American troops should soon have a new food option for their "MREs" or "meals ready to eat"--pizza.
Soldiers have been requesting the food for years, and scientists have been hard at work to create a pizza that doesn't go bad.
The invention can "stay on the shelf for up to three years and still remain good to eat," Yahoo Food reported via The Associated Press.
Calling shelf-stable pizza the "holy grail," scientists at a Natick, Mass., military lab say they are close to a pizza prototype.
"You can basically take the pizza, leave it on the counter, packaged, for three years and it'd still be edible," Michelle Richardson, a food scientist at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, told the AP.
She has been working to perfect the recipe for nearly two years, facing the challenge of keeping moisture (and bacteria) out of the pizza dough.
Moisture from the tomato sauce, cheese and toppings tend to seep into the dough, making for a soggy food that is the perfect environment for mold and bacteria.
Researchers used humectants such as sugar, salt and syrup to keep the water from getting to the pizza crust. They also "tweaked" acidity in the ingredients to discourage bacteria and added iron filings to the packaging to absorb air.
Jill Bates, who runs the test lab, seemed to think soldiers would be happy with the result.
"It pretty much tastes just like a typical pan pizza that you would make at home and take out of the oven or the toaster oven," she told the AP. "The only thing missing from that experience would be it's not hot when you eat it. It's room temperature."
A military man also gave the pizza his stamp of approval. David Accetta, a former Army lieutenant colonel and spokesman for the lab, said he liked the new MRE option and that it could have extra benefits for soldiers besides nourishment.
"In a lot of cases, when you are cold and tired and hungry, having a hot meal that's something that you like and you would get at home, it increases your morale--and we consider that to be a force multiplier," Accetta told the AP.
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