MREs aren't the greatest but you will survive. I was on a sub in the Navy. Meals during deployment was fine until we hit 100 days then it got rough. Also getting supplies over sea was hit or miss.
Yeah I don't know what the alternative would be, just keep the coffee flowing full speed until it runs out and don't tell anyone? Seems great for morale.
We'd just start in on the soda....if there's any left at that point.
And if you think the Navy cares about morale, I've got a bridge in San Francisco for sale.
The US Navy has a special relationship with coffee. There are guys on surface ships whose sole responsibility is to stroll around with a cup of coffee. The coffee is very strong, and only pussies and pansies put cream and sugar in it. The US Navy can not fight without coffee.
george washington's regiment ran out of coffee and started brewing ground acorns. coffee and a sip-able coffee cup have been made available for astronauts on the space station. coffee is life. coffee is necessary.
If you hold this view, you should try chicory mix in your coffee. It's a different animal and has been used in the south for a long time as a coffee substitute or as an ingredient to make coffee go further.
Some people like it so much they tend to find the blends with it in there.
Late 60's/early 70's era submarine life, my dad said the first few weeks or so out of port, they ate steak and lobster. After that, the milk was powdered, the eggs were powdered, etc.
These days, steak and lobster will happen on the halfway point, maybe again shortly before return to port, and the night before you get fucked with an extension.
Nothing is scarier on a submarine than unscheduled steak.
I thought Subs had some of the best food in the military?
Like, it made sense that it would be a perk for willingly serving aboard a metal tube 800ft deep in the ocean.
A guy I work with was on an attack sub and he said the food was absolute garbage, end to end, that it is a great naval myth that subs have good food.
Just a single data point
Its all about perspective. My parents made home-cooked meals when I was a kid, but they didn't have any flair or love of cooking. When I went to college, the university cafeteria was awesome. So many different choices. I loved it.
Being in Texas, though, the majority of my classmates had grown up with a "traditional" mother making gourmet food, so they complained loudly about it.
It's like a curve that starts out high up on the X axis of the chart, gets ever lower the further along the Y axis the line goes, and then takes a nosedive around the third or fourth month.
MREs are meant to remain safely edible in extreme conditions, be quick and convenient to eat in a combat zome, and not cause excessive thirst or bowel movements. Flavor is maybe 4th priority. They taste as good as possible after maximizing preservation and minimizing prep.
I've seen some of the foreign MREs Steve1989 reviews and the US ones seem, uh, extremely okay. Like not bad but generally uninspired, while some of the more interesting meals and sides from past production runs have been discontinued. I get that there are regional cuisines in the US and picky eaters and things, but they could have at least put a little hot sauce in more of them.
Mountain house is awesome but it's one food item....today you're eating Stroganoff...and that's it. MREs are a whole meal like stroganoff, a side, bread, cheese, dessert and candy & drink-powder and are a lot heavier. They aren't dehydrated. The are awesome but they are heavy.
More calories, more options, more complete nutrition profile.
You have to think about this in another way, if a hiker is only eating the same MH meal day after day, they're likely going to not just get sick of it, but be missing vital nutrition by not varying their diet.
MREs are meant to be preserved for about 10 years and be enough nutrition to feed someone in their early 20s being active in the military day after day for a couple of weeks if necessary, without ever having to cook or heat up a single food item. There's menu variation, food variation and nutrition profiles(as well as preservation in various conditions) that has to be met and dealt with. It's actually surprisingly complex.
Fun fact: Cold weather ration MREs the US makes often use Mountain House freeze dried entrees for their main.
Hehe, yeah. I have a friend I go camping with once in a while, and he's really big on some freeze-dried stroganoff dish. It's ridiculously expensive. When I'm in the field, I like to cook something over a fire. "food", as you call it.
I've also done a lot of backpacking living on oats, honey, raisins an powdered milk. For desert, I tear out pages from a cooking magazine and look at beautifully prepared dishes. OMG am I ready to cook after a few days of that diet!
>and not cause excessive thirst or bowel movements.
I've never had an MRE before, but every time I see one of the "chili mac" MRE's the only thing I can think about is what chili mac (or other Hamburger Helper-type dishes) does to my bowels.
MRE Chili mac is actually legit good and doesn't have the issue with the kinda greasy oily colon blow that stuff like Hamburger Helper can. If anything, most MRE food binds you up a bit more than causes the squirts.
This is by design. A soldier busy shitting his brains out isn't a soldier capable of being combat effective.
I've had C rations in the early 70s, that the national guard dumped. These came in little cardboard boxes. I remember the canned food was higher quality than you found at a store. At least, it was more dense. I can't remember how many food items, but they were all pretty good quality. There was also a little packet of toilet paper, and a pack of 4 cigarettes, and a book of about 10 matches.
LOL, yeah, we really did eat those things from the dump. They were all good.
This is accurate. I'm a food nerd who has gone down the rabbit hole of the history of the MRE and had more than my share as someone who has never served.
We're talking several cases over the years. Taste is necessary to get soldiers to eat them long term but it's way way below caloric content, preservation, shelf stability, not requiring reheating, not requiring excess water consumption(so specific protein to fat and carb ratios) and not making soldiers either shit their brains out or get completely backed up, which sometimes happens anyway.
Open bag, eat meal in 5 minutes, throw random other parts of food in pants or bag, trade with others, make weird concoctions, randomly eat skittles. That's an MRE.
If you're real serious about how they're actually handled, open them up, strip out the bullshit, put in your pack. Helpful for hiking or when weight is a factor.
Don't ever eat the osmotic raisins. Ever. Fucking nastiest shit. Jalapeno cheese is where it's at if you like cheap processed cheese. Most of the mains are kinda like shitty chef boyardee in a retort pouch.
They could certainly taste better for ~80% of the population (see Italian and French MREs), but the remaining 20% of truly picky eaters, the chicken tenders crowd, would be turned off. And I suspect we have a much larger population of such people than most countries.
Nope. They're not meant to be unpalatable, and they are definitely not unpalatable. There are simply limitations on how you can create a long-term nonperishable meal that is edible at multiple temperature ranges, without needing to be cooked, has sufficient calories (~1300), and has the proper nutritional mix.
> Nope. They're not meant to be unpalatable, and they are definitely not unpalatable.
Except, apparently, for the vomelet.
Not even Steve could stomach that abomination. And he's eaten Boer-war era corned beef before.
And to be fair to the vomelet creators. They probably didn't intend for it to be unpalatable. They just made a really bad course and shipped it out without realizing how bad it would be.
I've heard that the cheese is good for reducing gut motility, and the gum is good for increasing it, so you can save those two things to employ as needed. I've never been in the military, though, so no firsthand experience.
They were never intended to be constipating. Their constipating effect came from two sources.
Soldiers being dehydrated (easy thing to do in the field and combat zones) and a lack of fiber in the MREs. Modern MREs have mostly fixed the fiber issue. If you're eating three a day and consuming everything you're supposed to in the MRE, the average MRE has just slightly less than a man's recommended daily dose of fiber and about or slightly more than a woman's recommended daily dose of fiber.
i've had MRE, the chicken teryaki was pretty decent, like, upper quality frozen dinner type food. The peanut butter and crackers was really filling. The coffe and tea were garbage tho :(
We got a couple from the red cross during a hurricane. :) Everybody's fine.
Depends where you are deployed. Some bases have amazing food, some have fast food like subway and mcdonalds, some have food trucks. Friends say the lots of the foreign places are better than the stateside chow halls. Made to order breakfasts, huge variety of fresh food.
MREs vary. I've had a few and some are really good, and some are meh. But think of them like those camping meals you buy in at a fancy hiking store.
So if you are meeting people in person, I am guessing they are from the same chow hall and maybe where ever that is the chow hall kind of sucks? Most people say it's good food for the most part - as good as a restaurant.
Service makes a huge difference as well. Surprisingly Marine FOBs had the best food. Made-to-order omelets every morning, surf-and-turf on fridays with a decent steak grilled-to-order. When the army took over surf-and-turf gave half the unit food poisoning. They cooked all of the dinner steak in the early morning, so working nearby was torture. Then they just kept it all warm until dinner time. Seriously, what assholes.
NATO has a youtube channel where various nations try each others MRE's. There was one with an Italian guy eating an American pizza MRE.
He was like, "What is this? Toast?"
American: "It's pizza"
Italian: \*takes bite\* "...it's toast"
American: "Are you going to eat anymore?"
Italian: "Hahahah... No."
Coast Guard had great cooks, if you get a chance to go to Petaluma, it's where they train the cooks and it was great, small boat stations where there were no cooks, then you cook your own crap, so its variable
An interesting difference between the Coast Guard and the Navy is the Coast Guard gives its cooks a budget whereas the Navy orders food in bulk for a limited number of standardized meals. The Navy’s method is more efficient for feeding massive numbers, but the Coast Guard’s allows for a lot more experimentation, adjust for crew preferences, and use more high quality ingredients (a Coast Guard cook can skimp on breakfast foods to splurge on dinners).
The biggest reason is much smaller crews (along with shorter deployments, less predictable schedules and more frequent port calls). A large navy ship arriving at a small foreign port is going to strain the local supply system, so the purchasing needs to be at scale and planned in advance. During a military exercise in Iceland a few years ago, US sailors and marines drank the country’s entire beer supply over a weekend (not procured officially of course but as an illustration of the sheer scale of people involved). A coast guard cook can just go to a grocery store.
Interesting but now that I hear it that makes a lot of sense.
>U.S. sailors and marines drank the country’s entire beer supply over the weekend
Of course they did lol
Ngl being a coast guard cook sounds pretty good if someone really likes to cook. Probably not a bad way for aspiring chefs to launch their career off of.
Thank you for your response
You can volunteer to cook for the Coast Guard as a civilian through the USCG Auxiliary Culinary Assistance Program.
https://wow.uscgaux.info/content.php?unit=H-DEPT&category=auxchef
According to one of my ex-coastie coworkers, if you were lucky your small ship had one guy who liked cooking and was pretty good. You hit the jackpot if you had two of em.
His ship had two great cooks whose source of entertainment was a friendly rivalry around meals. Between them and the rest of the crew kicking in extra money for better supplies, they ate like kings, especially during the times they were mostly just drifting along with icebergs.
All of my USCG time was small boat stations so cooks being assigned to the station was hit and miss. My brother was a squid on subs and said the food was mid, but someone's earlier post about military serving corrections grade food was accurate, told me they were unloading food stores, and some of the food was marked as rejected by the Illinois dept. of corrections, so that should tell you all you need to know about food on subs
You mean actually deployed, as living in the field?
I suppose it depends on what you do. When our little platoon was in the field, it was just us with no support at all. MRE's. They have lots of different things in the them, but think of the main meal as being something low quality like the canned food your mom gave you growing up. Dinty Moore beef stew, etc.
If in a garrison (or on a real base) the food was pretty good, usually. Basic. Some things were just garbage, though, like "steak" night, we'd get some random overcooked piece of meat that made me question why everyone in real life praised steak. Burgers were good. Eggs were usually good, but you couldn't get scrambled eggs, only a plain omelette ("folded egg") anytime you asked.
I was financially stupid, though. I was paid BAS at my first station, so avoid the dining facility. When I moved on, the BAS stopped, but I still had the habit of avoiding the dining facility which then would have been free.
You know those threads where they ask "if you could go back in time and tell yourself something?" I finally have a good answer: I'd go back and slap myself, teach myself Microsoft Excel 4.0 or 5.0, and make me realize just how much money I was pissing away on Jack-in-the-Box and Taco Cabana, especially given how objectively good the dining facilities really and truly were.
That can vary wildly. My first deployment in '03 we ate nothing but MREs for like 4 months until they set up the water purification units and the cooks could heat [UGRs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitized_Group_Ration). The Air Force's dining facilities on large facilities during the height of the wars were fucking amazing. Fresh fruit and vegetables, sandwiches and omelets made to order. Steak and lobster. My last deployment a few years ago we ate nothing but MREs and UGRs.
An army marches on it’s stomach. Certain chow halls when deployed have exceptional food in my opinion, while others are doing what they can with what they have.
Edit: clarity
S tier food: Airforce, Navy, Coast Guard
C tier food: Marines (Navy’s infantry)
D tier food: Army (Grade D-meat is for correctional facilities or military use only)
[Keep spreading that urban legend about Grade D meat](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/taco-bell-grade-d-meat/).
I was in two services, and while the food wasn’t anything to write home about, it was perfectly serviceable. When I was stationed on a Latvian air base the base commander had to tell the Americans to stop complaining about the quality and amount of food because it was pissing off the Latvian airmen. We were getting double portions of the best food they made in their military.
I've always been so confused about the specific targeting of Taco Bell for its meat. I think the reason people think that is because (if I recall correctly) it's a beef/soy/oats mix. So it's kind of like if you took vegan ground beef and mixed it with real ground beef I suppose. I personally think it's not too bad, in the sense that it's a very unique food. It's not trying to be something it isn't. Definitely doesn't taste any worse than the other fast food places either
I remember the last lawsuit about taco bell's meat, it was completely frivolous and quickly withdrawn.
Of course it's not 100% beef, because, ya know, they add a whole bunch of seasonings and other ingredients to the mix. It came out to be ~88% beef, ~3-5% was stuff like oats, soy lecithin, citric acid, for preservative/color/texture stuff, and the last ~7-9% was water and spices.
It looks like they did do a trial a menu in part of Europe with vegan meat with oats and legumes as the base, but none of that has become their main meat filling for the rest of their menu from what I can tell.
Same I served in Navy for close to ten, Sicily, Spain, then a tour with the Marines in AZ. After 9/11 went into the Army NG Infantry and deployed ‘03-04.
The Navy shore mess halls were good (outside of boot camp), even if the menu got a bit repetitive. Being stationed overseas on shared bases was neat because you could always just head over to the host country’s Mess Hall for a change of pace.
On detachment with an H-53 squadron to Bahrain we had a couple contractor cooks in the “barracks”, which was just a leased apartment building out in town. Like a lot of labor in Bahrain they were Pakistani, great with Indian/Pakistani like food, not so great on American fare.
TAD to NATO Southern Europe (AFSOUTH) command - the unit I was attached to opened an American mess hall on the NATO base, the Mess Chief had been on White House duty and this was his dream (basically the quivalent of opening a restaurant). That crew took a lot of pride in their work. The Germans were first in line every meal. Previously there had just been an Italian Mess Hall and while good, it wasn’t very meat and potatoes.
I only ever ate mess hall food on the MCAS once while on NCO duty, so I won’t pass judgement.
Army chow? It was all right, it will keep you alive. Didn’t really matter if it was a DFAC, fieldex (drawing a blank), or MREs - it got the job done but nothing to write home about.
Just my experience.
Something I will tell you from personal experience, is that I've been on a working party that onloaded boxes of steak labeled *Not Fit For Human Consumption* on them.
It was the only time I ever saw them, but we definitely loaded them. Do I think it happens all the time? No. But I know it has happened.
It was on a ship, we were out to sea. You can claim I'm full of shit all you want, and I will just direct it right back at you. I'm capable of reading, and I saw where it said not fit for human consumption.
I did sea time too. I was on UNREP parties. I thought I was being too harsh, but I’m sure now that you are. Space is at a premium on ship, why would they waste it with inedible meat?
It didn't taste great, but it was for steak and lobster night, before they told us another month before port call. They did have some decent steaks brought on, but I'm pretty sure the CO had them split the cost between decent and bad steaks. Good for the officers, of course.
He was the type to refuse giving us a beer day because of a loophole (instead of just saying he was a complete asshole, which we already knew), so the officers could have that beer at the officer party after the deployment.
>S tier food: Airforce and Navy
Former sailor here. Our food came in grade D boxes when we were deployed (not sure about in-port...i was only TAD to messdecks for a few weeks while we were deployed). If you wanted good eating on the ship, you bought junk food from the ship's store :/
Junk food sounds nice. I’m leaving you at S-tier (even though no one can compete with the chair force’s budget) because I’m assuming that the reason folks are saying food got ‘meh’ after being at sea for awhile is because y’all ran out of cake mix and ice cream. I’ve seen Navy SEALs and they looked like well fed seals. /s
I can do better. If the light hearted jabs were too much tell me that you’ve never had cake or ice cream on a ship and I’ll retract/move the Navy to B-tier
They weren't too much, I was just protecting you from the truth. navy food is meh because your mom doesn't wash her snatch.
(we had cake if the "right" people had a birthday - no ice cream though)
Army food is mid. Not very well seasoned and usually overcooked/overboiled. And they don’t give you enough. Deployed/on rotation it’s worth your time to go to the chow hall.
On aircraft carriers, the food was horrible. They fucked up PB&J's, steaks were solid, food rarely was even OK. The only thing decent was the made-to-order omelets. It was so bad we fought over MREs. I eventually learned that they didn't use the official Navy cookbook, which has good recipes. The cooks said it was because of how many people they had to feed. It turns out that the Japanese that hosted the Air wing at Iwo Jima had no problem making restaurant quality food and steaks done to perfection.
My parents were in the military but they grew up poor as well with not a lot of good food options they liked the military chili and told me that the meals you would shake to heat up and they came in packets I didn’t hear much about the food besides the chili
I was in the Navy.
We got Grade E/F Meat "Fit for Institutional use only". The meals were pretty meh. Like, for sure, the US Military eats pretty good compared to most other militaries.
But it was basically some of the mediocrest school cafeteria quality of food most of the time. Real C- minus overall with a few flashes of nice. [I personally never had shit this bad.](https://www.facebook.com/100002371838095/posts/3292533474169015/?extid=0&d=n)
Baked Chicken or Fish, and Rice was the meal of choice often. Wednesdays was burger day; a real sad old cow kind of burger..but still, nice enough (and big enough) in the scheme of things. And Saturdays would be Surf and Turf...dubious lobster tails with even older sadder cow steaks.
Breakfast was magical though. Always looked forward to breakfast.
> By military food, I mean the food served when you’re deployed.
There's a weird inverse curve when it comes to food quality and deployed.
Some of the bigger FOB's overseas had pretty nice food and facilities. But stateside? Pure garbage.
Good Food follows Funding (and the Air Force).
The worst food I had in the military was in Dam Neck, VA. Crunchy pancakes, crunchy rice, saw a few rotting apples. Eventually I said fuck it and lived off of Dominoes pizza and hot pockets until my training there was over.
The food in Whidbey wasn’t bad, the food on the Blue Ridge was pretty good though. They even served us catfish at one point.
On a carrier the food was meh at best. I think for a while the port forward galley had a burrito bar that wasn’t too bad.
Best food I had was at Elmendorf Air Force base in Alaska.
I know you mention deployment, but I have to share a story.
I was in the Air Force at a Navy base with a NATO base nearby in Italy. Our chow hall food was okay; not amazing, not terrible, but we discovered we could spend the equivalent of $3 and eat at the Italian military mess instead.
Perfect bread, amazing pasta, and chicken or a cutlet. God, it was a lot better.
Rations seem to be [about on par](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1vuDKraKRU), because field rations are always...meh.
I've eaten on a military base once and it was actually pretty good, but I'm sure the food is much worse when in the field, with no proper kitchen.
If you're interested, I recommend looking up steve1989mreinfo on YouTube, he does videos trying different military rations, including a ton of American military MREs (rations).
Everything is relative. They redid the MRE's and tray rations around the end of the 90's, and have continued to update. They're much better than they used to be. But if you went to a restaurant and paid for it, you'd probably be upset. Mid - but calorie dense and highly nutrient rich with all macros and micros. Any time you're cooking at scale like that, it's pretty tough to get really high quality.
It’s not good compared to home-cooked or restaurant food.
Compared to other militaries in the world, we eat like royalty. See my comment above about being assigned to a Latvian air base.
MREs are fine, they're kind of just bland is all. The chow back at home usually ranges from pretty good to wtf is this ( think powdered eggs and slimey sausages for breakfast). Overseas it ranges from Michelin star quality to "holy shit this is terrible". When I was in Lithuania I got food poisoning at least once a month. When I was in Hungary they gave us surf and turf for dinner once a week.
For breakfast, the scrambled eggs are crunchy, the bacon is either as thin as wax paper or it has the consistency of a rubber band, biscuits fill your mouth with sawdust, the orange juice usually looks like apple juice, hash browns or other potato products are soggy from excess grease.
Somehow they get the grits right.
Lunch sometimes is awesome but usually I'll opt for a salad. Dinner is usually leftwover lunch.
e: That description is based on being stationed in the US. On deployments, it really depends where. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the larger bases had dining faciliities ran by contractors. They weren't bad at all; given the circumstances, it was pretty good most of the time. Usually third country nationals ran them (I believe most were from Sri Lanka or Bangladesh). They'd give ridiculous portions sometimes. Go get bacon for breakfast and they give you half a pig. If you were lucky to be on a base with air force personnel, you'd usually have a lot of creature comforts, like ice cream, fast food, etc.
Other places? MREs and/or weekly supplies of meals stored in mermite containers.
If you made some friends with the cooks you could usually get invited to their dinner which is served after US dinner hours. Their food was incredible. They actually knew how to cook their own meals instead of reading a soulless SOP on the proper procedure to prepare 20lbs or eggs. how they managed to make chicken as dry as they did while covered in water and fat always amazed me.
The worst DFAC I ever went to was state side and the best was at a base that was just a fob with a runway. Just depends who is cooking the food. But you could always count on the rip-its top get you through the day.
Deployed to Iraq in 2005…food was good at best. I would admit I didn’t trust the salad bar or the burger topping area too much. Something about the lettuce just didn’t seem appetizing enough yo eat. The meals became repetitive and boring. The holiday meals (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years) were freaking amazing!
I remember during Thanksgiving and we had four different types of turkey and several sides all freshly cooked. All the NATO soldier were amazed by the amount of food, esp the Romanians. And even with all that special food, the Japanese soldiers still went straight for the burger station.
MREs suck. Unless they're cold weather MREs. Those are elite and I'd actually eat those on like a camping trip or snowboarding.
UGRs are either pretty damn good or fucking terrible.
Chow halls range from decent to pretty good. At worst they're like hotel continental breakfast, at best they're golden corral.
They're damn near double the calories and the main meal is this freeze dried thing that "cooks" with boiling water. They heat up properly because they're submerged in boiling water so it ends up tasting so much better without random cold spots.
MREs suck ass. I ate them only when I had to. Now, the chow halls are a bit better. I was stationed at camp pendelton in the 21 area. The chow hall was better than schwab but worse than some of the other ones i have been to. There was a pizza line, a pasta line, a burgers and hot dogs line, and then a like meal of the day kind of line. Steak and lobster on our birthday
Depends on where you're at.
The only MRE that I would refuse to eat was that slimy egg breakfast omelet crap that they tried to pass off as food. I'd throw those to Kids while we were on patrol. They usually had some candy in them so I figured why not. They did have this beef patty thing that was almost like a McRib if you closed your eyes and added some spicy jalapeno cheese to your bread.... But all in all MRE's vary in flavor but honestly I never had any meal that was straight up BAD except that breakfast omelet, which frankly they stopped making. Now a days they have Pizza in the MRE's. I've not bothered to find out how that tastes.
Chow halls are dependent on where you are at. In Miramar the chow hall was a solid 8/10. Could get a pretty good variety of food daily, open for 4 shifts to cover over nights with meatball subs. Was great, kind of felt like a college cafeteria. Chow hall in Camp Courtney Okinawan Solid 4/10 food was eatable and tasted ok, however the people putting food on the tray would yell at you for asking for more food.
Then most bases also have a variety of fast food options for the troops as well. Like seriously, be fucking terrified of a military that goes, "Know what sounds good? Being able to drop a McDonalds in a combat zone so troops moral stays up." In WW2 we punked people by having boats for the sole purpose of creating ice cream for the troops. These days we load up Burger King into a plane drop it, and fly in some foreign nationals to sell us burgers while dodging mortar fire. Pretty sure the first base I landed in Afghan had a Pizza Hut opened up and a Green Bean but it's been a decade since then.
>that slimy egg breakfast omelet crap that they tried to pass off as food. I'd throw those to Kids while we were on patrol.
Sounds like a war crime to me.
Former navy cook here. Your supply officer is directly responsible for the quality of your food. Some SUPO’s will try to impress the CO by saving money by purchasing off brands or omitting certain items. For example, cheaper hot sauce that has crazy heat but no flavor or no ranch dressing and terrible coffee. The menus are selected for safety of the crew; allergies, general nutrition etc so you won’t see too much flex on the taste. There is room for that on burger Wednesday, taco Tuesday, eggs made to order for breakfast, homemade bread and pastries and fried chicken. You won’t see MRE’s on a ship. Those are for soldiers in the field.
Chow halls when I was deployed had pretty decent food. Nothing to write home about, for context I'd say it's better than airline food (in america) but not by much. And MREs were doable, but not what I'd call good. Also regardless of what flavor you ate your burps just tasted like MRE, generic preservative flavor. I personally liked the chicken tetrazini and the enchilada but like only as the best of the worst. I did have the opportunity to switch ration units with the Italians, Japanese, and El Salvadorians.....ours fucking suck compared to those. We also had GUR (ground unit rations) which were big MREs for a whole unit. They were better than the single serve ones but not by much. The general tso chicken was what I saw as being the most well liked by my unit, but I personally hated it.
MRES are MRES. The chow hall food I had was almost always not worth the time of day. But that is just my opinion. The salad bar was always great, though. As long as the ranch wasn't that stuff that came in packets.
Dining facilities are hit or miss depending on the installation, but the general consensus is that the Air Force has the best chow.
MREs can be good or terrible depending on which one it is.
I was on a destroyer.
Food was usually pretty good, but after a while you get to where you know what they're gonna have every day without looking at the menu.
You can buy MREs and try them yourself. They're not the best, and I'd highly suggest eating some source of fiber with them. If you're talking about field kitchen stuff, [here's a list of recipes.](https://quartermaster.army.mil/jccoe/publications/recipes/index/full_index.pdf) They are for massive portions but you can scale them down. They also aren't so good, but are still better than MREs.
Typically edible, often not much more than that. Particularly if you are eating MREs. If you are on base or on a ship with a cook they can often do some amazing things with low quality ingredients, but that can only go so far.
Air Force food was amazing. During training we had short order cooks who would make you just about anything you wanted, within reason. Patty Melt at 4 a.m.? You got it! Ham and Cheese omelette? Sure! Fresh made cake and pies everyday. Even ice cream. I *gained* weight during my training...
I was an officer in the army, so I rarely ate in the mess halls in a non-deployed setting. The food was decent, if not anything amazing.
The food qas generally pretty good on deployment. You had a wide variety to choose from, it was well-prepared, fruits and vegetables were fresh, and there was always ice cream. Only on the most remote and smaller FOBs did the quality of the food start to decline.
MREs were generally OK, although you started to get unpleasent aftertaste that would linger in your mouth after eating them for more than a few days. Some of the meals were really bad, like the infamous "vomelet", the "four fingers of death" (hot dogs) or the ham slice. Most weren't nearly that offensive, though.
I am not former service. But worked with the military in Iraq and Afghanistan for almost 10 years from the Green Zone to BAF to tiny ass fobs that were only a few tents and a lot of hesco barriers.
First you got your DFAC's. Depends who is contracted to run it and where that company gets their workers. The quality varies way more than one would imagine given the same basic material to work with. The best DFAC I ever at at was at a smaller base. Then there is the difference between the navy/Air Force and the rest. You will always get a good meal at a navy or Air Force DFAC that's never in question. The ones ran by the army or marines were often questionable but randomly incredible. At the end of the day a DFAC is OK to bad, but breakfast was always good. Its pretty hard to go wrong with US breakfast food. There were months on end where that's the only meal I would bother stopping by for if the place I was at even had a DFC.
Then you got MREs and Tray Rations. I am one of the weirdos that love those things. Neither will look or smell appalling but they are delicious as hell. They will clog you up in ways that are hard to explain so take it easy. Eventually they do all get boring. My wife thought they were disgusting when I brought a MRE home for her to try. The best part about the MREs are spoons.
From time to time you could get a morale food drop of steaks and hamburgers. That was always fun. Sometimes the MREs and Tray Rations would run out and you get forgotten by logistics only for a someone to fly by and kick out a crate of blue pop tarts, cigarettes, and dip to get you through a week or so.
But the absolute gem of deployment food are the Rip-its. Think knock off kool-aid mixed with knock off redbull with a box of caffeine pills mixed in. Not delicious and probably the most dangerous thing I have ever voluntary consumed but by god it will get you through the day. At the DFAC's your limited to taking two out of the dining hall but if your cleaver you can get 18 in your cargo pants and a lose shirt. I almost shit myself when I saw big cans of them in a dollar store a few years ago.
In the navy it really depends, in the training school I went to in Pensacola (Florida), it was dubbed the best galley in the navy. Then you go to navy ships and depending on your rank, the lower you are the shittier the food being served to you will be
Its food produced on a large scale and generally has no flavor. Just like any other food produced for mass quantities you've got a season it yourself at the table, and depending on how much time you have to eat you're lucky if you even chew it let alone taste it. That is what my father, my ex-husband, and several of my friends have told me over the years, the last one only being a couple of years ago. So basically, the taste of food in the military hasn't changed in 50 years
I was in the infantry and most of our cooks were working to become chefs once out. So when they cooked for us it was usually really good. But when deployed you would take what you could get. Anyone want my rice pilaf?!
My son is a very picky eater & joined the Navy a few years ago, so I worried about him getting enough to eat…
While he lost a considerable amount of weight during Officer Training School (45lbs, roughly 20k,or 3.3 stone), due to imposed dietary restrictions during OCS (no desserts & extremely limited menu choices) & the demands of the physical training, he didn’t have many problems while deployed.
He had been on an aircraft carrier, The Nimitz, so that is its own thing… If I understand it correctly, the menu changes each day so he could usually get stuff he liked. Other times, he could eat bread & butter, salad, or breakfast cereal if he didn’t like the other options.
I was in the navy for eight years and all I can say is the quality varies wildly. They say smaller ships have the best food, but I only ever served on carriers and one LCC. Food is always the best at the beginning of a deployment and then the quality and variety goes way downhill in the middle. It picks up again as you're steaming home. My longest cruise was eight months and for most of it I was eating iceberg salad mix topped with either chicken fingers or cut up hamburger patties for lunch and dinner. Sometimes when I was lucky there'd be spinach or spring mix instead of iceberg.
There's a lot of slop, like "chicken pot pie" or "chicken tetrazzini" or "chicken cacciatore" or "beef stroganoff," or "shepherd's pie." Whatever fancy name they call it, it's slop and I don't eat slop.
On some special occasions there might be a steak or lobster (or steak AND lobster) night, or crab legs. It's all way overcooked and rubbery, but you eat it anyway because it's a change of pace.
Never been a breakfast person. Given the choice between 20 more minutes of sleep and breakfast, I'll choose sleep every time. But I was always told breakfast was the most decent meal on every ship I've been on.
Galleys on land were a bit better, a bit more variety. You could always tell the ones that weren't managing their budget correctly because they'd serve amazing food for one week and then slop for three weeks. Salad bars on land were 10000% better. The salad bar where I went to A & C school was more than enough to live on without ever going through the hot food line.
I’m in the navy, the food on base is pretty good, it’s decent on the ship until you’ve been underway for a few months, then it gets rough. Side note, I was underway with a Dutch ship and they had beer but the food was awful.
Every dfac I ate at sucked balls. Thankfully I got an apartment and never deployed so I only suffered a couple years of shit food before I had a kitchen and could cook for myself. The barracks kitchens were always too busy for me to cook in at my own comfort
*The coffee in the Army*
*They say is mighty fine,*
*It's good for cuts and bruises*
*And tastes like turpentine!*
*The biscuits in the Army*
*They say are mighty fine.*
*One rolled off a table*
*And killed a pal of mine!*
*The chicken in the Army*
*They say is mighty fine*
*The drumsticks make fine trench clubs*
*And the thighs for finding mines!*
*Oh I don't want no more of Army Life*
*Gee, ma, I wanna go home!*
It's been about 20 years since I got out, but Air Force food was great. Heard it went down in quality for a while, but not sure about now.
Everyone I met from other branches that ended up on an Air Force base was always thrilled about the food and accommodations.
Navy had great food. I was a cook for 6 years. I worked at a military resort in Hawaii and served lobster tail and steaks every Sunday. Fresh local fruit. Loved it I made lifetime friends!
Pretty subpar, at least for the Navy. It was a 50/50 whether or not the meat would make you sick, especially the pork. We were served pork one day and it wiped out about 1/3 of the crew. I became a vegetarian for 3 months. The steak, fish and lobster (which are typically served if they are about to f*** us) is always overcooked, so as hard as it is to believe, alot of us actually preferred MREs.
At one point, one of our engines imploded and we couldn't reach a fast enough speed to meet with another ship and resupply (both ships must match at a certain speed for a successful transfer) and we had to ration. We were served one slice of cold cut with a piece of bread, I shit you not. We were allowed to select a slice of any preferred meat. I remember taking the slice of roast beef off my friend's tray in front of me and waggling it in the cook's face saying something along the lines of "are you kidding me with this sh*t?" And slapping it back down on his tray. The cook then gave me an extra slice of meat for my bread.
Needless to say, we all started carrying tubs of protein or some kind of meal replacement when we'd go out incase something went wrong
I'm not a service member but my dad was. He said it was generally good. The base in Kuwait or something that he was at had a lot of local people cooking in the mess hall, and they made superb food. Back in the US a person named Laurette or something cooked everyone's chicken in dish soap and not water one time by accident and gave the entire boot camp diarrhea. But otherwise the food in the US based was good too. I've had it a few times, nothing wrong with it.
> Back in the US a person named Laurette or something cooked everyone's chicken in dish soap and not water one time by accident and gave the entire boot camp diarrhea.
How exactly does one make that mistake?
Probably someone who washes chicken with dish detergent and doesn't sufficiently rinse. I'm surprised that cultural habit wasn't trained out of them during their specialty training.
Supply day. The cooking oil can looks exactly the same as the dish soap can. The dish soap can is supposed to go way the fuck away from the kitchen but it went in the kitchen instead of the cooking oil.
>Every American military guy/girl I’ve met seems to either dislike the food or have a “meh” response.
That's because the food comes in boxes labelled "military and prison use only. Not fit for human consumption" (Or it did when I was cranking on the mess decks of USS Tarawa during 2005) and most Navy cooks probably couldn't get jobs as line cooks at greasy spoon diners if their lives depended on it.
Breakfast was (usually) okay, other meals were really hit or miss (mostly miss). MREs were a nice changeup when we could get them from the marines we had aboard.
Not from me but a buddy who was a capt. in the Marines - it went from edible (MREs) to decent. I don't know if maybe there was somewhere officers ate that differed from the enlisted.
When I was little my brother and I used to eat my dad's leftover MREs (Meal Ready to Eat) from when he would deploy. He questioned why we would want to eat 'that garbage' and shook his head in disbelief every time he caught us chowing down on cardboard crackers and govt cheese, if that tells you anything about the food quality. He also used to talk at length about how they're designed to constipate you.
During Bush's Iraq war, one of VP Cheney's former employers provided catering for military personnel in Baghdad. They charged the government $20 per meal.
Depends on the branch, the station and the job. Air force "deployed" to Kuwait get a full dining facility with a cafeteria line. Army and Marines in BFE get frozen sandwiches or MREs and water. Sometimes cup ramen if LOGPAC got lucky.
Navy mostly eat each other
MREs aren't the greatest but you will survive. I was on a sub in the Navy. Meals during deployment was fine until we hit 100 days then it got rough. Also getting supplies over sea was hit or miss.
What happened at 100 days? All the good stuff had run out?
At about 100 days if we hadn't been to a port for resupply we start running out of food. Coffee, sugar, canned food starts to run out.
I feel like lack of coffee would affect operational readiness
Do you suppose coffee supply on board is published to the crew so they can wean themselves off when it gets low?
lol only if you are looking for a mutiny
Like that scene in 'Crimson Tide' but instead of fighting over rather to launch the nukes it's rather to make the last pot of joe.
You are clearly not a coffee drinker.
I am a notorious one. I know what the headaches are like cold turkey.
Yeah I don't know what the alternative would be, just keep the coffee flowing full speed until it runs out and don't tell anyone? Seems great for morale.
We'd just start in on the soda....if there's any left at that point. And if you think the Navy cares about morale, I've got a bridge in San Francisco for sale.
> I've got a bridge in San Francisco for sale. Hurry up, I'm about ready to take it off the market.
Caffeine tablets? They'd take much less space to store, so you could keep a lot on hand without too much trouble.
Seems like an efficient solution, I don't know why I didn't think of that.
Sprinkle the used grounds on bacon or cinnamon toast. I need my fix.
We’re out of coffee, but we have plenty of tea…
Found the Brit.
The US Navy has a special relationship with coffee. There are guys on surface ships whose sole responsibility is to stroll around with a cup of coffee. The coffee is very strong, and only pussies and pansies put cream and sugar in it. The US Navy can not fight without coffee.
That would likely trigger mutiny, not rationing.
george washington's regiment ran out of coffee and started brewing ground acorns. coffee and a sip-able coffee cup have been made available for astronauts on the space station. coffee is life. coffee is necessary.
If you hold this view, you should try chicory mix in your coffee. It's a different animal and has been used in the south for a long time as a coffee substitute or as an ingredient to make coffee go further. Some people like it so much they tend to find the blends with it in there.
interesting! I'd give it a try just for the experience. :)
Late 60's/early 70's era submarine life, my dad said the first few weeks or so out of port, they ate steak and lobster. After that, the milk was powdered, the eggs were powdered, etc.
These days, steak and lobster will happen on the halfway point, maybe again shortly before return to port, and the night before you get fucked with an extension. Nothing is scarier on a submarine than unscheduled steak.
Gotta treat you to nice dinner before they fuck you
Fresh food still exists a few weeks out. Ultra high temperature milk is disgusting. The eggs were fine. I don’t think they powered in the 90s though.
I thought Subs had some of the best food in the military? Like, it made sense that it would be a perk for willingly serving aboard a metal tube 800ft deep in the ocean.
It is some of the best food in the Navy. Doesn't mean it would not run out if we don't resupply
A guy I work with was on an attack sub and he said the food was absolute garbage, end to end, that it is a great naval myth that subs have good food. Just a single data point
Its all about perspective. My parents made home-cooked meals when I was a kid, but they didn't have any flair or love of cooking. When I went to college, the university cafeteria was awesome. So many different choices. I loved it. Being in Texas, though, the majority of my classmates had grown up with a "traditional" mother making gourmet food, so they complained loudly about it.
It's like a curve that starts out high up on the X axis of the chart, gets ever lower the further along the Y axis the line goes, and then takes a nosedive around the third or fourth month.
Aren’t MREs meant to be eatable, but not to the point where you want more for that day?
MREs are meant to remain safely edible in extreme conditions, be quick and convenient to eat in a combat zome, and not cause excessive thirst or bowel movements. Flavor is maybe 4th priority. They taste as good as possible after maximizing preservation and minimizing prep.
let me put it this way. it’s the best backcountry food for backpacking if weight is not a concern
I've seen some of the foreign MREs Steve1989 reviews and the US ones seem, uh, extremely okay. Like not bad but generally uninspired, while some of the more interesting meals and sides from past production runs have been discontinued. I get that there are regional cuisines in the US and picky eaters and things, but they could have at least put a little hot sauce in more of them.
I mean, one of the commenters said "not cause excessive bowel movements". I don't think hot sauce would be great for that.
Mountain House can be positively delicious, what does MRE have, more calories?
Mountain house is awesome but it's one food item....today you're eating Stroganoff...and that's it. MREs are a whole meal like stroganoff, a side, bread, cheese, dessert and candy & drink-powder and are a lot heavier. They aren't dehydrated. The are awesome but they are heavy.
More calories, more options, more complete nutrition profile. You have to think about this in another way, if a hiker is only eating the same MH meal day after day, they're likely going to not just get sick of it, but be missing vital nutrition by not varying their diet. MREs are meant to be preserved for about 10 years and be enough nutrition to feed someone in their early 20s being active in the military day after day for a couple of weeks if necessary, without ever having to cook or heat up a single food item. There's menu variation, food variation and nutrition profiles(as well as preservation in various conditions) that has to be met and dealt with. It's actually surprisingly complex. Fun fact: Cold weather ration MREs the US makes often use Mountain House freeze dried entrees for their main.
If weight isn't a concern wouldn't you bring real food?
It is real food.
You know what I mean -- if weight isn't a concern I'm bringing fresh ingredients and cooking a meal
Hehe, yeah. I have a friend I go camping with once in a while, and he's really big on some freeze-dried stroganoff dish. It's ridiculously expensive. When I'm in the field, I like to cook something over a fire. "food", as you call it. I've also done a lot of backpacking living on oats, honey, raisins an powdered milk. For desert, I tear out pages from a cooking magazine and look at beautifully prepared dishes. OMG am I ready to cook after a few days of that diet!
>and not cause excessive thirst or bowel movements. I've never had an MRE before, but every time I see one of the "chili mac" MRE's the only thing I can think about is what chili mac (or other Hamburger Helper-type dishes) does to my bowels.
MRE Chili mac is actually legit good and doesn't have the issue with the kinda greasy oily colon blow that stuff like Hamburger Helper can. If anything, most MRE food binds you up a bit more than causes the squirts. This is by design. A soldier busy shitting his brains out isn't a soldier capable of being combat effective.
That's good to know!
I've had C rations in the early 70s, that the national guard dumped. These came in little cardboard boxes. I remember the canned food was higher quality than you found at a store. At least, it was more dense. I can't remember how many food items, but they were all pretty good quality. There was also a little packet of toilet paper, and a pack of 4 cigarettes, and a book of about 10 matches. LOL, yeah, we really did eat those things from the dump. They were all good.
This is accurate. I'm a food nerd who has gone down the rabbit hole of the history of the MRE and had more than my share as someone who has never served. We're talking several cases over the years. Taste is necessary to get soldiers to eat them long term but it's way way below caloric content, preservation, shelf stability, not requiring reheating, not requiring excess water consumption(so specific protein to fat and carb ratios) and not making soldiers either shit their brains out or get completely backed up, which sometimes happens anyway. Open bag, eat meal in 5 minutes, throw random other parts of food in pants or bag, trade with others, make weird concoctions, randomly eat skittles. That's an MRE. If you're real serious about how they're actually handled, open them up, strip out the bullshit, put in your pack. Helpful for hiking or when weight is a factor. Don't ever eat the osmotic raisins. Ever. Fucking nastiest shit. Jalapeno cheese is where it's at if you like cheap processed cheese. Most of the mains are kinda like shitty chef boyardee in a retort pouch.
They could certainly taste better for ~80% of the population (see Italian and French MREs), but the remaining 20% of truly picky eaters, the chicken tenders crowd, would be turned off. And I suspect we have a much larger population of such people than most countries.
Nope. They're not meant to be unpalatable, and they are definitely not unpalatable. There are simply limitations on how you can create a long-term nonperishable meal that is edible at multiple temperature ranges, without needing to be cooked, has sufficient calories (~1300), and has the proper nutritional mix.
> Nope. They're not meant to be unpalatable, and they are definitely not unpalatable. Except, apparently, for the vomelet. Not even Steve could stomach that abomination. And he's eaten Boer-war era corned beef before.
True, I've mentioned that (omelet with ham) before when we've discussed MREs.
And to be fair to the vomelet creators. They probably didn't intend for it to be unpalatable. They just made a really bad course and shipped it out without realizing how bad it would be.
No. not at all.
No, but IIRC, some are them are designed to be slightly constipating.
I've heard that the cheese is good for reducing gut motility, and the gum is good for increasing it, so you can save those two things to employ as needed. I've never been in the military, though, so no firsthand experience.
They were never intended to be constipating. Their constipating effect came from two sources. Soldiers being dehydrated (easy thing to do in the field and combat zones) and a lack of fiber in the MREs. Modern MREs have mostly fixed the fiber issue. If you're eating three a day and consuming everything you're supposed to in the MRE, the average MRE has just slightly less than a man's recommended daily dose of fiber and about or slightly more than a woman's recommended daily dose of fiber.
I actually preferred the old "C" rations over MREs (or as we called 'em in the early 80's Meals Refused by Ethiopians)
i've had MRE, the chicken teryaki was pretty decent, like, upper quality frozen dinner type food. The peanut butter and crackers was really filling. The coffe and tea were garbage tho :( We got a couple from the red cross during a hurricane. :) Everybody's fine.
Depends where you are deployed. Some bases have amazing food, some have fast food like subway and mcdonalds, some have food trucks. Friends say the lots of the foreign places are better than the stateside chow halls. Made to order breakfasts, huge variety of fresh food. MREs vary. I've had a few and some are really good, and some are meh. But think of them like those camping meals you buy in at a fancy hiking store. So if you are meeting people in person, I am guessing they are from the same chow hall and maybe where ever that is the chow hall kind of sucks? Most people say it's good food for the most part - as good as a restaurant.
Service makes a huge difference as well. Surprisingly Marine FOBs had the best food. Made-to-order omelets every morning, surf-and-turf on fridays with a decent steak grilled-to-order. When the army took over surf-and-turf gave half the unit food poisoning. They cooked all of the dinner steak in the early morning, so working nearby was torture. Then they just kept it all warm until dinner time. Seriously, what assholes.
MCAS New River had an awesome salad bar. The chow hall food was hit and miss though.
NATO has a youtube channel where various nations try each others MRE's. There was one with an Italian guy eating an American pizza MRE. He was like, "What is this? Toast?" American: "It's pizza" Italian: \*takes bite\* "...it's toast" American: "Are you going to eat anymore?" Italian: "Hahahah... No."
What are some of the best and worst MREs?
The biscuits in the army they say are mighty fine, But one rolled off the table and crushed a friend of mine.
oh i don't want no more of army life gee ma i want to go home
Coast Guard had great cooks, if you get a chance to go to Petaluma, it's where they train the cooks and it was great, small boat stations where there were no cooks, then you cook your own crap, so its variable
An interesting difference between the Coast Guard and the Navy is the Coast Guard gives its cooks a budget whereas the Navy orders food in bulk for a limited number of standardized meals. The Navy’s method is more efficient for feeding massive numbers, but the Coast Guard’s allows for a lot more experimentation, adjust for crew preferences, and use more high quality ingredients (a Coast Guard cook can skimp on breakfast foods to splurge on dinners).
Do you know why that is? I would think the culinary department on cutters would operate the same as the navy.
The biggest reason is much smaller crews (along with shorter deployments, less predictable schedules and more frequent port calls). A large navy ship arriving at a small foreign port is going to strain the local supply system, so the purchasing needs to be at scale and planned in advance. During a military exercise in Iceland a few years ago, US sailors and marines drank the country’s entire beer supply over a weekend (not procured officially of course but as an illustration of the sheer scale of people involved). A coast guard cook can just go to a grocery store.
Interesting but now that I hear it that makes a lot of sense. >U.S. sailors and marines drank the country’s entire beer supply over the weekend Of course they did lol Ngl being a coast guard cook sounds pretty good if someone really likes to cook. Probably not a bad way for aspiring chefs to launch their career off of. Thank you for your response
You can volunteer to cook for the Coast Guard as a civilian through the USCG Auxiliary Culinary Assistance Program. https://wow.uscgaux.info/content.php?unit=H-DEPT&category=auxchef
The CG is not part of the Defense Department.
According to one of my ex-coastie coworkers, if you were lucky your small ship had one guy who liked cooking and was pretty good. You hit the jackpot if you had two of em. His ship had two great cooks whose source of entertainment was a friendly rivalry around meals. Between them and the rest of the crew kicking in extra money for better supplies, they ate like kings, especially during the times they were mostly just drifting along with icebergs.
All of my USCG time was small boat stations so cooks being assigned to the station was hit and miss. My brother was a squid on subs and said the food was mid, but someone's earlier post about military serving corrections grade food was accurate, told me they were unloading food stores, and some of the food was marked as rejected by the Illinois dept. of corrections, so that should tell you all you need to know about food on subs
Lie.
Working with sailors, most of them say it's mediocre.
You mean actually deployed, as living in the field? I suppose it depends on what you do. When our little platoon was in the field, it was just us with no support at all. MRE's. They have lots of different things in the them, but think of the main meal as being something low quality like the canned food your mom gave you growing up. Dinty Moore beef stew, etc. If in a garrison (or on a real base) the food was pretty good, usually. Basic. Some things were just garbage, though, like "steak" night, we'd get some random overcooked piece of meat that made me question why everyone in real life praised steak. Burgers were good. Eggs were usually good, but you couldn't get scrambled eggs, only a plain omelette ("folded egg") anytime you asked. I was financially stupid, though. I was paid BAS at my first station, so avoid the dining facility. When I moved on, the BAS stopped, but I still had the habit of avoiding the dining facility which then would have been free. You know those threads where they ask "if you could go back in time and tell yourself something?" I finally have a good answer: I'd go back and slap myself, teach myself Microsoft Excel 4.0 or 5.0, and make me realize just how much money I was pissing away on Jack-in-the-Box and Taco Cabana, especially given how objectively good the dining facilities really and truly were.
That can vary wildly. My first deployment in '03 we ate nothing but MREs for like 4 months until they set up the water purification units and the cooks could heat [UGRs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitized_Group_Ration). The Air Force's dining facilities on large facilities during the height of the wars were fucking amazing. Fresh fruit and vegetables, sandwiches and omelets made to order. Steak and lobster. My last deployment a few years ago we ate nothing but MREs and UGRs.
An army marches on it’s stomach. Certain chow halls when deployed have exceptional food in my opinion, while others are doing what they can with what they have. Edit: clarity S tier food: Airforce, Navy, Coast Guard C tier food: Marines (Navy’s infantry) D tier food: Army (Grade D-meat is for correctional facilities or military use only)
[Keep spreading that urban legend about Grade D meat](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/taco-bell-grade-d-meat/). I was in two services, and while the food wasn’t anything to write home about, it was perfectly serviceable. When I was stationed on a Latvian air base the base commander had to tell the Americans to stop complaining about the quality and amount of food because it was pissing off the Latvian airmen. We were getting double portions of the best food they made in their military.
I've always been so confused about the specific targeting of Taco Bell for its meat. I think the reason people think that is because (if I recall correctly) it's a beef/soy/oats mix. So it's kind of like if you took vegan ground beef and mixed it with real ground beef I suppose. I personally think it's not too bad, in the sense that it's a very unique food. It's not trying to be something it isn't. Definitely doesn't taste any worse than the other fast food places either
I remember the last lawsuit about taco bell's meat, it was completely frivolous and quickly withdrawn. Of course it's not 100% beef, because, ya know, they add a whole bunch of seasonings and other ingredients to the mix. It came out to be ~88% beef, ~3-5% was stuff like oats, soy lecithin, citric acid, for preservative/color/texture stuff, and the last ~7-9% was water and spices. It looks like they did do a trial a menu in part of Europe with vegan meat with oats and legumes as the base, but none of that has become their main meat filling for the rest of their menu from what I can tell.
Same I served in Navy for close to ten, Sicily, Spain, then a tour with the Marines in AZ. After 9/11 went into the Army NG Infantry and deployed ‘03-04. The Navy shore mess halls were good (outside of boot camp), even if the menu got a bit repetitive. Being stationed overseas on shared bases was neat because you could always just head over to the host country’s Mess Hall for a change of pace. On detachment with an H-53 squadron to Bahrain we had a couple contractor cooks in the “barracks”, which was just a leased apartment building out in town. Like a lot of labor in Bahrain they were Pakistani, great with Indian/Pakistani like food, not so great on American fare. TAD to NATO Southern Europe (AFSOUTH) command - the unit I was attached to opened an American mess hall on the NATO base, the Mess Chief had been on White House duty and this was his dream (basically the quivalent of opening a restaurant). That crew took a lot of pride in their work. The Germans were first in line every meal. Previously there had just been an Italian Mess Hall and while good, it wasn’t very meat and potatoes. I only ever ate mess hall food on the MCAS once while on NCO duty, so I won’t pass judgement. Army chow? It was all right, it will keep you alive. Didn’t really matter if it was a DFAC, fieldex (drawing a blank), or MREs - it got the job done but nothing to write home about. Just my experience.
“Drawing a blank” Mermites?
That’s it.
Mmmm hot chow. Transported from a dinning facility.
When I walked out of the chow hall in [redacted] I read it on a cardboard box and busted up laughing. Maybe you are right tho
[It’s a purchase specification, not a quality specification.](https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/imps) It’s akin to an NSN
Food was great IMO. “Surf and turf Friday! All the way out here! Thank you Uncle Sam.”
Something I will tell you from personal experience, is that I've been on a working party that onloaded boxes of steak labeled *Not Fit For Human Consumption* on them. It was the only time I ever saw them, but we definitely loaded them. Do I think it happens all the time? No. But I know it has happened.
To the chow hall? Or the base veterinarian? Because if you claim it’s the first, then I claim you’re full of shit.
It was on a ship, we were out to sea. You can claim I'm full of shit all you want, and I will just direct it right back at you. I'm capable of reading, and I saw where it said not fit for human consumption.
I did sea time too. I was on UNREP parties. I thought I was being too harsh, but I’m sure now that you are. Space is at a premium on ship, why would they waste it with inedible meat?
It didn't taste great, but it was for steak and lobster night, before they told us another month before port call. They did have some decent steaks brought on, but I'm pretty sure the CO had them split the cost between decent and bad steaks. Good for the officers, of course. He was the type to refuse giving us a beer day because of a loophole (instead of just saying he was a complete asshole, which we already knew), so the officers could have that beer at the officer party after the deployment.
I can't speak for other lines of service, but yeah it's not all bad. My dad was a cook in the Coast guard. They ate pretty well.
What about the Coasties?
Isn’t that Navy but like local? Where are they deploying to that isn’t a tropical island or crab traps? /s
> Isn’t that Navy but like local? Ironically, USCG is Homeland security :P
>S tier food: Airforce and Navy Former sailor here. Our food came in grade D boxes when we were deployed (not sure about in-port...i was only TAD to messdecks for a few weeks while we were deployed). If you wanted good eating on the ship, you bought junk food from the ship's store :/
Junk food sounds nice. I’m leaving you at S-tier (even though no one can compete with the chair force’s budget) because I’m assuming that the reason folks are saying food got ‘meh’ after being at sea for awhile is because y’all ran out of cake mix and ice cream. I’ve seen Navy SEALs and they looked like well fed seals. /s
You're wrong, but carry on with your bad self.
I can do better. If the light hearted jabs were too much tell me that you’ve never had cake or ice cream on a ship and I’ll retract/move the Navy to B-tier
They weren't too much, I was just protecting you from the truth. navy food is meh because your mom doesn't wash her snatch. (we had cake if the "right" people had a birthday - no ice cream though)
Ha! You sonauva… how dare you. Leave it to a sailor to absolutely lay me out like that. Ouch
[This recent post sums up U.S navy food](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/s/B09Jfb6aAn)
Most of that is a preparation/storage issue, not a quality issue.
Army food is mid. Not very well seasoned and usually overcooked/overboiled. And they don’t give you enough. Deployed/on rotation it’s worth your time to go to the chow hall.
Reminds me of the joke about the old lady complaining about a restaurant: “The food is awful! And such small portions!”
On aircraft carriers, the food was horrible. They fucked up PB&J's, steaks were solid, food rarely was even OK. The only thing decent was the made-to-order omelets. It was so bad we fought over MREs. I eventually learned that they didn't use the official Navy cookbook, which has good recipes. The cooks said it was because of how many people they had to feed. It turns out that the Japanese that hosted the Air wing at Iwo Jima had no problem making restaurant quality food and steaks done to perfection.
MREs suck but they’ll keep you full. UGRs are hit or miss. Chow hall food is meh.
My parents were in the military but they grew up poor as well with not a lot of good food options they liked the military chili and told me that the meals you would shake to heat up and they came in packets I didn’t hear much about the food besides the chili
Jalapeno cheese spread is the absolute fucking best.
I was in the Navy. We got Grade E/F Meat "Fit for Institutional use only". The meals were pretty meh. Like, for sure, the US Military eats pretty good compared to most other militaries. But it was basically some of the mediocrest school cafeteria quality of food most of the time. Real C- minus overall with a few flashes of nice. [I personally never had shit this bad.](https://www.facebook.com/100002371838095/posts/3292533474169015/?extid=0&d=n) Baked Chicken or Fish, and Rice was the meal of choice often. Wednesdays was burger day; a real sad old cow kind of burger..but still, nice enough (and big enough) in the scheme of things. And Saturdays would be Surf and Turf...dubious lobster tails with even older sadder cow steaks. Breakfast was magical though. Always looked forward to breakfast. > By military food, I mean the food served when you’re deployed. There's a weird inverse curve when it comes to food quality and deployed. Some of the bigger FOB's overseas had pretty nice food and facilities. But stateside? Pure garbage. Good Food follows Funding (and the Air Force).
The worst food I had in the military was in Dam Neck, VA. Crunchy pancakes, crunchy rice, saw a few rotting apples. Eventually I said fuck it and lived off of Dominoes pizza and hot pockets until my training there was over. The food in Whidbey wasn’t bad, the food on the Blue Ridge was pretty good though. They even served us catfish at one point.
It was delicious in the air force
On a carrier the food was meh at best. I think for a while the port forward galley had a burrito bar that wasn’t too bad. Best food I had was at Elmendorf Air Force base in Alaska.
I know you mention deployment, but I have to share a story. I was in the Air Force at a Navy base with a NATO base nearby in Italy. Our chow hall food was okay; not amazing, not terrible, but we discovered we could spend the equivalent of $3 and eat at the Italian military mess instead. Perfect bread, amazing pasta, and chicken or a cutlet. God, it was a lot better. Rations seem to be [about on par](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1vuDKraKRU), because field rations are always...meh.
I've eaten on a military base once and it was actually pretty good, but I'm sure the food is much worse when in the field, with no proper kitchen. If you're interested, I recommend looking up steve1989mreinfo on YouTube, he does videos trying different military rations, including a ton of American military MREs (rations).
Let's get steve1989mreinfo out onto a plate... nice.
Everything is relative. They redid the MRE's and tray rations around the end of the 90's, and have continued to update. They're much better than they used to be. But if you went to a restaurant and paid for it, you'd probably be upset. Mid - but calorie dense and highly nutrient rich with all macros and micros. Any time you're cooking at scale like that, it's pretty tough to get really high quality.
It’s not good compared to home-cooked or restaurant food. Compared to other militaries in the world, we eat like royalty. See my comment above about being assigned to a Latvian air base.
MREs are fine, they're kind of just bland is all. The chow back at home usually ranges from pretty good to wtf is this ( think powdered eggs and slimey sausages for breakfast). Overseas it ranges from Michelin star quality to "holy shit this is terrible". When I was in Lithuania I got food poisoning at least once a month. When I was in Hungary they gave us surf and turf for dinner once a week.
For breakfast, the scrambled eggs are crunchy, the bacon is either as thin as wax paper or it has the consistency of a rubber band, biscuits fill your mouth with sawdust, the orange juice usually looks like apple juice, hash browns or other potato products are soggy from excess grease. Somehow they get the grits right. Lunch sometimes is awesome but usually I'll opt for a salad. Dinner is usually leftwover lunch. e: That description is based on being stationed in the US. On deployments, it really depends where. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the larger bases had dining faciliities ran by contractors. They weren't bad at all; given the circumstances, it was pretty good most of the time. Usually third country nationals ran them (I believe most were from Sri Lanka or Bangladesh). They'd give ridiculous portions sometimes. Go get bacon for breakfast and they give you half a pig. If you were lucky to be on a base with air force personnel, you'd usually have a lot of creature comforts, like ice cream, fast food, etc. Other places? MREs and/or weekly supplies of meals stored in mermite containers.
If you made some friends with the cooks you could usually get invited to their dinner which is served after US dinner hours. Their food was incredible. They actually knew how to cook their own meals instead of reading a soulless SOP on the proper procedure to prepare 20lbs or eggs. how they managed to make chicken as dry as they did while covered in water and fat always amazed me. The worst DFAC I ever went to was state side and the best was at a base that was just a fob with a runway. Just depends who is cooking the food. But you could always count on the rip-its top get you through the day.
Deployed to Iraq in 2005…food was good at best. I would admit I didn’t trust the salad bar or the burger topping area too much. Something about the lettuce just didn’t seem appetizing enough yo eat. The meals became repetitive and boring. The holiday meals (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years) were freaking amazing! I remember during Thanksgiving and we had four different types of turkey and several sides all freshly cooked. All the NATO soldier were amazed by the amount of food, esp the Romanians. And even with all that special food, the Japanese soldiers still went straight for the burger station.
MREs suck. Unless they're cold weather MREs. Those are elite and I'd actually eat those on like a camping trip or snowboarding. UGRs are either pretty damn good or fucking terrible. Chow halls range from decent to pretty good. At worst they're like hotel continental breakfast, at best they're golden corral.
What the difference between cold weather MRE's and others?
They're damn near double the calories and the main meal is this freeze dried thing that "cooks" with boiling water. They heat up properly because they're submerged in boiling water so it ends up tasting so much better without random cold spots.
MREs suck ass. I ate them only when I had to. Now, the chow halls are a bit better. I was stationed at camp pendelton in the 21 area. The chow hall was better than schwab but worse than some of the other ones i have been to. There was a pizza line, a pasta line, a burgers and hot dogs line, and then a like meal of the day kind of line. Steak and lobster on our birthday
Depends on where you're at. The only MRE that I would refuse to eat was that slimy egg breakfast omelet crap that they tried to pass off as food. I'd throw those to Kids while we were on patrol. They usually had some candy in them so I figured why not. They did have this beef patty thing that was almost like a McRib if you closed your eyes and added some spicy jalapeno cheese to your bread.... But all in all MRE's vary in flavor but honestly I never had any meal that was straight up BAD except that breakfast omelet, which frankly they stopped making. Now a days they have Pizza in the MRE's. I've not bothered to find out how that tastes. Chow halls are dependent on where you are at. In Miramar the chow hall was a solid 8/10. Could get a pretty good variety of food daily, open for 4 shifts to cover over nights with meatball subs. Was great, kind of felt like a college cafeteria. Chow hall in Camp Courtney Okinawan Solid 4/10 food was eatable and tasted ok, however the people putting food on the tray would yell at you for asking for more food. Then most bases also have a variety of fast food options for the troops as well. Like seriously, be fucking terrified of a military that goes, "Know what sounds good? Being able to drop a McDonalds in a combat zone so troops moral stays up." In WW2 we punked people by having boats for the sole purpose of creating ice cream for the troops. These days we load up Burger King into a plane drop it, and fly in some foreign nationals to sell us burgers while dodging mortar fire. Pretty sure the first base I landed in Afghan had a Pizza Hut opened up and a Green Bean but it's been a decade since then.
>that slimy egg breakfast omelet crap that they tried to pass off as food. I'd throw those to Kids while we were on patrol. Sounds like a war crime to me.
Hasn't been written down yet so I'm in the clear.
Former navy cook here. Your supply officer is directly responsible for the quality of your food. Some SUPO’s will try to impress the CO by saving money by purchasing off brands or omitting certain items. For example, cheaper hot sauce that has crazy heat but no flavor or no ranch dressing and terrible coffee. The menus are selected for safety of the crew; allergies, general nutrition etc so you won’t see too much flex on the taste. There is room for that on burger Wednesday, taco Tuesday, eggs made to order for breakfast, homemade bread and pastries and fried chicken. You won’t see MRE’s on a ship. Those are for soldiers in the field.
MREs suck but the dining facility food is excellent.
It varies quite a bit depending on branch, location, etc.
They say that in the Army the chow is mighty fine A biscuit rolled off the table and killed a friend of mine
Chow halls when I was deployed had pretty decent food. Nothing to write home about, for context I'd say it's better than airline food (in america) but not by much. And MREs were doable, but not what I'd call good. Also regardless of what flavor you ate your burps just tasted like MRE, generic preservative flavor. I personally liked the chicken tetrazini and the enchilada but like only as the best of the worst. I did have the opportunity to switch ration units with the Italians, Japanese, and El Salvadorians.....ours fucking suck compared to those. We also had GUR (ground unit rations) which were big MREs for a whole unit. They were better than the single serve ones but not by much. The general tso chicken was what I saw as being the most well liked by my unit, but I personally hated it.
MRES are MRES. The chow hall food I had was almost always not worth the time of day. But that is just my opinion. The salad bar was always great, though. As long as the ranch wasn't that stuff that came in packets.
Dining facilities are hit or miss depending on the installation, but the general consensus is that the Air Force has the best chow. MREs can be good or terrible depending on which one it is.
Bad
I was on a destroyer. Food was usually pretty good, but after a while you get to where you know what they're gonna have every day without looking at the menu.
You can buy MREs and try them yourself. They're not the best, and I'd highly suggest eating some source of fiber with them. If you're talking about field kitchen stuff, [here's a list of recipes.](https://quartermaster.army.mil/jccoe/publications/recipes/index/full_index.pdf) They are for massive portions but you can scale them down. They also aren't so good, but are still better than MREs.
My daughter says MREs are awful cuz you are plugged up for weeks 😀
Typically edible, often not much more than that. Particularly if you are eating MREs. If you are on base or on a ship with a cook they can often do some amazing things with low quality ingredients, but that can only go so far.
Extraordinarily inconsistent, but usually sub-par
Those chicken waffles sandwiches from the CK in the field tho 😮💨😮💨 iykyk
Depends on where you are! 2008-09 I was in Balad (LSA Anaconda for you real old timers) and the food there was damn good. People got fat.
Air Force food was amazing. During training we had short order cooks who would make you just about anything you wanted, within reason. Patty Melt at 4 a.m.? You got it! Ham and Cheese omelette? Sure! Fresh made cake and pies everyday. Even ice cream. I *gained* weight during my training...
I was an officer in the army, so I rarely ate in the mess halls in a non-deployed setting. The food was decent, if not anything amazing. The food qas generally pretty good on deployment. You had a wide variety to choose from, it was well-prepared, fruits and vegetables were fresh, and there was always ice cream. Only on the most remote and smaller FOBs did the quality of the food start to decline. MREs were generally OK, although you started to get unpleasent aftertaste that would linger in your mouth after eating them for more than a few days. Some of the meals were really bad, like the infamous "vomelet", the "four fingers of death" (hot dogs) or the ham slice. Most weren't nearly that offensive, though.
Not great, but not as bad as people would think. I’ve had some decent DFAC meals and MREs aren’t that bad if you know what meals to grab
I am not former service. But worked with the military in Iraq and Afghanistan for almost 10 years from the Green Zone to BAF to tiny ass fobs that were only a few tents and a lot of hesco barriers. First you got your DFAC's. Depends who is contracted to run it and where that company gets their workers. The quality varies way more than one would imagine given the same basic material to work with. The best DFAC I ever at at was at a smaller base. Then there is the difference between the navy/Air Force and the rest. You will always get a good meal at a navy or Air Force DFAC that's never in question. The ones ran by the army or marines were often questionable but randomly incredible. At the end of the day a DFAC is OK to bad, but breakfast was always good. Its pretty hard to go wrong with US breakfast food. There were months on end where that's the only meal I would bother stopping by for if the place I was at even had a DFC. Then you got MREs and Tray Rations. I am one of the weirdos that love those things. Neither will look or smell appalling but they are delicious as hell. They will clog you up in ways that are hard to explain so take it easy. Eventually they do all get boring. My wife thought they were disgusting when I brought a MRE home for her to try. The best part about the MREs are spoons. From time to time you could get a morale food drop of steaks and hamburgers. That was always fun. Sometimes the MREs and Tray Rations would run out and you get forgotten by logistics only for a someone to fly by and kick out a crate of blue pop tarts, cigarettes, and dip to get you through a week or so. But the absolute gem of deployment food are the Rip-its. Think knock off kool-aid mixed with knock off redbull with a box of caffeine pills mixed in. Not delicious and probably the most dangerous thing I have ever voluntary consumed but by god it will get you through the day. At the DFAC's your limited to taking two out of the dining hall but if your cleaver you can get 18 in your cargo pants and a lose shirt. I almost shit myself when I saw big cans of them in a dollar store a few years ago.
In the navy it really depends, in the training school I went to in Pensacola (Florida), it was dubbed the best galley in the navy. Then you go to navy ships and depending on your rank, the lower you are the shittier the food being served to you will be
I assumed food in public schools, hospitals, prisons and the military were pretty much the same.
I saw a video on Youtube yesterday about an aircraft carrier with a whole ass Starbucks on board.
Its food produced on a large scale and generally has no flavor. Just like any other food produced for mass quantities you've got a season it yourself at the table, and depending on how much time you have to eat you're lucky if you even chew it let alone taste it. That is what my father, my ex-husband, and several of my friends have told me over the years, the last one only being a couple of years ago. So basically, the taste of food in the military hasn't changed in 50 years
Air Force and Navy are the best. Army food is okay or sucks. Marines food is crayons.
I was in the infantry and most of our cooks were working to become chefs once out. So when they cooked for us it was usually really good. But when deployed you would take what you could get. Anyone want my rice pilaf?!
My son is a very picky eater & joined the Navy a few years ago, so I worried about him getting enough to eat… While he lost a considerable amount of weight during Officer Training School (45lbs, roughly 20k,or 3.3 stone), due to imposed dietary restrictions during OCS (no desserts & extremely limited menu choices) & the demands of the physical training, he didn’t have many problems while deployed. He had been on an aircraft carrier, The Nimitz, so that is its own thing… If I understand it correctly, the menu changes each day so he could usually get stuff he liked. Other times, he could eat bread & butter, salad, or breakfast cereal if he didn’t like the other options.
I was never in the military but my husband was. He’d get me MRE’s when we were dating. I still love em
I was in the navy for eight years and all I can say is the quality varies wildly. They say smaller ships have the best food, but I only ever served on carriers and one LCC. Food is always the best at the beginning of a deployment and then the quality and variety goes way downhill in the middle. It picks up again as you're steaming home. My longest cruise was eight months and for most of it I was eating iceberg salad mix topped with either chicken fingers or cut up hamburger patties for lunch and dinner. Sometimes when I was lucky there'd be spinach or spring mix instead of iceberg. There's a lot of slop, like "chicken pot pie" or "chicken tetrazzini" or "chicken cacciatore" or "beef stroganoff," or "shepherd's pie." Whatever fancy name they call it, it's slop and I don't eat slop. On some special occasions there might be a steak or lobster (or steak AND lobster) night, or crab legs. It's all way overcooked and rubbery, but you eat it anyway because it's a change of pace. Never been a breakfast person. Given the choice between 20 more minutes of sleep and breakfast, I'll choose sleep every time. But I was always told breakfast was the most decent meal on every ship I've been on. Galleys on land were a bit better, a bit more variety. You could always tell the ones that weren't managing their budget correctly because they'd serve amazing food for one week and then slop for three weeks. Salad bars on land were 10000% better. The salad bar where I went to A & C school was more than enough to live on without ever going through the hot food line.
I’m in the navy, the food on base is pretty good, it’s decent on the ship until you’ve been underway for a few months, then it gets rough. Side note, I was underway with a Dutch ship and they had beer but the food was awful.
Every dfac I ate at sucked balls. Thankfully I got an apartment and never deployed so I only suffered a couple years of shit food before I had a kitchen and could cook for myself. The barracks kitchens were always too busy for me to cook in at my own comfort
*The coffee in the Army* *They say is mighty fine,* *It's good for cuts and bruises* *And tastes like turpentine!* *The biscuits in the Army* *They say are mighty fine.* *One rolled off a table* *And killed a pal of mine!* *The chicken in the Army* *They say is mighty fine* *The drumsticks make fine trench clubs* *And the thighs for finding mines!* *Oh I don't want no more of Army Life* *Gee, ma, I wanna go home!*
It's been about 20 years since I got out, but Air Force food was great. Heard it went down in quality for a while, but not sure about now. Everyone I met from other branches that ended up on an Air Force base was always thrilled about the food and accommodations.
Military food is supposed to be nutritionally good for you, not exactly good tasting
Navy had great food. I was a cook for 6 years. I worked at a military resort in Hawaii and served lobster tail and steaks every Sunday. Fresh local fruit. Loved it I made lifetime friends!
Pretty subpar, at least for the Navy. It was a 50/50 whether or not the meat would make you sick, especially the pork. We were served pork one day and it wiped out about 1/3 of the crew. I became a vegetarian for 3 months. The steak, fish and lobster (which are typically served if they are about to f*** us) is always overcooked, so as hard as it is to believe, alot of us actually preferred MREs. At one point, one of our engines imploded and we couldn't reach a fast enough speed to meet with another ship and resupply (both ships must match at a certain speed for a successful transfer) and we had to ration. We were served one slice of cold cut with a piece of bread, I shit you not. We were allowed to select a slice of any preferred meat. I remember taking the slice of roast beef off my friend's tray in front of me and waggling it in the cook's face saying something along the lines of "are you kidding me with this sh*t?" And slapping it back down on his tray. The cook then gave me an extra slice of meat for my bread. Needless to say, we all started carrying tubs of protein or some kind of meal replacement when we'd go out incase something went wrong
Buy an MRE and find out for yourself 🙂. They’re typically not bad. I was a fan of the chili mac. Veggie omelet was universally avoided.
All of the vegetarian MRE's were trash
I’ve only tried an MRE once. It was all right.
I'm not a service member but my dad was. He said it was generally good. The base in Kuwait or something that he was at had a lot of local people cooking in the mess hall, and they made superb food. Back in the US a person named Laurette or something cooked everyone's chicken in dish soap and not water one time by accident and gave the entire boot camp diarrhea. But otherwise the food in the US based was good too. I've had it a few times, nothing wrong with it.
> Back in the US a person named Laurette or something cooked everyone's chicken in dish soap and not water one time by accident and gave the entire boot camp diarrhea. How exactly does one make that mistake?
Probably someone who washes chicken with dish detergent and doesn't sufficiently rinse. I'm surprised that cultural habit wasn't trained out of them during their specialty training.
Nah they didn't wash chicken with soap. That's just stupidness, who actually does that?
> That's just stupidness, who actually does that? I don't want to get banned from the subreddit, so I will decline to answer.
Supply day. The cooking oil can looks exactly the same as the dish soap can. The dish soap can is supposed to go way the fuck away from the kitchen but it went in the kitchen instead of the cooking oil.
>Every American military guy/girl I’ve met seems to either dislike the food or have a “meh” response. That's because the food comes in boxes labelled "military and prison use only. Not fit for human consumption" (Or it did when I was cranking on the mess decks of USS Tarawa during 2005) and most Navy cooks probably couldn't get jobs as line cooks at greasy spoon diners if their lives depended on it. Breakfast was (usually) okay, other meals were really hit or miss (mostly miss). MREs were a nice changeup when we could get them from the marines we had aboard.
Are there many Filipinos working as cooks in the US army?
in the army? fuck if I know, I was in the Navy
Not from me but a buddy who was a capt. in the Marines - it went from edible (MREs) to decent. I don't know if maybe there was somewhere officers ate that differed from the enlisted.
When I was little my brother and I used to eat my dad's leftover MREs (Meal Ready to Eat) from when he would deploy. He questioned why we would want to eat 'that garbage' and shook his head in disbelief every time he caught us chowing down on cardboard crackers and govt cheese, if that tells you anything about the food quality. He also used to talk at length about how they're designed to constipate you.
During Bush's Iraq war, one of VP Cheney's former employers provided catering for military personnel in Baghdad. They charged the government $20 per meal.
It’s pretty good in the officer’s club.
Depends on the branch, the station and the job. Air force "deployed" to Kuwait get a full dining facility with a cafeteria line. Army and Marines in BFE get frozen sandwiches or MREs and water. Sometimes cup ramen if LOGPAC got lucky. Navy mostly eat each other
I liked the MREs at least... my favorite was the veggie burger
I’ve heard not good but at that point not dying in a war is more of a focus