Has lunch come round so soon? Great. My zombie-enforced prandials today consist of the most iron of rations and it doesn't look too tasty.
LUNCH
Standard emergency ration
Emergency drinking water
Seven Oceans rations are designed to be stored in lifeboats, to eat when stranded like a painted ship upon a painted ocean. And what with water, water everywhere and never a drop to drink, they thoughtfully provide some emergency water packs.
I'd better conserve this food - who knows how long those zombies will be out there [shudder]. Now let's see. The pack recommends that you shouldn't eat more than six units (3 bars) per 24 hours. That's 3 x 278 calories. Eat only when hungry. Take only one unit at a time. Eat in small pieces and chew well.
It's full of further handy hints: SAVE DRINKING WATER. Do not drink more than half a litre every 24 hours. NEVER DRINK SEAWATER - NOT EVEN WHEN MIXED WITH DRINKING WATER.
Oh ok. I wasn't planning a trip to Brighton anyway.
My hard ration bar is made of wheat flour, vegetable soya fat, sugars, malt, vitamins C, B1 and B6.
It comes in small slabs wrapped in greaseproof paper - and each of the nine bars is divided into two blocks. The texture is crunchy and crumbly - it falls apart in the mouth to a kind of rusky crumble, grainy as a mouthful of wet sand. Although you can taste the high calories (there's a fatty denseness there), it's not at all greasy.
The "taste" is generically cereal, like a wholegrain biscuit, but almost completely neutral. Slightly sweet, but basically nothing. I guess a lot of sugar would make you thirsty. I could only manage to eat half a block, but then again we must bear in mind Seven Oceans' maxim: only eat when you're hungry.
This is the epitome of "food as fuel".
The water is in handy sachets of 2 x 50ml, which is a lot of opening if you're to get your half-litre. It's easy to tear, and tastes - like water. A tad vanilla, oddly.
Well, that's lunch done with. Although the meal is utterly compact and convenient as well as nutritionally balanced, it's as close to absolute taste zero as you can get while still maintaining the sensation of chewing.
Tune in again for my afternoon snack of gel and freeze-dried fruit. Let's say 4pm, shall we?
More? Zombie attack! Breakfast, the new British multi-climate ration packs reviewed
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