laugh reading this because of memories of the 1950's where we were eating 'C' rations from WWII. It would sure be lighter in a pack, this new stuff. We had a pack of cigarettes with every three meals. They were Green ball luckies. We smoked them anyway, they were dry and burned the throat. I guess they don't pack cigarettes anymore. freeze dried or otherwise. LOL

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  5. When we were kids we used to make tea parties out of K rations. This would have been 1955 are so and they were still quite good to us kids.

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  6. Some MRE's taste better than others... kind of like any other type of dehydrated food products. Interesting concept on the sandwich. Hope it does taste as good as they claim.

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