# How old is the meat in canned soups?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-meat-in-canned-soups/741275>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 24, 2015, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-meat-in-canned-soups/741275 "2015-12-24T17:14:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![HeXen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@HeXen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeXen)\
**Post date:** [December 25, 2015, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-meat-in-canned-soups/741275/21 "2015-12-25T15:14:00Z")

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Too much sodium is the morbid thought for me. The meat in it is the least of my health concerns. I don’t understand how people can stand the taste of that much salt, shrivels my mouth up and I can only imagine what it’s doing to people’s blood pressure.

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [December 26, 2015, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-meat-in-canned-soups/741275/22 "2015-12-26T00:29:20Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> Quoth **JerrySTL** :
> 
> MREs have a relatively short shelf life.

[Well, in the short term, at least](http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2008-03-09).

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**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\
**Post date:** [December 26, 2015, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-meat-in-canned-soups/741275/23 "2015-12-26T00:57:59Z")

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> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> I dealt with MREs in the USAF & Army in the early 1980s. They were just in the transition from canned C-rats in our theater.
> 
> So when in the field we ate a combo of 20-ish year old Viet Nam-era C-rats and 1 year old gen-1 MREs. The average C-rats were better / tastier than the least-good MREs. And none of them had spoilage problems.
> 
> The C-rats packed better in your ruck, but were heavier. Different folks had different ideas of how to make that tradeoff.

I never encountered MRE’s while I was in the Army. They were just getting phased in as I got out. I never minded the C-rations. Some were better than others, but none of them (except ham and motherfuckers) were bad. The canned pound cake that came in some of them was some valuable trade merchandise. GI’s loved that shit like hoopies love meth.

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