I'd like to buy a month or two of MREs as a just-in-case addition to our preps. Any reasons why I shouldn't do this? I can buy 90 for $360, which is the best price I've seen.

-- Mara Wayne (MaraWayne@aol.com), August 27, 1999

Answers

MREs are great because you can eat them cold with no preparation, eating on the run or under a tarp in the rain. If you can heat water or have MRE heaters, you have a hot meal that tastes good. They are loaded with sugar, salt, chemicals.

On the downside, they lack any fiber to speak of. A diet of these will soon have you constipated and that is not good. Especially for Pollys, who are full of it to begin with. :-) (But then, I have brown eyes myself, so I shouldn't talk).

We have MREs to eat for 3-4 days, but after that we will eat dried vegetables cooked in heated water or soaked overnight in cold water. Flaked oats (oatmeal) also can be soaked similiarly, and these provide excellent sources of fiber. MREs are expensive, espcially with several children to feed, so MREs will be a "treat" to our normally healthy diet, used for eating on the run or to break up monetony of a bland fiber diet every few days. (Dried fruits also will be psychological pick-me-up foods).

We bought only MRE entres. Many places sell the complete meals and you pay too much for stuff you don't really need or like. We found the best price for entrees at major Surplus and Survival, which sells a case of 24 entrees, assorted (their mixture) for about $45. http://www.majorsurplusnsurvival.com 1-800-441-8855 (California). Dealt with them for 3 years, good service.

Sportsman Guide (Minn.) has the MRE heaters 12/$7 or so. I don't have their webside/phone handy now.

-- programmer farmer (more_fiber@home.org), August 27, 1999.

From: Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr near Monterey, California

I have bought a week or so of these. What I like about them is that they claim to be fairly tolerant of higher storage temperatures. Living in a temperate zone, as I do, that's not such a big consideration, however, I do think they're good for storage in a car trunk for road emergencies, Y2K or no. And for now, never knowing when one might have to bug out (even if we have no real plans to do so, or place to bug out to, it's nice knowing these meals are in the trunk.

On the down side, they are not nearly as compact as equivalent dehydrated or freeze dried foods, even though they also require adding water. The packaging materials are toxic waste and can't be burned. So, if the garbage workers go out on strike, your trash heap will be all that much more attractive to rats. Soldiers on the go don't really care about these problems.

Many people complain about the taste, but I thought they were just fine. Maybe that just goes to show what a bad cook I am or something.

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage.neener.autospammers--regrets.greenspun), August 27, 1999.

Thanks for these thoughts, both of you. You have to add water?

-- Mara Wayne (MaraWayne@aol.com), August 28, 1999.

MREs are great, however, simple constipation is not the problem. If you don't drink a LOT of water you may end up with a compacted bowel problem. Many soldiers had to be airlifted to hospitals during Desert Storm for this. Just something to be aware of when using MREs.

-- Bronwen (Silverfox@netutah.com), August 28, 1999.

For all of you who say MRE's are great.... I just want to know: have you tasted them? We ordered a total of 20 MRE's. Each a different kind. By the time we had tasted 10 of them, we were ready to BARF! No kidding! My 2 teenagers decided that we should save the other 10 to give to anyone who came asking for handouts. :-) I realize that if you were absolutely starving, you would eat them, but to tell you the truth, grass and leaves sound just as tasty! (Not as nutritious, but just as tasty!) :-)

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), August 28, 1999.

Hey, if you are realy hungry ANYTHING tastes great. If you eat at least one heaping bowlful of old fashioned oatmeal every day, that should help the bowel problems. Please note that the MRE's usually have one single item that is fortified (the peanut butter, the cocoa powder, or something). This is where most of the vitamins and minerals are, so if you don't eat the entire meal, you are missing full nutrition.

MRE's life span is dependant on temperature, I don't have the graph handy but they're good for ten years stored at 55 F. but will only last a month or so at car trunk temperatures. Now MR8s (the NATO ration) are very stable even at high temperatures. Hope you like wheat and sugar....

-- Ken Seger (kenseger@earthlink.net), August 28, 1999.

MREs are ready to eat, add no water. But the suggestion to drink LOTS of water is correct, there is no fiber to speak of and LOTS of water will help flush your system out. You still, truly, needs a source of fiber.

On taste, yes, my family _has_ eaten MREs. Perhaps a dozen MREs each from little ones 2 yrs to the two a-dolt parents :-) Our normal diet is fresh ground wheat products, vegetables, steamed zuchini over brown rice, oatmeal most mornings in winter (topped with raisens or dried pineapples and/or honey or milk), home made soups, - in short, your basic neo-homesteader diet. Bland and boring compared to the typical American diet. Plus my wife grew up in a jiffy mix home, she came with no skills at cooking and has learned on her own completely, so she does not yet have a flair with seasonings that some have. So them into this diet comes an MRE, and from our perspective, it's a great treat. Not to be compared to a Big Mac, but to be compared to baked acorn squash with cinamin sprinkled on top. Now, squash tastes good, but not yet as good as an MRE. So it depends on your perspective. If a person is dependant on fast foods, you *will* suffer, even with adequate food. We have eaten bitter dandelion leaves from our yard some times, and with such an adjustment in our expectations we are able to survive comfortably with oatmeal, plain rice, and dried vegetables.

In WWII a number of people in England died from a new conditioned, coined "Appetite fatique" (sic). Their normal shipping access to imported foods was disrupted and people had monotonous diets and particularly many "normal" foods were no longer available. People lost their appetites and slowly starved to death rather than eat "strange" foods. We've adjusted our diet for "hard times" already, and in the process eat healthier than before. Win-win.

Most people take sugar for granted. In fact, a lot of sugar in the diet is expected and "needed". Pop, catsup, cookies, fast food, tomato sauce, salad dressing, ice cream, "fruit" juices - nearly everything we have in our American diet has sugar added to it. 100 years ago sugar was a treat, and a nice treat was to put a spoonful of sugar in a piece of material and the material wrapped up and a child would suck on the ball of sugar in the material soaking the sugar out slowly. Today, a child demands it be cherry flavored or nothing else will do.

I've stated this in every how-to seminar I've done - mental preparation is 90% of preparation. With proper mental prep you can make do without a lot of physical preps, but all the physical preps are useless, really, without proper mental preparation. I include spiritual prep in mental preparations; I've spoken to saved and unsaved people.

Have I actually tried eating an MRE? yes. have you actually tried to survive a truly hard situation that went on for weeks? Give heed to those that have, listen to history's lessons. If you have trouble with MREs, you are in very, very poor shape to weather much of a storm. Like the British people accustomed to tea and crumpets, you might _very_well_die_, and your family.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. The weak curl up and die. Sad, but true. Our shallow and superficial lives (I do mean "our") will be revealed soon I think, and we'll suffer proportionally.

-- Programmer Farmer (dependson_your@perspective.com), August 28, 1999.

Mara

MREs tast about as good as boxed mac and cheese or boxed flavored rice. You can eat them. Much better than the C rations.

They are not an item for everyday meals. Their strength lies in being ready and available when you need them and their portability. I would buy a case (24) or three and leave it at that.

The cheapest and healthyest(?) way to build up a survival food store is to build an old fashioned pantry based on whole grains, dried fruits, canned goods, powdered milk and things closer to what you eat every day. Much cheaper than freeze dried and whole grains store very well.

Keep your...

-- eyes_open (best@wishes.net), August 28, 1999.

I ate them for four miserable years in the infantry.never again,go for canned food,good god,spam is preferable.$20 buys 100pounds of rice at your local asian food store.mre's are really a gimmik if you're not living a geurilla lifestyle,of course that might happen.

-- zoobie (zoobiezoob@yahoo.com), August 28, 1999.

You don't add water to the food (except the drink mix of course), you add it to the heaters to activate them. They get really hot and are a good way to heat anything without a fire. Some places sell them separately.

The taste varies. I think the ham patties are great, better than canned ham because they're not full of fat and gelatin. I bought some of these separately. The chicken is ok, kinda bland but then plain chicken IS bland. They do include a tiny bottle of hot sauce.

The pound cake is good.

To prevent constipation you can carry some metamucil, or some flax seed. That's what people on a low-carb (i.e. mostly meat, thus low fiber) diet do. Flax seed is good for you anyway.

-- biker (y2kbiker@worldnet.att.net), August 28, 1999.

I just ate 3 MREs that I bought about 15 years ago in Louisiana. I bought more than that (for hurricane preps) but these I had put in the trunk of my car, where they banged around for about 10 years, honest. I ate them to see what they were like after the worst possible storage conditions.

Everything was fine except for the cheese spread - just couldn't bring myself to eat it. Turned brown and clotted, but smelled ok, smelled a little like peanut butter. If I'd been hungry, I'd have eaten it.

I keep a couple in my desk in case we get snowed in, etc, some in the house. These things are terrific, if not haute cuisine.

$360 for 90? Terrific price - grab 'em.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), August 30, 1999.

MREs - IMNSHO, not bad for a short term situation. Not optimum for a long term diet (too much sodium, fat; not enough fibre). Also too expensive to the long term. It's not a bad idea to have a few around (even as part of a 72 hour "bug out" kit).

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), August 30, 1999.

Uh, while its true MREs don't have any fiber, that little "Chicklet" gum in the accesory pack is a laxative. Not kidding.

-- kozak (kozak@formerusaf.guv), August 30, 1999.