From calorie count to portion sizes, we wanted to find all the differences between Military MREs in the US and the UK. This is "Food Wars."
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00:00 From calorie counts to portion sizes, we wanted to find the differences between MREs and ration
00:04 packs in the US and the UK. This is Food Wars.
00:07 A US MRE is manufactured and packaged by Warnick, Ameriqual, and Sopacco,
00:17 and come in one standard pack size.
00:20 UK MREs, or ration packs as we call them, are produced by Vesty Foods and come in three
00:25 portion sizes. The standard portion is this, a 24-hour ration pack. You can also get a smaller
00:30 version which is a 12-hour ration pack. And our biggest portion is this. This is a 10-man
00:36 operational pack which contains 10 of these 24-hour ration packs.
00:40 According to the Defense Logistics Agency website, a case of MREs, which is 12 meals,
00:45 weighs around 22 pounds or 9.98 kilograms. So on average, one meal would be roughly 831.6 grams.
00:53 The approximate weight of one of these ration packs is 1.75 kilograms,
00:57 but we're going to weigh it to see if that's accurate.
00:58 So the weight of our 24-hour ration pack here in the UK was actually 1.49 kilograms. This is a bit
01:08 lower than the promised 1.75. I don't know if you're a soldier in the field if this is actually
01:12 a positive thing because you've got less weight to carry, or if you're actually getting slightly
01:15 less food than you were promised. In the UK, our ration pack menu number two contains a chili
01:19 con carne. We're going to compare ours to the American chili to see who's getting more.
01:22 [MUSIC]
01:27 I do think I've lost a little bit in here. And if I were eating this straight out of the packet,
01:31 maybe tearing the packet open, getting better access, I could probably get that closer to
01:36 the 300 mark. So here are the contents of a 24-hour ration pack in the UK. In total,
01:40 we counted 29 edible items as well as a few extra bits, including tissues,
01:45 sanitary wipes, matches, and other stuff like that.
01:47 We counted 11 edible items in our US ration pack.
01:50 [MUSIC]
01:53 Here are all the military MREs for the US not available in the UK.
01:57 And here are all the ration packs in the UK that you can't find in the US.
02:00 There's actually very few overlap of specific meals in US MREs and the UK ration packs. Also,
02:06 depending on which MRE meal you get, they contain different combinations of snacks and sides.
02:12 In both countries, official MREs are not available for sale directly to consumers.
02:16 Basically, when you get a ration pack in the UK, it will come with a corresponding menu number.
02:20 The menu number will give you a rough indication of what you're going to find inside,
02:22 although there is a bit of variation. So what we've done here is lay out the breakfast and
02:26 the main course options in order of the menus. In the UK, we were currently able to get hold
02:30 of menus 1 to 10. All right, we got the US MREs. I think we got every menu 1 through 24.
02:36 We're going to go through the entrees and the breakfasts now. I want to point out that for the
02:40 US MREs, not every single one came with a definitive breakfast. And some of them just
02:46 had something that was fruit or fruit-related, which we assumed was supposed to be eaten first
02:51 thing in the morning. Now, all of these can be eaten either hot or cold. I guess, ideally,
02:55 you'd have them heated up. We actually got sent this flameless heating bag. Instructions for use.
03:00 This is either going to go really well, or I'm going to give myself and the Food Wars table
03:05 some chemical bands. I'm going to do a chili because we've already got a chili opens,
03:08 and I kind of know what they taste like. Filter line only. I'm going to leave that for 10 minutes.
03:13 Oh.
03:14 Well, it works. I hope I've sealed that well enough because that steamed up very quickly
03:24 there. So while that does its thing, I guess all that remains is for me to try the rest of them.
03:28 Starting down here, remember our good friend, the chili? Not bad. I would say as average as chili
03:34 can be. I think, honestly, I've never been in the military. I haven't done any service,
03:38 but I used to camp a lot when I was a kid. And I do remember going on sometimes two,
03:43 three-week-long canoe trips in Canada. A couple days in, this is like gourmet. You know what I'm
03:49 talking about. Your standards change quickly when you're outside all day. It comes with a cornbread.
03:54 This cornbread muffin's actually really good. Let's try it with the chili.
03:58 So the breakfast that we got for menu one was pork, sausage, and beans in a tomato sauce.
04:04 This is kind of an iconic British meal. I can't lie. It's kind of good.
04:08 We're starting off strong. I like that. Next up, we have a Pindi Chana Aloo,
04:12 which seems to be like a potato and chickpea curry. And then the final option from menu one
04:16 in the UK, meatballs and pasta. Do I have high or low expectations for meatballs and pasta?
04:21 Yeah. I mean, I think my fear was that like pasta doesn't hold up very well when it's kind of
04:26 submerged in a sauce and cooked for a while. And I think that's kind of come true.
04:29 Meatballs are all right, though. Menu number two is shredded beef and barbecue sauce,
04:33 but also came with seasoned black beans and tortillas. So, I mean, I don't know how you
04:38 would do this out in the field with no plates and not a table. And then the beans, a military taco.
04:47 Here we go. These beans are rock solid. The consistency is a little weird. This one is the
04:53 chicken and noodles with vegetables and sauce. Yeah, this looks like a can of like chunky soup
05:03 or chunky stew before you heat it up. This definitely should be heated up before. Oh,
05:06 my God, this is brutal. If you had this and you couldn't heat it up for some reason,
05:10 this is very bad. The first potential breakfast, the applesauce with raspberry puree. Now we're
05:15 talking here. Oh, my God, that does not taste like fruit. That tastes like pure sugar. There
05:22 is fruit in it, but it tastes more like like fruit flavored soda. This will definitely wake
05:28 you up in the morning. Then we're on to menu two and the breakfast is a raspberry muesli
05:32 with milk. Now it says with milk, but there is no liquid in here. So I think what they've done
05:36 is actually put powdered milk in here and you add some water and then hopefully that kind of turns
05:40 into something resembling milk. It looks very chalky and powdery at the moment without the
05:45 water in it. It says to add around 100 mils of water, mix it and then leave it to stand for
05:51 a minute or so. But yeah, I mean, now that's looking a lot more like muesli. That's actually
05:56 not bad. I'm quite impressed by that. There is like a slightly noticeable difference between that
06:01 and real milk. Then the main for menu two, obviously the chili con carne, which we opened
06:06 for the portion sizes section. Not the best visuals, but it's quite hard to make a nice
06:11 looking chili anyway. So it's more about the taste. It's not spicy, pretty well seasoned.
06:17 And the menu two also has a rajma masala. The longer I leave this one, I think this is the
06:21 first one that is actually like a bit of heat to it, but not unpleasant at all. Just like a nice
06:26 warmth. This hits close to home spaghetti with beef and sauce. Oh, and it even came with Italian
06:32 bread sticks. When we think it's not meatballs, they had meatballs. We don't have meat sauce.
06:38 Bread sticks. They're a bit dry. They're the most driest thing I've ever eaten.
06:44 These are so dry. It's white chicken chunks. Oh no. It's just, I just canned white chicken.
06:53 [sad music]
06:56 No, I'd be so bummed. Yeah, this is the worst one.
07:00 So we got a beef taco filling with Santa Fe rice.
07:03 Um, not horrible. Decent seasoning, but yeah, I think what's missing for all these is cheese.
07:11 Then we're on to menu three and we have our first duplicate item. It's another muesli for breakfast.
07:15 Now this one I'm intrigued by. One of the main options in menu three,
07:18 steak and vegetables with dumplings. A classic British beef stew is kind of one of my favorite
07:24 foods. Having said that, I've opened this and it looks and smells like cat food. Now I've been
07:28 eating most of these straight out of the bag because they've had a kind of texture which
07:32 permits that, but this one I think we're going to have to plate up. This apparently is steak
07:37 and vegetables with dumplings. Now I started this section by saying that all of these can be eaten
07:42 hot or cold, and I do think that's true. I guess the question is whether or not all of them should
07:46 be eaten hot or cold, and I think this one just immediately from the look of it I think probably
07:51 needs to be heated up because we've had our first womp womp moment of the episode. God.
07:57 That's not good. Beef strips in a savory tomato sauce. Marinara sauce with meatballs.
08:05 Wait, so there's no noodles? Just sauce and meatballs? Oh my goodness, look how little
08:11 these meatballs are. Look at these little guys. There's no pasta in there, just the meatballs.
08:15 Yeah, ooh, spaghetti-o level of meat flavor. Beef stew. At least this one has noodles. And this one
08:21 came with a breakfast that was grape jelly. We're going to jump ahead slightly to menu eight because
08:27 that's where I've taken our hot main from, and the alarm has just gone off which means it's ready to
08:31 eat. Once it's cooked, just tear it along here and then it's at the perfect height that you can then
08:37 just also tear this and eat the whole thing. It's changed the consistency of this a little bit. I
08:43 think with the steak and vegetables, for example, I think that would change the consistency a lot,
08:47 whereas this has just made it like a little bit more runny, but not too bad. It was very hot,
08:51 but that's still really good. I think this one I do prefer heated up actually. It brings out a
08:55 few more of the flavors, a little bit more depth of flavor to it. That's really good, and I'm so
08:59 impressed with this like heating pad thing. The heating pad as well as just, I guess, warmed up
09:04 meals, thumbs up for me so far. Macaroni in a beef sauce, that's good. We got noodles! And the chili.
09:11 Oh, that's terrible. It tastes like anything. Vegetarian taco pasta, which is a vegetable
09:16 crumble with pasta and taco style sauce. Is this supposed to be zapple sauce? Who doesn't love a
09:24 little apple sauce? Again, wow, super sweet. With sugar, not high fructose corn syrups, that's a plus.
09:31 And the last item for menu three is a beef burrito style filling with rice. Sadly, this does not come
09:36 with any tortillas, so you can't make an actual burrito with it. There's a little bit more spice
09:41 than anything else that I've had so far. The texture of the rice would be improved by heating
09:45 this one up because the rice is still like a little bit al dente. Albo macaroni and tomato sauce.
09:50 Granted, I mean, I know I got to heat them up. Yeah, this one's all right. Mango peach applesauce. I'm liking
09:56 the applesauce. This would be considered, I guess, a breakfast or it's fruity, so maybe this you would
10:00 have first thing in the day. Oh yeah, oh this is really good. Next up, we got menu four and we're
10:04 starting with an all-day breakfast. Apparently, it differs from the sausage and beans because this
10:08 contains some omelet as well as some bacon pieces. I think my only criticism of this is that the
10:13 sauce that they put the beans in is like exceptionally sweet. Carrying on through menu four, we have a
10:18 pasta bolognese main. I have a similar concern to the meatballs and pasta. I think that is like roughly
10:23 the color that you want your bolognese sauce to look like. I think when I looked at this one, I was
10:27 expecting worse. Again, like the vibe I'm getting particularly from the pasta dishes is very much
10:34 like tinned pasta vibe, like a tinned bolognese. And the last menu four item is a chicken curry with
10:38 potatoes and rice. There's actual like decent sized pieces of what I hope is chicken, less flavorful
10:45 than some of the other ones. I want to try heating some of these up. You do this, then you put your
10:49 MRE inside. Sorry, you can't tell if I'm adding water to this. Here we go. Real exciting stuff here
10:55 in the studio while we're moving on. So we got one, two, three heating up. The staff was able to make
11:01 this thing work. I was not. I don't know why. But moving on, we have a cheese tortellini and a tomato
11:08 sauce. Oh yeah, look at this. I got the whole, the whole tortellini right there. Then we're onto menu
11:14 five and we're starting off with another muesli. It's the third muesli we've had in five meals. The
11:18 variation I think is going to start to kind of run dry. Speaking of a lack of variation, meal five
11:23 also has another pasta bolognese. The different option from meal five is a sweet and sour chicken
11:28 with rice. Good color on it. Nice familiar orange color. There's pineapple in this and water chestnuts.
11:35 I'm kind of impressed. This is pretty good. I'd say this leans more on the balance of sweet rather
11:39 than sweet and sour. I think with the water chestnut and also the kind of like pineapple
11:43 chunks, there's still some things in there with bite, which I appreciate. Creamy spinach fettuccine
11:48 with egg noodles, spinach and mushroom in a cream sauce. Oh, it feels like they're going a little,
11:56 I don't want to say overboard because I figure you got to have like a variety of meals, but doesn't
11:59 like a fettuccine with mushrooms in a cream sauce like after a long day of hauling stuff around and
12:06 soldiering and exhausting job and carrying all the stuff and just be like, ah, let's kick back with
12:11 some spinach, mushrooms and a cream sauce. Like the most colorful one so far. I don't feel great.
12:17 I do not feel good. Next up is menu six, which we've actually covered all of already. Starts with
12:23 an all day breakfast, which I've had, then moves on to a another pasta bolognese, which I've also
12:28 had and finishes with my old friend steak vegetables with dumplings, which I will absolutely
12:34 not be trying again. This should be the Mexican style chicken stew. Oh, and then they're saying
12:39 there's another tear here to remove the MRE. Very smart. So you got a second spot to tear. This is
12:45 really smart. Second spot to tear. So it's easier just to grab the MRE out. So the package is hot.
12:55 So it feels like this is much like I smoosh it around a little bit. So they are still flimsy
13:01 tortillas, but looks like they're chipotle flavored. Not as gelatinous, I guess.
13:06 Definitely better heated up. Yeah, I like this. It's pretty good. Next up is menu seven, which I
13:12 don't know if this was deliberate or not, but appears to be like a fully vegetarian menu. For
13:16 starters, we have a vegetarian all day breakfast. I think the main difference is that they've subbed
13:21 out the meat sausages for vegetarian sausages. It's another one that seems to be like mostly
13:26 beans. It seems very fitting that the British army is powered by baked beans. Makes you proud
13:32 to be British. It's got the same issue as before that the beans are just like, I think too sweet.
13:36 One of the main course options in menu seven is the rashma masala with rice, which I've again also
13:42 had. But one that I have not had is a vegetable and chickpea biryani. I like a biryani. For those
13:47 who don't know, it's just like various things. Sometimes meat, in this case vegetables,
13:52 cooked down with rice and a bunch of Indian spices. I've had much better biryani in the past. I'm sure
13:58 there are lots of people watching at home and recoiling in horror at the thought of this being
14:02 a biryani, but it's okay. And I think on the whole, the vegetarian menu, pretty good. Moving on,
14:06 we have the chicken burrito bowl, which comes in a bag and not a bowl. Sure, a lot of this just
14:12 like, I don't know, we've got some heated up. So you can see the difference when it's not heated
14:15 up. It's just this weird gel cube. And that comes with what essentially would be considered a
14:21 breakfast, I guess, apple pieces in a spiced sauce. So the entree appears to be a maple flavored pork
14:28 sausage patty. Okay, so just one block of yep. It is of course just this. It's like a cliff bar,
14:40 but pork. Not good. Really weird. It tastes surprisingly bland. A hash brown potato with
14:46 bacon, pepper, and onions. Oh no. This is the most cat foodie looking. Menu A is another duplicate
14:55 one. We start with another all day breakfast. Then there's another chili con carne, which I've
14:58 actually already heated up and eaten. And we have another beef burrito style filling with rice.
15:03 A cooked beef ravioli. Once again, it like heated the bottom of it. So you still got to kind of,
15:11 still got to massage it a little bit. Like this, this side is heated. And then this middle part
15:15 didn't get heated. It also came with tortillas, which is funny. This is what this looks like.
15:19 And it looks gross. Menu nine starts with more muesli. Then moves to a new dish, which is sausage
15:24 casserole. This is another like classic British dish, a sausage casserole. Slow cooked, stewed
15:29 sausages with tomato, potatoes, other vegetables. On the whole, the sausages have actually been like
15:35 surprisingly good. It might just be because I quite like those slightly cheap, like pre-packaged
15:40 sausages. And then for your other main course, we have another pindichana aloo. This one, another
15:45 high one. It's just, it's just going to be a patty. Oh, it has a sauce. Apparently it's grilled
15:54 jalapeno pepper jack flavored. Comes with no gratin potatoes. No gratin potatoes? What do you
16:02 think of that? This looks really rough. Italian sausage with peppers, onions, and a marinara
16:07 sauce. Yeah. Okay. Menu number 21 should be lemon pepper tuna or tuna chunks in a bag. We've just
16:14 been informed that this bag actually says white chicken chunks, which we saw before. There is a
16:18 lemon pepper tuna that we don't have. And finally, last but not least, we have menu 10, which starts
16:22 with an instant porridge. The cooking instructions actually specify that you need to put boiling
16:27 water in it, leave it for three minutes to soak, and then eat it. Whereas all the other ones are
16:31 technically able to be eaten cold. Menu 10 has a couple of mains, one of which is another beef
16:36 burrito style filling with rice. And our final main course is hunter's chicken. It's another,
16:40 it's another plate one, which I don't think is a compliment. Doesn't look great, does it?
16:46 This is hunter's chicken. Traditionally, this is chicken breast with some bacon, some cheese,
16:51 some barbecue sauce. I think bits of chicken in here, although I'm kind of struggling to see
16:56 where. I think it's these like small bits rather than like a chicken breast. No, that's really bad.
17:04 Beef goulash. Beef with brown rice, spinach, carrots, tomatoes, and smoked paprika.
17:10 A pepperoni pizza and cheese slice.
17:12 Army pizza.
17:16 Oh god, that's so bad. This has been brutal. I don't know what it is about this food. Like,
17:26 yeah, some things tasted bad, but most things just tasted okay. I have a headache and my stomach
17:32 doesn't feel good. I noticed there's a lot of sodium in this, so that might have something
17:36 to do with it. Tortillas came with this one, the southwest style beef and black beans with sauce.
17:41 Again, we have very few breakfasts, but this one is mixed fruit, which appears to be,
17:48 there's some chunks in there, so you got a bag of mixed fruit.
17:51 On top of the mains and breakfast options, you also get a dessert in a British ration pack.
17:55 The options we got today included a chocolate brownie, a cinnamon cake, a vanilla cake,
18:00 a chocolate cake, or an orange cake.
18:02 The US MREs have an assortment of desserts, which looks all right. Muffin tops, cookies, puddings,
18:08 cakes, a bun, a toaster pastry, cookies, and cobblers.
18:13 I'll try a couple of these. I want to try the brownie because it's packaged
18:16 differently to the others and because I like brownie. It looks a little bit more cakey than
18:20 brownie-ish, but we'll see. No, that's so dry.
18:25 Starting down here, you get a maple muffin top or a chocolate banana nut muffin top.
18:32 Three different types of cookies. You get an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie,
18:36 chocolate chip cookie, and oatmeal cookie. That's funny.
18:40 And actually, now that I think about it, we've got patriotic sugar cookies.
18:42 Could be in the cookie category. The packaging was different, so I separated them, but I'm curious
18:46 what a patriotic sugar cookie looks like. Oh, nothing. These look like broken up Girl Scout
18:53 cookies. Is that a rocket? What is that? I don't know what that is. Do you know what that is?
18:59 - Oh, like, oh my God, turn it around. Turn it upside down.
19:02 - Ah, it's a Liberty Torch. Oh, it's a bunch of different ones, but they're all broken up.
19:07 Oh, well. These are pretty good. Then I wanted to try one of the cake options.
19:11 It's actually probably the cinnamon that appeals to me the most, so I mean, this looks better.
19:15 It could be, again, slightly more moist, but it's got a pretty nice texture to it.
19:21 There's definitely a cinnamon flavor there. In terms of shelf-stable baked goods,
19:26 this is a much better effort than the brownie was. This is actually perfectly edible.
19:29 - I have an assortment of pound cakes. Applesauce pound cake, lemon poppy seed pound cake,
19:34 vanilla pound cake, marble pound cake, cinnamon bun, and a toaster pastry that just feels
19:44 completely destroyed in here, so I don't know what toaster you're using out in the field,
19:48 but all right. And last, this package that looks like all the other ones is a cherry
19:52 blueberry cobbler. I think this is fine. Oh, that's colorful. It just looks like jelly.
19:59 - Every ration pack in the UK also comes with four to five snack options. We've taken all the
20:03 ones we got from menus one to 10 and laid them out here.
20:05 - Snacks. Our US MREs come with a lot of snacks. You usually find three or four of these in each
20:12 MRE and various combinations.
20:15 - So here we have a mixed fruit snack, which is like a fruit puree in one of these handy little
20:22 pouches.
20:22 - First of all, I mean, how bright did these look just compared to all the packages we've
20:27 been dealing with this whole video? Like, I'm looking at these, I'm also going to turn the
20:31 saturation down. Peppermint candy rings, and then you got M&Ms, Twizzler nibs, more M&Ms,
20:37 Skittles, Skittles, Reese's Pieces. Very nice. Thank you.
20:41 - There are a few different peanut options on the menus in the UK,
20:44 starting with barbecue peanuts, some chili peanuts, and the classic salted peanuts.
20:49 - Dried fruit, dried cranberries, raisins, and a trail mix that has a nut raisin mix for the trail.
20:59 - Here we have cheddar cheese flavor spread. In the UK, if you're having cheese, you have like
21:03 cheese and crackers. So I feel like maybe this is supposed to be enjoyed with some of these
21:07 crackers down this end.
21:08 - Down here, three different types of energy bars you can get. I've never heard of the brand
21:13 First Strike. Not sure if that is a brand that exists outside the military, but you can get an
21:18 apple cinnamon, chocolate, or cran-raspberry energy bar. Oh, geez, look at this thing.
21:26 A bunch of junk.
21:29 - Next, we have a fruit flapjack. Flapjack in the UK is a mixture of oats, syrup, butter,
21:38 and often raisins, which are kind of like packed together to make a nice nutritious sweet treat.
21:42 - This is an oatmeal block. I'm not really sure what this is. I'm actually going to open this one
21:47 just out of curiosity more than anything. Looks like a sort of shortbread biscuit on the outside.
21:53 Yeah, somewhere between like a digestive biscuit and like a rusk,
21:58 which for the uninitiated is like, I think, an oaty biscuit that's basically made for babies.
22:04 I feel like I used to steal rusks from my baby sister when she was little. Sorry, Annie.
22:08 - Trail mix granola nuts. You got it. Packages of either dry roasted nuts. Man,
22:14 they really suck this thing dry. Look at that. Same with this one, the smoked almonds
22:20 and jalapeno cashews. Recovery trail mix with pretzels, granola, and this trail mix that has
22:29 beef jerky in it. Want to mainline your jerky? US government has you covered. Beef sticks.
22:35 - Here we have a sachet of peanut butter. We have three different types of jam that we found. We
22:40 have apricot, we have plum, and we have strawberry jam. This is an exotic fruits nougat bar. Here we
22:46 have a sesame bar, which is basically just sesame seeds held together with melted sugar. Apricot
22:51 oat biscuits, a tropical fruit and nut mix, as well as just nuts and just fruit.
22:58 - Cheese-filled cracker, pepperoni flavor, cheese-filled pretzel, cheddar flavor.
23:05 - Pretzel nuggets, barbecue corn nuggets, barbecue-flavored corn kernels, so like
23:11 corn nuts, right? Baked snack crackers, cheddar flavor, and protein puffs, ring-shaped barbecue.
23:17 - I feel like if you get these ones, you've done quite well. These sound fancy. We have chocolate
23:21 orange mini cookies and coconut biscuit bites. Sound like a more gourmet approach to a ration
23:28 pack snack. - And for the breads and spreads,
23:30 we'll call it multigrain bread, white wheat snack bread, wheat snack bread. I mean, how good are the
23:36 shots we have to get of these? Everything looks the same. And then this one, Italian bread,
23:39 blah-biddy-blah. Got it. Okay, great. You have a vegetable cracker or a regular cracker. What do
23:44 you want to put on those breads or crackers? You got chunky peanut butter, peanut butter,
23:48 chocolate peanut spread, cheese spread, cheese spread with jalapenos, cheese spread with bacon.
23:55 - Here we have cheese and oat biscuits, which I think are probably designed, like I say,
23:58 to be eaten with the cheesy spread. Next up are biscuit browns. I wasn't sure what a biscuit brown
24:02 was, and after tasting it, I'm still kind of equally unsure. It's like a sort of bran, like,
24:07 wheaty cracker type thing. - For the fruit, you got apple jelly,
24:12 strawberry jam, and there was a grape jelly from earlier. I don't know where it went,
24:16 but it looks exactly like this package. - And finally, we have a cookies and cream bar.
24:21 That's not what I was expecting at all. When you hear cookies and cream, I'm right in thinking
24:25 that you expect Oreo, right? Whereas this is more like a Rice Krispie type of treat. It doesn't
24:31 smell of Oreo at all. It literally smells of, like, a Rice Krispie treat made with dark chocolate.
24:36 Doesn't taste great either. - The US MREs have an assortment of
24:40 different drinks, both, I guess, regular temperature and warm. So the first thing I
24:44 want to do before we get into that is point out that we have four different, in the middle here,
24:49 coffee drinks, hot drinks you want to, as you have it. This is a French vanilla cappuccino,
24:54 and I want to make it real quick. We saw how we heated up the drinks before, so
24:58 here also comes with a hot beverage bag. Pre-added the water, so now I'm going to go ahead and put
25:04 powder in here. This looks all right. Mix it up a little bit. Happy cappuccino.
25:15 It smells like when the VCR gets really hot. You can watch, like, three movies in a row.
25:23 - Now we're on to the drink options, which, again, I think you get four of in a 24-hour
25:26 British ration pack. These all come in the form of powders, which you mix with water and then
25:30 consume. They're also split into four different categories. We have just a standard drink powder,
25:35 we have an energy drink powder, a fortified energy drink powder, and we have an isotonic
25:40 drink powder. Having quickly scanned the ingredients of both of these, I'm actually
25:44 not sure what the difference is between, say, an energy drink powder and a standard fruit flavor
25:48 powder. There's no caffeine in the energy powders, for example. I think most of the energy is coming
25:52 from the sugar content in these. - While that's cooking, let's see what other drinks we have.
25:58 We got orange, lemon, lime, and grape. That's definitely not grape colored. It says grape on
26:04 here. I think it tastes like grape, but also because it's blue, I'm thinking blue raspberry.
26:10 While my coffee is cooking, I also have different coffee flavors. I get a chocolate, hazelnut,
26:16 protein drink, Irish cream cappuccino, chocolate protein drink. - Regardless of the type of drink
26:22 powder that you're getting, they do come in a bunch of different flavor options. I'm not sure
26:26 if any of these particularly appeal to me. I'll try the tutti frutti one. I feel like of all of
26:30 these, it sounds pretty fun. Yeah, I was really hoping that the color would be like a bright blue
26:35 or pink or something, but just normal. It's unlocking some kind of repressed alcohol memory,
26:43 I think. I'm fairly sure I've drunk a cocktail to the point of oblivion that tasted pretty much
26:49 like this. - So this is my French vanilla coffee. Oh yeah, not recognizing a lot of these words,
27:02 but yeah, this is nice. And the last thing we have here are beverage-based powders. So these
27:11 had electrolytes in them, so energy drinks almost. And then these, I think, are just,
27:15 these have lots of sugar. So we have lemon-lime, orange, and tropical punch. And then this little
27:23 stick, beverage-based orange type three. - Finally, every ration pack in the UK also
27:28 contains a bag of common items. We start down this end where we have some matches. Then we have some
27:36 water purification tablets. I think there are six of these in here, actually. And according to this,
27:41 you can purify a liter of water per tablet. That's pretty good. I like that this is in the essential
27:45 items thing. We have some hot sauce. We have some tissues, as well as two alcohol-free hand wipes.
27:52 Then you have two teabags, two sachets of instant coffee, four sachets of beverage whitener. I think,
27:59 again, this might be something along the lines of they can't legally call this powdered milk,
28:03 but it is effectively a powdered milk substitute. And four sachets of sugar.
28:07 Our US MREs have these following accessories. First of all, over here, you've seen it a few
28:12 times in this episode, the heating thing, the heating bags to heat up your food and your drinks.
28:19 Saw this the whole time, the spoon. Every MRE comes with a spoon. Now, did you notice I had a
28:25 difficult time kind of cutting into some stuff? And I thought, why don't they have anything like
28:28 a knife in here? Of course they have a knife. They're soldiers. They have pocket knives.
28:33 They come with a concentrated beverage base. This one is cranberry grape. Over here is the coffee
28:39 zone for the most part. Bill's Brewed Freeze-Dried Coffee. You can do that with hot or cold water.
28:44 Six ounces right here. And you have your choice of either Splenda or sugar. Salt. If you need more
28:51 sodium on your food, this is a coffee creamer. Each pack of accessory comes with two pieces of gum.
28:56 These are waterproof matches. Spice up that food a little bit. A little bit of Tabasco. A little
29:01 Tabasco garlic is all we got. A moist towelette and regular napkins.
29:08 In the US, MREs were first introduced in the 1980s and were designed to be lightweight,
29:16 portable, and self-contained meals that didn't require cooking or refrigeration. They were also
29:21 intended to provide the necessary nutrition for soldiers in the field. Early iterations of British
29:26 ration packs actually used cans. It wasn't until the 1990s that these were replaced with pouches.
29:30 Each MRE typically contains around 1,200 to 1,300 calories with balanced nutrition
29:36 essential to supporting the demands placed on soldiers during military operations. Each MRE
29:41 is said to have approximately 170 grams of carbohydrates, 45 grams of protein, and 50 grams
29:47 of fat. As we've said, a British ration pack is usually designed for 24 hours worth of nutrition,
29:52 whereas it seems as if the American ones are not. We can assume this because the average
29:55 nutritional value of an entire British ration pack is somewhere between 3,800 and 4,200 calories.
30:01 Now here's a chili meal from before. We're going to go through its specific nutrition.
30:05 Now I want to point out that the bag didn't have anything on it, so I am learning about the
30:10 nutrition of these in real time. The chili with the beans, one serving size, all this is 260
30:17 calories. And this single serving of cornbread with your chili, also 260 calories. Your vegetable
30:24 crackers are going to be 170 calories. And your cheesy spread is 120 calories. Then the cheese
30:31 filled crackers, the pepperoni pizza flavor, 240 calories for this one. And if you're going to be
30:37 sipping on your lemon-lime flavored non-fruit juice juice, that's going to be 130 calories for
30:43 the whole beverage. A grand total of this many calories. We've selected some items which seem
30:48 to match up roughly with what you'd expect to find in a US MRE. Here we have the chili con carne main.
30:53 We've got some crackers with the cheese spread, some peanut butter, and a fruit-flavored drink.
30:58 The total calories for these items comes to 1,379. The FDA recommends that adults consume
31:04 around 75 to 90 milligrams of vitamin C per day. Just two of these drink sachets is more than
31:09 enough vitamin C for that intake. We are not getting scurvy anymore. We learned our lessons
31:13 back in the Navy days. Although it's also worth noting the amount of sugar that is in one of these.
31:16 In a 45-gram sachet of mango and passion fruit drink, you will find 40.5 grams of sugar. That's
31:23 81% of your daily recommended intake just in one of these. Let's take a look at the ingredients of
31:30 the chili con carne in the UK. Beef, red kidney beans, tomato puree, water, onion, red and green
31:36 peppers, wheat flour, calcium carbonate, iron, thiamin, and nicotinamide, modified mace starch,
31:43 salt, spices, spice extracts, calcium carbonate, and smoked flavor. The ingredients in here are
31:48 actually all pretty natural without any real artificial preservatives. Our eyebrows were
31:53 raised when we saw nicotinamide in the wheat flour. Thankfully, it's not some kind of nicotine. It's
31:57 just another type of vitamin B3, aka niacin. This chili with beans contains all this. Looks like
32:04 mostly normal stuff until you get to the bottom of the list there. Ethozylated monodiglycerides.
32:09 I have no idea what that is. I don't think I've ever had that in food wars before. So
32:12 if someone in editing can go ahead and say what it's used for. These have a minimum shelf life
32:19 of three years depending on storage conditions. The storage conditions for these MREs I'm assuming
32:24 were room temperature the whole time. So I'm feeling pretty confident these are all not
32:30 expired. Similarly, ours have a shelf life of around three years and after that it's down to
32:34 the temperature at which they're stored. For example, this chili was made in December 2021
32:38 and apparently is shelf stable until around 2025. And how can these meals have such a long shelf
32:44 life you ask? According to the USDA, MREs are shelf stable because they have been commercially
32:51 sterilized by heat in a sealed container to destroy bacteria that can make it unsafe or spoil the food.
32:56 Like food in metal cans, MREs can be kept for a long time but not indefinitely. The shelf life of
33:04 MREs and ration packs is pretty directly related to the temperature at which they're stored. The
33:08 cooler the storage temperature, the longer they'll last. Rations in a desert temperature might only
33:12 last a few months whereas rations at room temperature or colder climates can be good up to
33:16 five years. We're filming this towards the end of 2023 which means that our chili con carne for
33:21 example is already around two years old. I've got to say I don't feel great after eating them,
33:25 however I do think that's probably more due to the quantity that I've eaten rather than due to
33:29 the storage quality of these. Since 1981 the US menu has changed about five times improving the
33:35 quality and the taste. It also has expanded the menu variety and now includes vegetarian, kosher,
33:40 and halal options. There also aren't many changes in the UK, however there was a recent controversial
33:45 change. Chocolate bars were taken away from British troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan
33:49 because they kept melting in the desert heat. They were replaced with the much less popular
33:52 peanut butter. I can see how people would be annoyed about that. So you get five matches
33:57 as well as one of these little striking strips.
34:07 I broke it so...
34:09 Oopsie-daisy.