What a difference a year makes when it comes to MREs.
The fighting food scientists who bring you your field grub have been working hard to bring down those nasty trans fats – you know, the processed "partially hydrogenated oil" that American Heart Association says raises bad cholesterol levels while lowering the good kind. It also raises your risk of heart disease, stroke and Type 2 diabetes.
If you added up all the trans fat in the most recent batch of 24 MREs, you'd get 71.5 grams of the fake fat officially called trans fatty acids, or TFAs for short.
That's a 48 percent drop from the 117 greasy grams packed into the previous menu of two dozen meals.
That has meant doing away with the Chicken Fajita MRE, for example, which packed 9 grams of trans fat between its tortillas, cheese spread, fudge brownie and cappuccino mix.
If any of those are favorites – and really, who doesn't love the cheese spread? – that's because TFAs also make your food taste yummier. That's no small concern in field rations.
While a tiny percentage occurs naturally in the guts of some animals, the vast majority of TFAs used in cooking are "created in an industrial process that adds hydrogen to the liquid vegetable oils to make them more solid," according to the American Heart Association.
It also helps keep food from spoiling.
So, it's a bit of a double-edged butter knife for the military's top ration chefs: You get healthier food, but maybe not so – ahem – tasty and fresh.
"Pending regulations have specified that the TFA content of rations should be as low as possible, but TFAs have been shown to improve texture, extend shelf life, and increase a product's ability to withstand the negative effects of oxidation, so removal of TFAs has been a challenge for food scientists," according to the FAQ on the Pentagon's new Combat Rations Database website.
Read staff writer Patricia Kime's story about the new site on Military Times.
Officials say they're going to keep trimming down TFAs.
What do you think: Have you noticed in a difference in MRE taste lately?
Let us know in the comments.
