Italian 🇮🇹 and American 🇺🇸 soldiers swap rations

So I have a present for you. Okay. I’m excited. I have an Italian ration kit to exchange if you want. Oh, I'd love to. I also have something for you as well. It's our pizza slice cheese version of the MRE for the American. Oh, perfect. So there you go. Let's see. So here we have pizza slice cheese. Oh, it will be interesting. So with American MREs, we have a kind of a water-based system to heat them up. Yes, it comes with handy instructions here. What you’re going to do is we’re going to take our water, and it doesn't have to be hot. So we're going to go in here and we're going to fill it up to the black lines on the bottom. But the water reacts with the heater inside. I typically wait about three minutes for it to heat up. But we can honestly, this one, it's kind of exploding. I'm quite surprised. I have another conception of pizza. Okay. It's like a toast. Okay. We try. Okay. We can survive with this. You can survive with it. Instead of pizza I prefer to call it like toast. Like toast? Yep. Good. Another bite, no? No thank you, I appreciate it. Okay, here we have a cracker. Oh, chunky peanut butter. I like a lot. I spread like that. How universal it is that everybody loves the peanut butter and crackers. Good. I like. Oh, this is spicy. Yeah, that's the jalapeno cashews I think. They're pretty good. After that I need a lot of water. Some sauce. I drink like this? Yeah, you just peel open the top and then you can just... Oh, it’s like a jam. For breakfast, it could be good. Thank you very much. Here is the 24-hour combat ration. I will show you, there are three boxes. One is for breakfast, one is for lunch and the last one is for supper. Perfect. Okay, let's see what’s in here. Here we have the breakfast and then you can open like this. And there are a lot of accessories inside For brushing teeth. Oh, my gosh. Okay. It comes with three toothbrushes and a teeny tiny toothpaste. Napkin with some disposable spoon. You have something to sanitise the water. You have salt. Instant coffee. Oh, nice. You have a milk condensate. Oh, wow, okay. Chocolate. Oh, my gosh. There’s a lot. Something for your teeth to clean. And here is, we have a little stuff to use it to make the other cans that are inside the other box hot, warm, hot. For lunch, here we have these cans with the typical ravioli ‘al ragù’ [with Bolognese sauce]. That is the Italian main dish, in general. And of course, to eat like that, cold, is not good. But if you make it warm. Yeah. You can put it like that. It's actually pretty good. It tastes, I don't know if you ever had minestrone soup? But the sauce kind of tastes like that. And then...I don't know. If you like the lunch more than the dinner then you can change. For example, here. Soup. Oh nice. - With beans and pasta. That sounds actually really good. And then we have chicken. The chicken in jelly? And another bar. Okay, let's do the chicken in jelly. It's not bad. It's just... it's like a weird consistency, a weird texture especially in jelly. But it’s not that bad. This is Macedonia [fruit salad], the mix of fruit. I'll try it out. It kind of throws me back to when I go to school, when I used to go to school or high school and my mom would pack me lunches and she’d either give me like the apple sauces or the little plastic cups with all the fruit in them. But I really like the fruit cup. I really like the fact that it comes with the candies and the toothbrush and toothpaste. That's pretty cool. I really enjoyed it. I like how much stuff you got with it. I think in terms of how easy it is to carry around probably like a five, but just like overall experience, I'd say about seven or eight. I really liked the ravioli. I didn't like the chicken and the meat in the jelly. I understand. Eight. Eight because in general when you go out there, it’s quite good to not have so many things to carry. - To clean up all the garbage. Exactly. At the end you don’t need to survive with this for a lot of years but just for a short period. So I think it's quite good. Thank you.

Channel: NATO

Views: 6,453,543

Keywords: NATO, OTAN, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Military, mre, mre review, meals ready to eat us army, rations, wearenato, army rations, army ration pack, field rations, food review, mre food, mre taste test, mre taste, combat ration, military food, military food packs, meal ready to eat, taste, tasty, italian army, Esercito Italiano, us army, italian food, pizza, italian pizza, american pizza, american vs italian pizza, italian coffee, ravioli, cucina italiana, military rations

Id: s1vuDKraKRU

Length: 6min 26sec (386 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 14 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/shortordercook]

Alright nice let’s get this out on a tray

[u/ITTITT]

The Italian guy grokked that the American MRE is very practically designed.

I've tried every MRE that was available in the 2001 to 2010 range and they are mostly just bland and inoffensive with some side options that take more risks flavor-wise, but those are easy to trade around based on difference in preference.

The #1 thing MREs are designed to do is get ~4000 calories and the right nutrients delivered in a way that doesn't create logistical issues with weight, waste, contamination or time spent.

The Italian kit relying on cans isn't ideal. Cans can be punctured or burst with rough handling and the weight and packing issues they create are why the US did away with them in the Vietnam era.

[u/crmacjr]

Mine-strone.

[u/Baba0Wryly]

Asking anyone more familiar with military etiquette, is exchanging patches as they do at the end a common thing for soldiers from different countries to do?

[u/[deleted]]

Any ration taste test is only valid after at least 24h of field exercises. Anything less and you can remember what real food tastes like haha

[u/klavin1]

Is this meant to embarrass the US for the quality of our rations?

[u/Onehundredyearsold]

That was interesting! Seems like the Italian meal was more healthy than the carb laden US ration. They should include some of the niceties in the US ration pack like tooth brushes and hot sauce. If there are comparable ration packs in the US like the Italians have I would be interested to know.

[u/SisKlnM]

Which would you rather carry 5 of…

[u/game_cook420]

A pit bull attacked and killed them both.