MRE Challenge: Volunteers Wanted

Eat Only MREs for 21 Days Straight?

A lot of you out there have no doubt already been put through this experiment. Now instead of being forced to eat nothing but MREs, the Army needs volunteers to eat only MREs for 21 days straight to...get this...learn more about the digestive process to improve future MREs.I think all of us who have eaten MREs for extended periods of time will testify to the impact that an MRE can have on a person's digestive tract. It's not good. At least the Army is taking some steps to rectify a problem that has only been known about since the beginning of MREs which was about 30 years ago. The Army is working on fixing that and more. Here's my favorite line from the article:

Hatch, who had little experience with MREs before the study kicked off over the summer, said she'd heard a few negative comments from soldiers enforcing negative MRE stereotypes...

A few? She obviously hasn't been around many soldiers if she only heard a few negative comments. One of our most popular posts ever was about the 5 worst MREs in the military. We had our 5 and thousands of people told us about more that we didn't have on our list. I'd say that the negative feeling is a bit more widespread than Adrienne Hatch might realize. From The Army Times:Three weeks, nothing but MREs.It's not a far-flung mission, nor is it a lost wager — it's how Army researchers hope to discover how new knowledge of the digestive process could improve future Meals, Ready-to-Eat. The work could even help protect soldiers from sickness while deployed.Here's what you need to know about the ongoing study, run by the Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine's military nutrition division:1. "Gut health" goals. Researchers want to learn how MREs effect the trillions of bacteria housed in soldiers' digestive systems — microorganisms that, when fed properly, can benefit overall wellness. By finding a base level of these bacteria under study conditions, researchers can determine how to improve MREs when it comes to minding what study head Dr. J. Philip Karl calls "gut health."Read the rest at The Army Times.