Name: US vs UK Military MREs | Food Wars | Insider Food
Uploaded: 2025-02-01T11:06:27.000Z
Duration: 34 min 11 s
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From calorie count to portion sizes, we wanted to find the differences between MREs and ration packs in the U.S. and the U.K.

MRE is manufactured and packaged by Warnick, Ameriqual, and Sopacco, and come in one standard pack size.

MREs, or ration packs as we call them, are produced by Vesty Foods and come in three portion sizes.

The standard portion is this, a 24-hour ration pack.

You can also get a smaller version, which is a 12-hour ration pack.

This is a 10-man operational pack, which contains 10 of these 24-hour ration packs.

According to the Defense Logistics Agency website, a case of MREs, which is 12 meals, weighs around 22 pounds, or 9.98 kilograms.

So on average, one meal would be roughly 831.6 grams.

The approximate weight of one of these ration packs is 1.75 kilograms, but we're going to weigh it to see if that's accurate.

So the weight of our 24-hour ration pack here in the U.K. was actually 1.49 kilograms.

This is a bit lower than the promised 1.75.

I don't know if you're a soldier in the field, if this is actually a positive thing, because you've got less weight to carry, or if you're actually getting slightly less food than you were promised.

In the U.K., our ration pack menu number two contains a chili con carne.

We're going to compare ours to the American chili to see who's getting more.

I do think I've lost a little bit in here, and if I were eating this straight out of the packet, maybe tearing the packet open, getting better access, I could probably get that closer to the 300 mark.

So here are the contents of a 24-hour ration pack in the U.K.

In total, we counted 29 edible items, as well as a few extra bits, including tissues, sanitary wipes, matches, and other stuff like that.

We counted 11 edible items in our U.S. ration pack.

Here are all the military MREs for the U.S. not available in the U.K.

And here are all the ration packs in the U.K. that you can't find in the U.S.

There's actually very few overlap of specific meals in U.S.

Also depending on which MRE meal you get, they contain different combinations of snacks and sides.

In both countries, official MREs are not available for sale directly to consumers.

Basically, when you get a ration pack in the U.K., it will come with a corresponding menu number.

The menu number will give you a rough indication of what you're going to find inside, although there is a bit of variation.

So what we've done here is lay out the breakfast and the main course options in order of the menus.

In the U.K., we were currently able to get hold of menus 1 to 10.

We're going to go through the entrees and the breakfasts now.

MREs, not every single one came with a definitive breakfast and some of them just had something that was fruit or fruit-related, which we assumed was supposed to be eaten first thing in the morning.

Now all of these can be eaten either hot or cold.

I guess ideally you'd have them heated up.

We actually got sent this flameless heating bag.

This is either going to go really well, or I'm going to give myself and the Food Wars table some chemical burns.

I'm going to do a chili because we've already got a Chili Opens and I kind of know what they taste like.

I hope I've sealed that well enough because that steamed up very quickly there.

So while that does its thing, I guess all that remains is for me to try the rest of them.

Starting down here, remember our good friend the chili?

I think honestly, I've never been in the military, I haven't done any service, but I used to camp a lot when I was a kid.

And I do remember going on like sometimes 2, 3 week long canoe trips in Canada.

Like your standards change quickly when you're outside all day.

This cornbread muffin is actually really good.

So the breakfast that we got for menu one was pork, sausage, and beans in a tomato sauce.

This is like kind of an iconic British meal, I can't lie.

Next up we have a Pindi Chana Aloo, which seems to be like a potato and chickpea curry.

And then the final option from menu one in the UK, meatballs and pasta.

Do I have high or low expectations for meatballs and pasta?

Yeah, I mean, I think my fear was that like pasta doesn't hold up very well when it's kind of submerged in a sauce and cooked for a while.

Menu number two is shredded beef and barbecue sauce, but also came with seasoned black beans and tortillas.

So, I mean, I don't know how you would do this out in the field with no plates and not a table.

This one is the chicken and noodles with vegetables and sauce.

Yeah, this looks like a can of like chunky soup or chunky stew before you heat it up.

This definitely should be heated up before.

If you had this and you couldn't heat it up for some reason, this is very bad.

The first potential breakfast, the applesauce with raspberry puree.

There is fruit in it, but it tastes more like fruit flavored soda.

This will definitely wake you up in the morning.

Then we're on to menu two and the breakfast is a raspberry muesli with milk.

Now it says with milk, but there is no liquid in here.

So I think what they've done is actually put powdered milk in here and you add some water and then hopefully that kind of turns into something resembling milk.

It looks very chalky and powdery at the moment without the water in it.

It says to add around 100 mils of water, mix it and then leave it to stand for a minute or so.

But yeah, I mean now that's looking a lot more like muesli.

There is like a slightly noticeable difference between that and real milk.

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US vs UK Military MREs | Food Wars | Insider Food

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