The Cerritos College’s Veterans Resource Center held its MRE, or Meal, Ready-to-Eat, tasting event on Nov. 5, to introduce people to the VRC and the food that veterans would use during their time in service.
MREs are self-contained food sources for people in the military to eat when they are deployed and will not have access to other food sources around them.
“I’ve been so used to eating the MREs and stuff when I was in, of course,” Andy Cervantes said, who is an eight-year military veteran who volunteered at this event.
“It’s just, a new way to get people who are not aware about the food of what we eat. It’s an opportunity to take a look inside and see what we do in a sense – or just like some of the basic things that we have occasionally done before,” Cervantes finished.
Another volunteer for this event and military veteran, Adrian Gutierrez, added on, “It is pretty much promoting the (student veterans) club and also getting people to know that we’re friendly and we’re not just mean ol’ people.”
The MRE packaging was on display alongside another table that had samples of the food that the military would eat.
Some of these samples were beef stew, stir fry, chicken barbecue and beef tacos.
Andrea Wittig, the director, office of the president, trustee services, government relations & strategic initiatives, was at the event and tasted a sample of the barbecue chicken.
“It was surprisingly good… it tasted better than some of the fast food I’ve eaten before,” Wittig said.
Cerritos College President Dr. Jose Fierro, came down to the center to also partake in the event and try out the bread with the beef taco sample.
“There are different flavors. There are some that are better than others, but it’s good,” Fierro said.
There was a variety of reactions to the tasting of the MRE samples.
“It’s a mixture you get a reaction of ‘oh you know, it’s actually good,’ Another reaction was like, ‘oh I kind of wish it tastes better’ but that’s how it is,” Cervantes said.
Cervantes continued to relate the food to how it is in the military, “it’s really a hit and miss on the food – for example, when it came to the food, the menus that we wanted were first come, first serve.”
Gutierrez hoped that this event opened up peoples’ minds to the VRC.
“I feel like a lot of people are kind of shy and scared of like, they hear military veterans, or anything related, and they just feel like it’s restricted to those people.
“We’re just people, we’re just students, we’re just like everybody else. We just had a little different adventure and that’s it – we want to share that,” he stated.
This was part of a series of events hosted by the VRC as part of its Veterans Week celebrations.
