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MRE's. Meals Ready to Eat. Not one word of the name of this food item isn't a lie. They are not meals, they are not ready, and they are definitely not to eat. All of us who served and who have spent any time deployed or away from regular facilities have had to endure MRE's. There are recipes that have been passed down from generation to generation trying to find ways to make the food more palatable. In most cases, even the best field chef can only get an MRE up to the level of "meh, ok, if there is absolutely nothing else available, I'll eat it". It's certainly not ever going to be fine-dining quality, but it beats starving to death (barely).
We here at Grunt Style have over 60 veteran employees in the company. We did a bit of an informal survey asking our veterans what they thought were the worst MRE's they had to eat. Here are the 5 worst MRE's in the military according to our highly scientific and very formal survey of Grunt Style veterans.
#5 Jambalaya with Shrimp
This is one of those items that when you hear the name, you think, "that sounds pretty good". It sounds like it's something you would order if you were out at a restaurant or that your mom might have made at home back when you were a kid. It just sounds good. The reality though is anything but.
#4 Chicken Fajita
Again, the name sounds so appetizing. It's like you are out at your favorite restaurant and you say to your waiter, "I'll have the chicken fajitas please." What you think about in your mind when you think about chicken fajitas is a hot sizzling skillet being delivered to you full of chicken and onions and peppers. The first time you get handed a menu number 16, you might have that image in your head. You might have laughed at your buddies because you won the MRE lottery for the day. You were on top of the world. For a brief moment. It certainly wasn't the first time you were lied to in your military career, and probably not the last, but it was painful none the less.
#3 Ham Slice
This one comes from my era. I'm one of the oldest people here at Grunt Style and my time in the Army was back in the 90s. The ham slice doesn't even sound appetizing just in the name. There was nothing good about the ham slice from the main entree to the accessory pack. If you got the ham slice, you were going to be hungry. If you got the ham slice in any kind of colder weather? You weren't going to be hungry anymore because you were going to be throwing up seeing what happens to a cold ham slice. If you never saw, trust me, it wasn't good.
#2 The Veggie Omelet
Anytime your nickname is "vomelet" it probably isn't going to be for good reasons. Other than the #1 item on our list, the veggie omelet was the most universally despised MRE that anyone of our veterans ever encountered while serving. The military is not the first place that I think of when I think vegetarian-friendly. I get the idea that they were trying to be healthy, well, healthier, but vegetarian? No. Just no.
#1 The Rat Fu*ked MRE
You know that one. It's the one you get when you were out in the field and the pog's in the rear tore through all the MRE's taking out the ones they wanted along with any good accessory's from all the MRE's so that by the time they reached you way down the line, all of the worst stuff was left for you to pick through. You could spot a case of rat fu*ked MRE's coming your way because there was usually a large blue falcon high above the case informing all who can see and hear far and wide that the people who are about to receive these MRE's have in fact been buddy fu*ked by people who aren't even their buddies. With the rat fu*cked MRE's you knew that you were going to get nothing but veggie omelets. At least with the real cases, you stood a chance of getting something else. There was hope. Remember Red, hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies. The guy who said that quote may have been living a miserable life inside a prison serving time for a crime he didn't commit, but he never had to eat a rat fu*cked MRE. If he had, he would have lost hope too.
Those are the 5 worst MRE's in the military according to our very scientific and formal survey of Grunt Style veterans. These are just 5 though. There are so much more than we could have chosen from and I'm sure you all out there have good choices that could have made this list. Be sure to tell us which was your least favorite MRE's and the lengths you would go to avoid having to ever eat one.
