WASHINGTON — Hungry individuals don’t put much thought into the packaging of their food. When people grab a snack, they generally rip into it and toss it aside to get to the good stuff.

But at the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center’s Combat Feeding Division in Natick, Massachusetts, about a half-dozen engineers spend their days focused on nothing but packaging. With military rations, including meals, ready-to-eat and supplemental bars, packaging is a crucial part of preserving the food’s freshness and extending shelf-life stability, so troops stay fueled up during important missions.

While the rations themselves go through a lot of trial and error, so, too, does the packaging.

Cutting Waste, But Keeping Quality

For the unfamiliar, MREs come in one large plastic bundle with several smaller packages inside consisting of an entree and supplemental snacks and drinks. These rations are packaged in three or four layers of materials, depending on the product, to protect food from the elements and preserve freshness until opened.

But Natick’s experts are always looking to improve.

“There are 10, 15, maybe even 20 components in an MRE, and each one of those has their own specific package,” said Danielle Froio-Blumsack, a longtime materials engineer on the division’s Food Protection and Individual Packaging Team. “That’s a large amount of packaging waste to dispose of, and it’s an issue for the Army. It’s also an environmental and health hazard.”

The lab’s specialists run most of the entrees through what’s known as the retort process, which hermetically seals them into sterilized packaging via a pressurized chamber. Synonymous with pasteurization and canning, retort extends a product’s shelf life without the need for preservatives.

Current retort pouches have three layers of blended polymers and a foil layer that keeps water vapor, oxygen and light out.

“You need to have low permeation … because that allows you to extend the shelf life and improve the overall quality for the warfighter,” Froio-Blumsack said.

Unfortunately, the foil isn’t recyclable, so FPIPT personnel created a new polymer blend with similar properties that weighs significantly less and meets shelf-life requirements. It doesn’t meet water vapor transmission rates, however, so experts are determining if they need to rework their requirements.

“Are our requirements too stringent and are they maybe limiting the materials that we could use?” she said. “That could open up the door to either cheaper or more sustainable materials.”

Some of the new, nonfoil pouches spent five years in storage and recently passed food safety and quality testing in the division’s microanalytical and sensory evaluation labs, where trained microbiologists and sensory panelists test the rations.”

“It was a pretty big success,” Froio-Blumsack said.

However, it takes a long time for new materials to make it to the warfighter.

“Already it’s been seven years for this project, and it’s still just on the cusp of being able to go out into the field,” she said.

Exploring Energy Harvesting

The lab works with academia and industry to create new materials and find commercially available technologies that can be formulated to meet military needs. One project that’s in the early stages collaborates with Purdue University on energy harvesting, which converts ambient energy into usable power. The lab is looking at doing so by putting what are called tribal voltaic nanogenerators on patches that would go on pallets of boxed rations.

“Within each one of these little patches are … two layers of material that, when they vibrate or shake or move in any way, their vibrational energy can be harnessed and stored as energy,” Froio-Blumsack said.

The hope is that during the logistics cycle — when pallets of rations are moved and bounced around through air, ship or truck — they could harvest enough energy to potentially heat a ration instead of needing the flameless ration heater currently used by troops. In Arctic conditions, the process could prevent rations from freezing, she said.

“Anytime the pallet would shake or bounce or move, those materials would rub against each other and generate energy,” she said, adding that where they would store that energy has yet to be worked out.

The FPIPT has also worked closely with NASA to extend the shelf life of astronaut food in preparation for future missions to Mars.

Testing, Testing … and More Testing

Meanwhile, at the division’s packaging lab, all materials, layers and structures are tested multiple times.

“The idea behind this is to really put things through their paces. If we get a new product, where did it fail? What was the material?” explained Wes Long, the CFD’s packaging lab manager. “We pass this data along … and then we can come up with a solution.”

The lab is filled with various vacuum, heat and impulse sealers that suck the air out of the packaging. Analysis equipment inspects the pouches to make sure they’re strong enough. For example, tensile testers measure a material’s ability to tear, and burst testers check a package seal’s ability to withstand internal pressure before it ruptures. The lab also uses a water tank to blow ration packages up like a balloon to test for leaks — even those as small as a pinhole are marked as a failure.

“It immediately bubbles whenever there’s a failure,” Long said.

After each material is tested, the lab’s experts create parameters and send them to their industrial partners for standardization.

When vendors incorporate new automated technology, the division buys the same equipment to ensure it can replicate potential issues. For example, several of the division’s biggest vendors who previously hand-filled MRE pouches now use a faster automated process. However, the machines can sometimes thin out the material at the corners of the pouches and along the seals. Items can also get stuck in the machinery, which is one reason why the ever-popular mini bottles of Tabasco sauce were removed from MREs and replaced with polymer-based packets instead.

“While respecting the needs of the soldiers for morale, we have to give them good quality,” Long said of the unpopular change. “That [hot sauce bottle] was no longer working.”

Much like the food itself, the warfighter also gets to test and approve the packaging.

“If we invent something we think is great, we need them to have that final approval, because that’s what matters,” Long said.

He added that it’s important for the sealed packages to be flexible without fail since they’re piled together and shipped all over the world.

“These rations inside that have food — those pouches rub against the [bigger] pouch. That pouch is in a box. That box is in a pallet, and they’ll be stacking pallets about four high, so that bottom box with that bottom ration has to absorb all that weight,” Long said.

Those ration cases are made of thick, solid fiberboard that’s been engineered for structural strength and compression.

“Nothing like what your [online order] comes in,” Long said. “It’s strong and weather resistant.”

Before being put into pallets, the boxes are dropped and shaken — what they call rough handling tests — to simulate real-world conditions to make sure the products get to the warfighter in one piece.

By Katie Lange, Pentagon News

WASHINGTON — As the race to control the Arctic intensifies, more research is focused on how to optimize service member performance in the extreme cold, where lack of sleep and appetite, altitude and equipment issues can all affect a warfighter’s ability to function.

Researchers at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine’s Military Nutrition Division in Natick, Massachusetts, study physiological stressors that warfighters encounter. By manipulating dietary, exercise and environmental conditions, they’re working to determine the best way to deliver the right nutrition and energy to increase warfighter lethality.

How extreme cold negatively affects warfighters

In extreme cold environments, difficult terrain, bulky clothing, heavy equipment and the body’s own process for regulating internal body temperature can cause service members to expend more energy. Many also don’t get enough nutrition or sleep, said USARIEM research psychologist Harris Lieberman.

“Sleep deprivation is what usually occurs when you’re deployed,” he continued, “and service members don’t eat enough food [in the cold] to keep up with all the work that they do.”

The U.S. military has a cold-weather version of the meals ready to eat, which is dehydrated to keep the rations from freezing. But they need to be rehydrated at mealtime, which can take time — something not all warfighters have. Many just don’t eat during busy time periods. That lack of nutrition can lower the energy levels required to do the mission, explained Lee Margolis, a veteran-turned USARIEM nutrition physiologist.

“Energy expenditures can range anywhere from 5,000-7,000 calories per day [in extreme cold],” Margolis said. “For an average individual, normally you’re going to burn about 2,000-3,000 calories per day.”

High altitudes, where less oxygen is available, can also affect energy expenditure — even in the strongest special operators — and change the body’s ability to metabolize food for fuel.

“It’s critically important that we develop solutions to offset the impacts of altitude,” explained James McClung, chief of USARIEM’s Military Nutrition Division. “Nutrition can be a part of that.”

Other issues, such as equipment freezing up and losing its ability to function, can also affect productivity.

Mimicking Extreme Temps

Researchers visit cold-weather climates, such as Alaska and Norway, to perform studies, but they’re also able to do some at home. USARIEM’s Doriot Climatic Chambers allow experts to test the effects of extreme environments in two massive indoor chambers: one focuses on human-subject testing, while the other is used for equipment testing.

“Every climate you could possibly imagine … we can recreate,” said Facilities Manager Jeff Faulkner.

The chambers’ temperatures can range from 165 to minus 65 degrees, and they can create 40 mph of wind, rain and snow. Each chamber has inclining treadmills that can handle up to five Soldiers at 15 mph on a 12-degree incline. Smaller conditioning rooms have the same capabilities as the chambers, except they can drop to minus 72 degrees.

In one of the smaller conditioning chambers, Lieberman is leading a cold-weather study to analyze the behavior, physiology and performance of stressed, sleep-deprived Soldiers to determine what nutritional needs will increase their performance.

After various pretests and body composition measurements, the volunteers, who are part of the Natick laboratories’ Soldier Volunteer Research Program, spend two days and one night in the room at 16 degrees. While wearing cold-weather-appropriate gear, they undergo various physical activities, such as stationary bike rides and hand strength tests, to measure their reaction time and vigilance.

They take various cognitive performance tests to measure mental acuity, and they eat meals primarily consisting of military rations that dietitians tailor specifically to their needs. They also forgo sleep. “If something unexpected happens, can you effectively respond and correctly deal with it?” questioned Lieberman, referring to the study’s end goal.

Carbs, fat, protein: What’s best for energy balance?

Meanwhile, USARIEM researchers have been working to get a better understanding of the types of macronutrients that will help cold-weather combatants thrive. The goal: to keep warfighters from expending more energy than they’re consuming.

“We’re studying using macronutrients to avoid negative energy balance — the case where we cannot eat enough to maintain physical or cognitive performance — which is associated with poor performance and also an increased risk of injury,” McClung said.

“We’ve seen that there are decreases in lower body power specifically,” Margolis said of the negative energy balance. “Obviously, under a combat scenario, your ability to move very quickly, especially if you’re carrying a heavy kit, may be the difference in survival.”

The research, which has been years in the making, helped to develop a more energy-dense ration known as the close combat assault ration. The CCAR recently replaced the first strike ration for combat troops.

In 2016, in collaboration with the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, known as FFI, USARIEM began studying Soldiers in the field to see how they metabolized prototypes of supplemental snack bars created by the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center’s Combat Feeding Division. One bar was higher in carbohydrates, while the other was higher in protein. The result: the volunteers liked and ate the bars, but they ate fewer of their actual combat rations, leading to energy deficits.

Further lab research in 2022 studied the amount of food Soldiers ate by feeding volunteers a higher-fat prototype product. Fat has more calories per gram than carbs and protein, so a bar with a higher-fat count could provide more energy in a smaller package, Margolis said — something that could help lighten warfighter load during combat operations.

By providing the volunteers with the higher-fat prototype product, researchers wanted to see if their energy intake would increase.

All of the volunteers ended up consuming more calories than in previous studies. However, most of their energy deficits remained at moderate levels, causing no adverse effects, explained Emily Howard, a USARIEM nutritional physiologist who helped carry out the study. The takeaway for researchers: the amount of food a warfighter consumes is the most critical factor in preserving their performance, not so much the composition of that food.

However, since Soldiers don’t typically eat a lot in cold-weather conditions, the research into how to optimize macronutrients in rations continues.

Evolving tactics

One upcoming study will monitor how warfighters on cold-weather ruck marches perform when eating two newer prototype ration bars: one that’s higher in fat and more energy-dense, and another that’s less energy-dense and higher in carbs. During the study, researchers plan to measure each volunteer’s oxygen and carbon dioxide levels.

“We’re able to actually calculate if their body is using primarily carbohydrate, primarily fat, or a mix while they’re doing exercise,” Margolis said.

The study will also look at glucose and insulin level changes, as well as hormone responses, to see how well that fuel sustains them on long marches and during moments when they might need to pick up the tempo.

Margolis’ team also plans to do some observational studies during the annual exercise Arctic Edge in Alaska in 2026 to see how service members are using the cold-weather MRE and its supplements.

Once the studies are concluded, USARIEM’s findings are shared with the Combat Feeding Division as recommendations for adjusting current rations or developing new ones.

By Katie Lange, Pentagon News