An emergency food in Japan

What food do you think of first when you hear the word "emergency food"? In Japan most people will think of "KAN PAN" = canned bread. (wiki says in English it is called Hardtack.) In Japan it was made in 1941 for Japanese military, then after the ww2 we ate it as emergency food.

Here are the emergency food reports. Of course they picked KAN PAN first. Usually some crystal sugar are included. One can of bread has about 700kcal and can make us pretty full. We can also keep it for 5 years.

Look! I've never known about preservation RITZ. You can keep this RITZ for 5 years, and of course we know it tastes good. This is a dried rice cake, we can eat it by just soaking it with water. The report says it tastes pretty good, but it's so light and can't get full at all. This type of rice we can buy anywhere, but we can keep the emergency type for 5 years, while the regular type is just one year. You can get full from it, and taste of course is good, but you need hot water, which is a problem for emergency food.

And this is battle food from the Japan self-defense force page. There are some different kinds of menus, but rice and something is the basic combination. This one is, red beans rice, fried salmon, potato salad, and Miso soup. They don't write calories, and can keep it for 1.5 years, though you need to cook it with hot water. So they are battle foods, and maybe not the emergency food.

The report tries American MRE and THE ARKIII too. He says he loves MRE, and the deserts are especially good. About ARK3, he explains that the taste is a failure fruit and cookies taste. Do you agree?

By the way, since I have never experimented with a big disaster or emergency situation. When I ate KAN PAN, I mean I had to eat it because of its expiration date. It was a kind of sweet for me. Today I found this sitethis site, they sell KAN PAN with rescue team figures by KAIYODOKAIYODO. Rescue119! I find this really funny.

Comments

[Dave77]

I've eaten MREs on a few occasions growing up. I got to say that, while they weren't great cuisine they certainly were tastier than you might think. One of the biggest issues is how one goes into eating it. Its one of those products that, if you go into it expecting it to taste bad, it just might. Plus, like many kinds of food, some kinds of MREs are best when eaten after being warmed.

I'm not sure if its known in Japan so forgive me if not but "Tang" orange juice mix is a famous long lasting mix (originally an austronaut made drink). I remember hearing it can stay good for at least 7 years, once. Not a great drink in my opinion, but could be worse. :)

[Mari]

Hi Sausage.

Thank you very much for yoru comment.
Hmm ice cream. I have no idea peope would be in such mood.

[Sausage]

Interestingly, for those US space flights, the astronaughts had freeze-dried ice cream. I have no idea how it remained as solid ice cream once they added water to the powder.. I think the final product was like melted ice cream.