How MREs Impact Civilian Food Production

MREs bring back fond - and not so fond - memories for soldiers: scrambling to get the beef stew or spicy penne pasta; trading cheese spread for pound cake or vice versa, and ransacking the discard box for snacks during long, lonely stretches on guard duty. But those days are over, and you've returned to eating what you thought was a normal, civilian diet. So you might be surprised to learn that many consumer food items - from energy bars and supermarket bread to meat patties and many snack items - were developed by the U.S. military or rely on technologies used in creating combat rations. Now a new book, Combat-Ready Kitchen: How the U.S. Military Shapes the Way You Eat, shows how the armed forces, as part of the country's longstanding policy of military preparedness, spreads to the food industry. Combat-Ready Kitchen can be found at any major bookseller, or online at Amazon. If you have an experience of eating in combat you'd like to share with the author for possible inclusion in the solider stories on her website, visit this Military.com post about 10 food favorites invented by the U.S. military.