Our tax dollars at work- The search for the best Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches

Don't laugh. Our military is just trying to improve the MREs our fighting men and women have to eat in the field. This use of government funds is more sensible than some senseless fence.

I wish the researchers good luck, but I'm not volunteering as a taste tester. Hat tip- Outside the Beltway

Making a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich is easy. But developing one that will remain stable under battlefield conditions has become a monumental task for scientists at the Defense Department's Combat Feeding Directorate.

Researchers at the Natick, Mass., center, which develops food for soldiers, have been working since the early 1990s to develop shelf-stable "pocket sandwiches" similar to those found in the frozen-food aisle of grocery stores.

Barbecued chicken was easy enough. So were beef pockets, an Italian-style pocket, even a french-toast pocket -- all of which are supposed to be ready to be included in soldiers' "first-strike rations" by 2007.

Sandwiches edible for 2 years

But what soldiers keep asking for is a classic PB&J. And that, as it turns out, has been a problem.
"You would think that would be the simplest," says Michelle Richardson, a food technologist for the U.S. military.

The problem is the peanut butter. It sucks moisture out of the bread, making it dry.

Richardson's team is looking for a way to add "barriers" to the surface of either the peanut butter or the bread, in hopes that would hold in enough moisture to make the sandwich taste the way a PB&J should, without promoting bacterial growth.

In combat, soldiers subsist mainly on "meals ready to eat," or MREs -- vacuum-sealed meals that require no preparation. There are about 24 MRE "menus" in rotation.

Pocket sandwiches -- which have been tested in the field for the last four years -- were designed to go into rations that tide soldiers over in the first few days of deployment until they can set up a kitchen.

A typical 2,500-calorie ration might include two pocket sandwiches, a side of applesauce, an energy bar and a beverage -- less weight and volume than an MRE, but still packed with nutrients, according to Richardson.

MREs keep for three years at 80 degrees and are eaten with a spoon. The pocket sandwiches can last two years, Richardson says, but they have the advantage of requiring no utensils.