All:
If you have a need to stock up on some MRE’s, “The Ready Store” sells MRE Entrees seperately so you don’t waste money and space on other junk.
http://www.thereadystore.com/emergency-food/emergency-mre
Excellent customer service and they offer other essentials you may find necessary as well.
Stay safe.
Ben
At what point is an expired MRE to old to eat? 
they dont really expire, they have an inspection date. check this site out
Depends on the temperature at which they are stored. Lowering the temperature 10 degrees doubles their life usually, this is true for a lot of other food as well.
Freeze em.
how many cases do you keep on hand?
One MRE (the military issued one not the civilian bought kind) can sustain you for one day. I would keep a case of military MRE’s on hand and another box of canned goods. In a cool temperature, shelf life is about 5-8 years from what I’ve been told. First things to go “bad” is peanut butter and cheese. Inspect your food before you eat it.
Does anyone else know of any other places to get full cases of MRE’s at a decent price. I am looking for 2 cases for LEO deployment. I thought MRE’s would be great because we would be living out of our cars for the first few days. Anyone have other ideas besides mre’s? I guess my requirments would be: take up as small a sapce in a full patrol car (older Impala), easy to prepare, can be eatin hot or cold, individual meals can fit in to a daypak or hydration pak. Thanks for the thoughts.
Lawdog, you can also consider freeze dried food a lot of campers use, sorta like civilian “LRRP” chow, but more of a selection. They take longer to prepare and you will need to carry more water for drinking and for food prep. Personally, I’d stick with the MREs.
Sources for freeze dried food:
Depends on your definition of sustain.
One MRE has around 1200 to 1400 calories if you consume ‘everything’ included in the package.
1500 or fewer calories is consdered starvation level for most adults.
Here are a few sources I have ordered from.
http://www.theepicenter.com/
http://www.mredepot.com/
http://beprepared.com/
I have MREs from 1999…hhhhmmm…I guess I best eatem up:eek:
Do they still make the old freeze dried MREs? Aaah the pork patty without water was a real delicassy:p
MRE’s are prepared essentially the same way as canned foods which are considered “food grade sterile.” They are heated to a point that all of the bacteria are destroyed. As long as the packaging has not been compromised or is swollen the MRE should be safe to eat.
That does not mean that as it goes past the “best by” date the flavor, texture, color, and nutritional value are not affected. As someone mentioned, the cheese tends to seperate and turn brown, the drink mix hardens, etc.
That said, we have been eating through some British and Canadian MREs (Canadian are the best out there in my opinion) that are more than 10 years old. Some of the items are not as tasty anymore - probably weren’t to begin with - but they were at least edible.
If you are going to keep them in your car you should rotate them more frequently. Depending on where you are it can get well over 100 degrees in a car trunk in the summer which will cause an MRE to break down faster. They should probably be rotated every six months to a year depending on the weather. Since an MRE costs about the same as lunch at a decent restaurant, you could eat one every few months and replace. I would also suggest writing the date on them so you know how long they’ve been in there.
Again, depending on your situation, you might also consider having “sustainment packs” ready to go at the station for such a scenario. They would last longer because you could store them in better conditions and you could also include other things like spare radio batteries that may also have a shorter shelf life.
One option to military MREs, Sure-Pak is a civilian MRE made from basically the same components. The city where I live keeps several cases of these in the emergency command center.
Check the lot numbers of any Sure-Pak’s – http://www.mreinfo.com/civilian/mre/sopakco-sure-pak-12-mre-recall.html. It’d be terribly ironic to have your survival rations be the death of you…
Thanks for the advice. I will keep them in my house next to the deployment bag. They wouldn’t last too many summers in the car her in Florida. Plus there is only so much space in the car.
If you were lucky enough to find a Tabasco sauce and scrounge up a heat tab you would take the pork patty and break it up into some water and heat it up until the pork patty gets soft. Then add a package of the beans and a package of cheese. Add the Tabasco sauce to preference and then brake up the cracker and add it right before eating. MRE chili.
If you could bring all that together you were living large. This was before MRE’s came with M&M’s in them.
You couldn’t give the Chicken Ala King away.
I used to love the bars that the cold weather MRE’s came with. Everyone used to toss them, but I loved them. There were two of them. Does anyone know what they are/were?
Chicken a la Thing!!! :eek:
Compressed sawdust…
At first I thought so too, but I ended up with bunches of them and was broke so I was eating them all the time and ended up developing a taste for them.
The MCW is the same thing as the LRP, but with a different Accesory package and bag… let’s see: sports bar, fruit bar, “poptart” thing… ummm, peanut brittle, granola… I am sure I am missing some 