Many years ago in my youth, my dad was a member of the National Guard. Sometimes, after his monthly drills, he would bring home some of his field rations. At first these were the venerable MCI (meal, combat, individual – commonly but incorrectly called C-rations or C-rats) and later these became MREs. Now to my 12 year old brain, these were pretty cool. I can still clearly remember the tinned pound cakes from the MCIs as being pretty tasty.
Now I’m not crazy. I know that time has probably warped my memory of these things. In reality, they were probably pretty dreadful even by the standard of commercially packaged foods of the day to say nothing of modern standards. My research of the current generation of MREs suggests that nobody seems to have much of anything good to say about them. I still want to buy some. There are sellers all over Amazon and eBay. Some people suggest that privately selling government issue MREs is illegal and while this may be a grey area, the government doesn’t seem to be doing much to stop it.
Am I wrong to wanting to feed my nostalgia? I know how to check production and inspection date codes so I can get the freshest DOD meals available but that could still mean they’ve been baking in a desert warehouse for the last three years. There’s a non-trivial risk of getting something nastily past its edible life. I’m OK with that.
Please be advised that I am not a ‘prepper’ in any way. The idea of buying food just to stick it on a shelf in my basement just in case is not a factor in this at all. I’m also aware that civilian versions of the official DOD product exist. These are often made by the same manufacturers that produce meals for the American military and usually contain the exact same entrees although the extras are more limited. I don’t want these civilian versions because to my mind, they’re not real MREs and if that’s pointless distinction, then I plead guilty.
Should I roll the dice and buy a case or should I just leave this memory in the past?
I’m familiar with Steve and several other YouTubers commenting on MREs. I’ve watched a lot of them but I think this is one of my favorites. (That’s the best apple drink I’ve ever had!)
October, 1971. USS Amberjack (SS-522), and I was in ship’s company (that just means regular Navy, by the way). Took the boat (“ship”) from Key West to Philadelphia Naval Shipyard for some cool refits and stuff. One of the things we had to do was offload all the stores, you know, food, spares, torpedoes, and the like. The crew wouldn’t be living on the boat for several months, and all of that stuff had to be removed anyway, because of… welders and ship fitters and cranes, you know.
We found mixed nuts in #10 cans, packing date noted as 1947 (as in 24 years earlier). They were delicious. Then there were the hamburger patties, canned in water… likewise delicious, packed also in 1947. Did anyone get “the runs” from this stuff? No one ever mentioned, or showed signs of it. (Of course, when you’re 20 years old you can eat just about anything.)
You shouldn’t have to buy a case to try some.
They are seriously bad I have to tell you. I have eaten (or tried to eat) a newish one a few years ago. Nasty doesn’t describe it well enough.
As a former involuntary consumer of said “Meals Ready To Eat” due to military service, I’m often drawn to Eddie Murphy’s take: “If you’re starving and somebody throw you a cracker, you gonna be like this: Goddamn, that’s the best cracker I ever ate in my life! That ain’t no regular cracker, was it? What was that, a Saltine? Goddamn, that was delicious. That wasn’t no Saltine. That was… That was a Ritz. That wasn’t a Ritz? God, that was the best cracker I ever ate in my life.”
I’ve just ordered a couple of daily ration packs myself, out of curiosity - including (IIRC) a Russian military rescue services issue - because it has some unusual canned items in it that I intend to feature on my own channel. (I have a series that I call ‘Weird Stuff In A Can’)
I don’t think it’s ignorant to want to try these things - quite the opposite in fact.
Apparently it’s legal. The armed forces contract the production of MRE’s to private companies. The private companies fulfill the military contracts and then produce extra MRE’s for commercial sales. The civilian MRE’s are supposedly identical to the military MRE’s except for the packaging. So as long as you aren’t buying MRE’s that have government labels on them, you’re okay.
I think some of these MREs that we’re seeing for civilian sale have been sold off through military surplus auctions and other similar channels - they have often have fairly short remaining expiry dates - I think they’re being cleared out from military stores and replaced, then sold off.
There’s a reason MREs have the nicknames “Meal Rejected by Ethiopians” and “Meal, Ready to Excrete” and perhaps others. And it’s not because they’re a gustatory treat.
My father was in the Air Force back in the 60s and he would sometimes bring home C-rats. I don’t rememeber much about them except for the candies. Those were good. I have a vague memory of the cake being good, but I don’t think we ever tried to eat anything else.
I’d be leery of whole cases of military labelled MREs for sale, since some random supply person might be defrauding the system. But if a person is in the military and gets issued an MRE for a meal, but doesn’t eat it, I would assume they could legally sell it or give it away. The modern MREs are really not that much different from the dehydrated or pouch heatable camping food; not terrible but not exactly restaurant fare.
I know that I can buy individual meals but I’d rather just go with a case. That way I can sample all the menu options over the course of a month or so, get totally sick of them and burn out this nostalgia for the next decade or so. Besides, keeping them in their case until I open them should partially protect them from abuse in transit.
I’m not expecting a treat. If they rise to the level of cheap, off-brand, canned dinners then I’ll consider it passable. Some of the reviews I’ve read seem to be indicative of their quality. The spaghetti with meat sauce “wanted to be Chef Boyardee but failed the physical”. The chicken with noodles and vegetables in sauce “couldn’t muster enough flavor to even taste bad and appeared to be pre-chewed for my convenience”.
That’s certainly what the sellers are claiming. How true that is, I can’t say. Sasquatch could be right. They meal could have fallen off the back of some truck. Maybe it’s a flaw in my personality but I can’t bring myself to worry about that too much.
My son brought home a bunch of them once, because they were going to be discarded and the cook said “help yourself”. I had, I think, two of them, because I thought the first one might be an anomaly. It wasn’t. They weren’t spoiled - I don’t think those things would spoil for the next four centuries - but the dominant taste was “chemical” with subtle undertones of nothing in particular. They come with a little chemical system to heat them up, but hot sawdust is not much more palatable than room temperature.
We still have some of them on the bottom shelf of the pantry, but if WWIII breaks out, living on those things vs. being eaten by the radioactive mutants is going to be a judgment call.
Well, he wondered if the speckles on the dextrose cubes were bug droppings and then sampled a cube anyway. He said the biscuits tasted “slightly rancid” and numbed the side of his mouth, but “weren’t bad”. I’d have to sum up my reaction to the video as being a combination of fascination and disgust. LOL
