I have been aging the Rib Shaped, Barbecue Flavor Pork Patty from Menu 16 on the shelf behind my desk since February 2012, when I was given it during a tour of the US Army Natick Soldier Research, Engineering and Development Center. By law, combat rations are designed to last for three years at 80 degrees Fahrenheit, so I'm not overly worried about food poisoning. Still, it's definitely long past its expiration date. But the perfect occasion to taste my now-vintage Meal, Ready to Eat (a.k.a. MRE) never came along. Until now: the MUNCHIES theme week on fast food .

Which makes perfect sense. Seeing how consumers go loco for the ersatz baby backs when they appear at McD's, why wouldn't the US military want to provide a similar treat for the hardworking men and women on the battlefield in Iraq, Afghanistan, and—perhaps coming soon to a theater near you—North Korea? It's hard not to imagine the Natick Center food technologists, who spend all their time creating and perfecting rations, being inspired on a run to their local drive-though, and the McDonald's corporation, patriotic American business that it is, giving the project a big thumbs up.

I scissor across the end of the pouch and tumble the rectangular "rib" onto a plate. The pebbly textured meat is caramel brown and crossed by four raised "bones." Not unappealing, except if you peek in the package. The meat juice is a bizarrely bright yellowish-orange; I quickly tilt the pouch up to keep it from splashing out. Following the civilized example set by our Tweeter-in-Chief, I slice off an end with a knife and fork. It's porky and slightly smoky, although there's a tinny aftertaste, probably from some of the preservatives used to keep it fresh so long. Using a couple of "wheat snack breads" and the packet of dark, oily "BBQ" sauce that came with it, I assemble a sandwich and take a bite. Not bad! Scatter a couple onion slices and pickles on top, and the whole thing would be pretty damn close to a McRib.

The McRib was born of fear. In the mid-1970s, McDonald's, while still on its global domination trajectory, was feeling pressure from competitors "Have It Your Way" Burger King and aggressive upstart Wendy's. It was also reeling from a 1977 federal government recommendation that people "decrease consumption of meat and increase consumption of poultry and fish" to avoid heart disease. The upshot: erosion of their core business, the burger. It was time to expand their offerings. But the fried chicken market was already cornered by KFC and newcomer Popeye's, which sold crispy drumsticks and breasts by the bucketful. Their Filet-O-Fish, introduced countrywide in 1965, was never going to be a bestseller because, well, fish. And the tastiest pork preparation was barbecue, whose long cooking over low heat is the epitome of slow food—and whose bones 'n' sauce presentation was antithetical to the tidy tidbit ethos of the quick-service restaurant.

The McRib and, with a small modification, the McNugget are actually restructured meat, a food processing technique created by the US Army in the 1960s to dramatically lower its food bill. Until then, most beef, lamb, and pork had been sold in carcasses, which were broken down by butchers in specialty shops or, increasingly, supermarkets. But the system was inefficient. Dead animals are oddly shaped, and take up a lot of room. They include bones and gristle, which end up being tossed. And they are shockingly inelastic when all your customers want T-bones for Father's Day, of which there are only 12 pounds on a 1,200-pound steer. Enter boxed meats, itself a military innovation from World Wars I and II. By the mid 1960s, the Army could order exactly the cuts it wanted. And what they wanted was the cheapest stuff available—the trimmings.

Food technologists at the Natick Center were asked to develop "fabricated meat" by figuring out a way to turn this waste product into something edible. It took them the better part of a decade, but here's what they came up with:

Mission accomplished—for the Army. But it was just the beginning for the fast food industry. Several of the Natick Center's collaborators began knocking on doors—from Denny's to Burger King to McDonald's, peddling the new processing technique as a way to produce something tasty for almost nothing. Says Mandigo, who is often erroneously credited with the invention of restructured meat — and, by extension, the McRib—"Government doesn't patent their intellectual property, so anyone can use it. They [the Natick Center] presented material at technical meetings… The military allowed us to use the processes they'd developed."

By 1976, soldiers in the field were testing fabricated beefsteaks, lamb chops, veal steaks, and pork chops, and in 1981, the heat-and-serve entrees, now renamed "restructured meat," became a staple in the new MRE ration. "For the military, it was a very important application. It allowed them to use all the meat from a particular animal and provide essential nutrition in portion-controlled, easy-to-prepare serving," Dr. Roger Mandigo, a Natick Center contractor and meat scientist, told me.

Although restructured meat represented a radical departure from the plain ground beef of its signature product, McDonald's was one of the first quick-service chains to bite. "McDonald's McRib is as close to our product as you can get," John Secrist, a food technologist at the Natick Center, told me. In an attempt to give pork "the same stature as beef in the institutional market," the National Pork Producers Council funded Mandigo to show how to apply the new technique. Using his roadmap, McDonald's then developed "a patty of pork made from small flakes of meat taken from the shoulders of a pig," according to the professor in a 1982 United Press International. Upholding the McRib scarcity theory, Mandigo observed that merely testing the item in one-third of the country's almost 6,000 Micky D's required 40 to 60 percent of the total amount of pork shoulder available weekly.

The McNugget is also a restructured meat product, with the addition of modified cornstarch for thickening. But in this case, credit for the technical details is claimed by Keystone Foods, McDonald's meat supplier (the 12th largest meat company in the US, according to National Provisioner). "In 1981, the McDonald's President said he needed chicken on his menu and wanted something that customers could hold in their hands, with no bones and cut into pieces," explained the company's founder Herbert Lotman to National Provisioner. "We tried several attempts to fit his requirements… [I]t took us about six months to create what looks like the nuggets we have today." Fish stick maker Gorton's is said to have contributed the tempura batter, according to the book Tastes Like Chicken: A History of America's Favorite Bird.

A burger is pretty simple food. The main ingredient, beef, is ground, perhaps with some salt and pepper added, and then gently shaped into a patty so as not to disturb the muscle proteins and toughen the meat. From there on, it's just a question of cooking technique: grill, broil, or pan fry? While McD's had built an empire on cookie-cutter hamburger production, the steps involved were still basically the same as for the home cook. The most controversial update had been an early 1970s move to frozen instead of fresh patties. So when that changed with a vengeance with the introduction of the McRib and the McNugget, McDonald's knew the manmade animal proteins would be much more acceptable to the public if they'd been invented by a personable and photogenic executive chef.