{"id":114449,"date":"2021-06-12T17:08:46","date_gmt":"2021-06-12T21:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=114449"},"modified":"2021-06-12T17:08:46","modified_gmt":"2021-06-12T21:08:46","slug":"mres-are-the-new-hipster-hotness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=114449","title":{"rendered":"MREs are the new hipster hotness"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Trump and Kanye on the MRE?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to the New York Times, who clearly don’t understand military humor, MREs are the latest fad for civilians. The same people that protest the military-industrial complex, think the military is only for those too stupid to go to college for a really useful degree like gender studies, and deface American monuments are now enamored with the field expedient meal we all love and hate.<\/p>\n

From the NYT<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Unloved by Generations of Soldiers, the M.R.E. Finds a Fan Base<\/h2>\n

The rations often derided as \u2018Meals, Rarely Edible\u2019 have gotten (somewhat) better and become objects of fascination for millions of civilians.<\/h4>\n

Kathleen Ehl had always thought of her business as a niche affair \u2014 an online store called North Georgia Outdoors Supply that she and her husband run out of their home in Gainesville, selling Meals, Ready-to-Eat.<\/p>\n

M.R.E.s, as they are widely known, are thick pouches of shelf-stable rations created for the United States military. They\u2019re not particularly fancy or appetizing, and they\u2019re technically not allowed to be sold commercially if they are made under a government contract, as most are. Ms. Ehl and her husband, Oliver Walker, scour online auctions and salvage stores for the meals, and sell most of them to collectors and survivalists.<\/p>\n

But last February, when pandemic-induced panic buying kicked into high gear, their orders jumped from 100 a week to 100 a day. \u201cThere were some nights my husband and I packed M.R.E.s from after the kids went to bed to 2 in the morning,\u201d said Ms. Ehl, 37.<\/p>\n

Early 2020 was a boom time for M.R.E. distributors across the country, from the major military suppliers to Army surplus stores. Yet today, as purchases of other pandemic fixations have flagged, the civilian fascination with the meals has persisted \u2014 driven by caution (stocking up for the next potential pandemic or natural disaster) and curiosity.<\/p>\n

Though sales figures for M.R.E.s are hard to come by, given the questionable legality of some sales, the internet audience that discusses and taste-tests the rations has grown to millions. People who never thought they\u2019d own an M.R.E. now keep them in their basement.<\/p>\n

Sylvia Marie, 26, ordered a few, including a Mexican-style chicken stew and a vegetarian taco pasta, shortly into the lockdown, while staying at her relatives\u2019 home in South Windsor, Conn. She was looking for foods that were new to her and didn\u2019t require a great effort to make.<\/p>\n

On the website where she placed her order, \u201ca lot of the reviews were people who had been talking about how they had bought these to stock their bomb shelters,\u201d said Ms. Marie, a food-policy researcher at Tufts University. \u201cI don\u2019t think I would normally associate myself with that population.\u201d<\/p>\n

No one is more intrigued or puzzled by the phenomenon than the scientists and engineers who research and develop the meals at the Department of Defense Combat Feeding Division. At the division\u2019s headquarters in Natick, Mass., the team spends years perfecting every detail of an M.R.E. before it is sent off to manufacturers: Is this beef ravioli as nutritious as possible, and shelf stable for up to three years? Can it survive a drop from a helicopter, or blistering desert temperatures?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Can it create a hard, brick-sized and <\/em>shaped lump of human fecal matter in your bowel that causes an aneurysm when you try to shit it out? Can we put that slice of “bread” that’s like eating a piece of dried out C4 in every bag? Can meals be combinations of foods that leave you scratching your head? Like the Salisbury steak meal that came with a big hunk of beef jerky. They at the DOD Combat Feeding Division hope you like a beef side dish for your beef.<\/p>\n

“Unloved”? Fake news. Depending on the field kitchen, an MRE can be preferable. Hell, I’ve been to some DFAC\/Chow Halls that legit couldn’t out cook an MRE.<\/p>\n

“Derided”? Hey now, we in the military service deride everything, thank you very much. If we ain’t bitching, then there’s something wrong. MREs aren’t bad, in fact they are kind of fun, for like two or three days. I can see why these never-served folks find them novel and entertaining. I still miss the jalapeno cheese on a cracker. I also will always have fond memories of the spaghetti MRE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to the New York Times, who clearly don’t understand military humor, MREs are the latest … MREs are the new hipster hotness<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[478],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-none"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=114449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114450,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114449\/revisions\/114450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=114449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=114449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=114449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}