Amazon Is Prepping To Offer Ready-To-Eat Meals

Amazon may dominate your shopping routine in terms of wires, cords, gadgets, and maybe even deodorant, but even with the siren song of AmazonFresh, you're probably not getting all your food from the super site. Amazon's looking to change that by bringing some old-school military tech into the modern day. According to Reuters, the retailer is looking into creating ready-to-eat food that doesn't require refrigeration.

Think of it as an update to the MRE, or "meal ready to eat" that soldiers and survivalists carry with them on long treks (or use to stock their zombie-proof bunkers). Since these meals don't need to be kept cold and don't go bad, Amazon is hoping to mass produce entrees such as beef stew and vegetable frittata and position them as a substitute for take-out. It's hoping that the strategy will earn it a foothold in the grocery world.

Amazon plans on n selling the food (which should hit the market next year) through AmazonFresh, though the actual food won't necessarily be fresh in the way consumers are used to. Thanks to a proprietary prep process, the food will last up to a year. Unlike MREs, however, the food will maintain its structure and flavor, not end up like an unidentifiable mush of gravy-soaked nuggets. Instead of cooking the food for hours under pressure like before, new tech blasts food with microwaves (the process is called microwave assisted thermal sterilization, or MATS) to obliterate bacteria.

Not everyone's convinced that the idea will catch on, especially under the umbrella of AmazonFresh.

"I get why new food processing systems that increase shelf life may be good for Amazon," Bentley Hall, CEO of fresh-food delivery service Good Eggs, told Reuters. "I struggle to see how this solution addresses an actual consumer want or need better than fresh, prepared meals."

Perhaps fans of Soylent will be drawn to the convenience of having nonperishable sustenance at their fingertips? When the meals do hit AmazonFresh in 2018, there are sure to be plenty of opinions from internet foodies.