Your Pro Citizen Newsletter 70: The loved and hated MRE (Meal, Ready to Eat)

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Medical, shelter, water, calories (food).

Three minutes without oxygenated blood, three hours (or less) without shelter in severe weather, three days without water, and three weeks without food. The food issue for self-sustainers in the field is not about comfort or fighting hunger, it is simple energy math. We must get calories in our system to burn, and the more nutrient dense the better. What is real for us are the caloric requirements for mental efficiency and hard physical work. What is your plan to get quality calories in the field when you can’t run a stove or cook? Conditions may become more extreme during a large-scale crisis and push those boundaries but having a short term chow plan that works for that ice storm or just being in the field (training or for real) for a couple of days will probably get you through any foreseeable trouble. Aside from the challenge of having enough calories to keep you fed during extremely hard physical activities we always have the weight, volume, preparation, and storage issues. Fortunately, there is a good option that has recently come way down in price (temporarily it seems). MREs are far down the list when it comes to food storage and prepping, so please don’t misunderstand my point today. They are a niche solution for a problem set, one that does not include bunker storage or get home bags.

The MRE

MRE (Meals, Ready to Eat) or sometimes we called them Meals, Rarely Eaten. Eating MREs will get old in a hurry (eating them constantly is not only bad health wise but food boredom is real unless one is fighting off starvation). There is enough variety and soldier creativity to get you through a long-ish stretch but they are still a short term solution. These are the packaged rations the military uses that have the advantage of being eaten without any preparation (aka ready to eat). MREs do not tolerate high temperatures long term so using MREs for a get home bag (GHB) stored in your hot car it isn’t a great option. They work well for bug out or go bags that are stored in your house (climate-controlled conditions) and the palatability is actually quite good. Healthwise…they are garbage. The ingredient quality is questionable and I would not recommend a long term MRE diet. But they are calorie dense and can get you through some rigorous physical activity without having to think about preparing a meal.

MREs have a reputation of being the cure-all for readiness food in some corners of the readiness community, but that is far from the truth. They are a bit more niche than many folks think. They do have a purpose, but they are not the final solution for food storage or emergency planning. As with all things in The Pro Citizen Project - make your own decision based on the info we provide. We are not recommending you go purchase MREs, we are not recommending you don’t purchase them. This is just simply information to consider.

Challenges with MREs

Aside from the health and short term use requirements, MREs can be expensive and somewhat difficult to find trustworthy sources. Never buy from flea markets or secondary sources, these who knows where they came from meals may have been exposed to extreme heat and could be spoiled. MREs generate a lot of trash due to the packaging, so for patrol or trail use we recommend that you field strip them before movement (take them apart discard all the non-essential packaging).

Dates

Legitimate contractor packaged MREs are designed to be shelf stable for extended periods if the conditions are good. There is no expiration date. This is misunderstood by some in the community, MREs don’t “go bad” based on the case date. There are two sets of dates, the date packed and the inspection date. The inspection date just lets the gov’t know when to check the lot numbers of the meals for spoilage. A quick aside on recent price drops: Here is where the current (the last couple of weeks) price breaks come in. We saw several vendors (no we are not one of them) selling cases for 40-45 bucks each with free shipping. Cases usually run about 100-120 (10-12 bucks a meal which is pretty crazy expensive in my opinion) so this was a recent development that we dug into. Turns out FEMA had pallets (probably hundreds or thousands) of MREs in storage that are coming due for inspection. July 2025 is the inspection date for the ones we bought to research this article. They have recently sold them on the surplus market which has resulted in a recent flood of inventory for the MRE sellers and lower prices. Again…this is not a purchase recommendation newsletter.

There is also a Time Temperature Indicator (TTI) on cases that will change over time when exposed to poor storage temps. The labels have an outer reference ring and an inner circle. The inner circle darkens with time, darkening more quickly as the temperature increases. TTIs are read by comparing the color of the center to the reference ring that surrounds it. Initially, each TTI has a “bulls-eye” appearance, with the center being much lighter than the dark reference ring. Over time, the center will darken until it exactly matches the reference ring, giving the appearance of a large solid circle on the TTI. They can be used to quickly determine whether the product has remaining shelf life (center lighter), has reached the end of its expected shelf life (center the same) or has exceeded its expected shelf life (center darker).

And just for posterity's sake here are all the meals in both A (menu 1-12) and B (13-24) cases for the 2022 production. If you want a particular set of menus you can focus your purchasing effort to get the desired case:

The Secret Menu

Ok not really secret menus, nothing like “Animal Style” at In and Out - these are just some types of prepackaged meals that are cousins to the baseline MRE. The better ones tend to be much more expensive than baseline MREs and the lesser quality (aka less calories) are cheaper.

First Strike (TM) Rations

These require little or no preparation, the beverages can even be reconstituted and consumed directly from the drink pouch. Lightweight and almost a 3 to 1 ratio better when compared to an MRE for volume and weight. Each ration provides an average of 2900 calories with 14% protein, 34% fat, and 52% carbohydrate. These are hard to find and expensive, but they are an outstanding option. While First Strikes are silly $$$$ they can be replicated (mostly) with commercial items and substitutions if you are creative. The key is building them to match the percentages and calorie load.

Cold Weather / LRP Rations

These are calorie dense rations developed for extreme cold and / or long range patrols. They include a freeze dried component as well, so there is a “not ready” to eat component for these MREs. They are stupid expensive on the secondary market, almost 30 bucks a meal. I would not recommend buying these as a regular dude unless you just want to try one. Mountain House makes (or used to make I’m not 100 percent sure) the freeze dried component. Their (Mountain House) older dense Pro Pak hiker meals were the repackaged components used in these, but I have not seen them available on the commercial market for a while now.

Humanitarian Meals

These are cheap and they suck. Don’t bother with them. Lower calorie density overall and little to no protein. You are better off throwing some jerky and a pop tart in your cargo pocket and calling it good. Not really…but close. They are better than nothing but if it is between a case of humanitarian and a case or regular meals for a few bucks difference go with the regular MREs.

Summary. MREs are “an option” for us to use short term and under the right conditions. Patrols that require calorie dense meals with no cooking / stoves or even simply woods bumming with your buddies are good use cases (no pun intended). At five bucks a meal (with the current price drops) just letting your kiddos give them a try to see what you used to eat in the Army might be worth the expenditure. One more time, we are not recommending you buy or not, this is just some quick info and how they can be used to support your requirements.

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