field ration, or combat ration, is a canned or pre-packaged meal, easily prepared and eaten, transported by military troops on the battlefield. They are distinguished from regular military rations by virtue of being designed for minimal preparation in the field, using canned, pre-cooked or freeze-dried foods, powdered beverage mixes and concentrated food bars, as well as for long shelf life. Such meals also prove invaluable for disaster relief operations, where large stocks of these can be ferried and distributed easily, and provide basic nutritional support to victims before kitchens can be set up to produce fresh food. Most armies in the world today now field some form of pre-packaged combat ration, suitably tailored to meet national or ethnic tastes. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army has introduced a new ration consisting of pre-packaged 1-man meals sealed in hard plastic retort pouches. The Chinese soldier rations is divided into Instant Meal Individuals (Twelve item menu), and Self Heating Individuals (Three-item menu.) A typical Chinese ration package contains roughly 1000 kcal, and includes compressed food, energy bar, egg rolls with pork, pickled mustard tuber, and instant solid beverage. Every Self Heating Package comes with an insulated flameless heater activated by water.
#1 menu! Packaging is not large.
The other side of the packaging. The labeling includes included food and calorie and nutritional composition, a total of 1049 kikocalories.
When you open it, all have some “xia mi wan gao”! The #1 meal includes compressed food, energy bar, egg rolls with pork, pickled mustard tuber, and instant solid beverage.
Fondly remembered compressed biscuit!
List of nutritional ingredients. This has 554 kilocalories, equivalent to an average lunch’s kilocalories.
Open and see, there are two pieces!
The outside of the biscuits have plastic wrap, so remember to tear off before eating. When you bite it, it is very brittle and dry, and it is very powdery in your mouth. Compared to the previous compressed biscuit, the flavor is a little better, and also not sweet and greasy. The instructions say this can also be mixed with water to become porridge, but I have not yet tried.
Given the weight, not wanting to absorb too much of the compressed biscuit’s calories, I put it aside to begin examining the energy bar. Why is it called an energy bay? It is not even the same of a bar, so calling it an energy block would be better. Energy block…our country’s troops are all Transformers!!
The energy bar’s packaging reverse side, also printed with instructions and nutritional composition, calorie content. 303 kilocalories.
Let us open and see. Just a blocky block of red bean moon cake!!!
Upon taking a bite, the taste is average, about the same as the individually wrapped moon cakes in supermarkets/convenience stores, but a bit harder, and personally a little too sweet. After eating, my energy was indeed full, and without eating lunch until 2pm in the afternoon I did not feel hungry!
Let us take a look at the egg roll with pork, whose name sounds very attractive. However, after the experience of the previous two, this time I did not have any expectation of savoring something delicious. This time the nutritional composition and calorie content were all direcly printed on the front. 115 kilocalories of energy.
The back has nothing printed on it, just a serial number.
Out comes the egg roll with pork, a whiff of packaging flavor. On the surface are some chilis. I like to eat hot/spicy things! The yellow-colored wrap is chicken egg, the rest is pork, but it is suspect just how much pork is inside, there is no room for jokes in the army…
I take a bite to taste…it is just flattened ham sausage, so it would be more suitable to be called Ah Bian [former Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian] brand ham sausage! It would be even better if it had more spiciness and flavor! As for the chicken egg…just pretend it is chicken egg!
After finishing the egg roll with pork, let us look at the refreshing pickled mustard tuber! Mustard tuber does not have much calories, so this time they decided not to print any nutritional composition and calorie content information. I suppose this is just for you to taste.
The light and crispy flavor is okay, but the taste is not as good as pickled vegetables on airlines.
Finally, let us have some beverage! Solid instant beverage, what is this? Coffee? Orange juice?
This small bag has 57 kilocalories! Has citric acid, so it must be sweet and sour to drink and better tasting than nutrition!
The color is like tea. However it is sour, a little like sweet-sour plum juice, the flavor is not bad! That is it, time to clean up!
The #2 meal pictures:
