Walk Thoughts #84: MRE tour (2)

Here are the final 13 out of 26 photos for your MRE viewing pleasure. Each MRE supposedly contains 1200-1500 calories of food, so about two packs per day ought to feed the average soldier. MREs are planned out to look and feel like normal American meals: there's something that serves as an appetizer (e.g, beef jerky), a main meal, a carby side, drinks (usually coffee and juice), and condiments like hot sauce to spice the blandness up a little. The packaging is designed to serve as its own garbage can. The magnesium-based chemical-heat system (seen in the previous set of pics) uses a little water to heat your meal packet in about 10 minutes. The heater says "DO NOT OVERFILL," but I overfill routinely, and it doesn't affect the heater's performance.

The reason why I ignored my meal schedule and ate all my MREs within the first few days of my walk was that I realized I need to reduce my pack weight still further. I may be losing weight, but my pack can actually lose weight faster than I can if I help it along. While it'll be depressing to rely on Soylent and Survival Tabs for so much of the hike, I felt it was more crucial to shed weight than to spread out my more-enjoyable meals over several weeks. Not to worry: I can still look forward to my Mountain House freeze-dried meals, and if necessary, I can either eat in town or just fast. I've fasted before.

Enjoy the pics. The last one shows what I like to do with chewing gum. Sexy, I'm sure you'll agree.