MRE's and Survival Foods, sites, vids, buying advice etc

Arts & Media Food & Drink
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There is a general survival thread from 2016
This is mostly about Buying MRE’s and survival foods, Fav vid about same.
Even off the shelf items that can augment survival foods
Best sites to visit after an EMP burst :slight_smile:

I thought about this for a while but how to broach the subject without sounding like a flaming lunatic?
We started watching Steve1989’s channel on youtube, mostly eating old MRE’s but also some of the newer ones.
Amazon and ebay has some for sale at reasonable prices
Also some of my fav podcasts are sponsored by

However I noticed most of the meals have rice. Well gee whiz I can buy rice and beans dirt cheap at Walmart. store in tubberware with some salt and that should last a while.
Just recently I bought a huge container of Hawian Punch for under 10 bucks.
I know the store brand of Quaker oats is still edible after a decade, a huge container is under 3 bucks.
Have a 20 lbs bag of flour but it is still in my cars trunk since I am not sure how to store it. But hey it was dirt cheap. The 5 lbs bag of suger in the cuppard has lasted years and is still good.
I also bought powered eggs and powdered milk

Anyway share whatever you want and enjoy!

edit
looks like a good place to start for info

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rice has oils that can go rancid when exposed to air.

bulk bags of rice are vacuum sealed or in nitrogen filled buckets to prevent spoilage.

tbh, the magic of most long life/shelf stable foods is they’re freeze dried and or vacuum packed.

absence of moisture = bacteria can’t grow
low/no oxygen with a good sealed container = fats/oils can’t oxidize.

Traditional preservation methods such as pickling, high acidity (vinegar,etc), high sugar content (jellies,jams), and canning all work pretty well , but definitely should be rotated more often than freeze dried + vacuum sealed stuff.

rice is probably used often in survival foods because it’s cheap, dries/reconstitutes well and doesn’t really have much of a flavor, and adds filler calories. Same goes for oats.

freeze drying removes a lot of the aromatic components of foods and diminishes the perceived taste.

if you’re going with the roll your own survival foods, look into freeze drying, smoking, canning,etc . Salt, dry spices, and stuff like hot sauce keep well and can de-blandify your foods. Find a way to keep track of your stock and rotate it (first in first out)

Looked at the link (mreinfo) one little gotcha about getting MRE’s at army surplus stores.

I’m not sure if there is some sort of iffy regulations or what about the flameless heaters, but yeah, i’ve definitely seen a couple of surplus stores where the MRE will be taken out of its original sealed bag, the flameless heater removed and everything else packed back up in a big ziplock bag.

Not sure if its too big of a deal, but the heaters can be pretty useful if you don’t have pots/pans to boil water in.

also, mountain house i think is more known as a camping brand, but I’m pretty sure i recall some of the stuff from my patriot supply just being rebranded mountain house stuff.

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This guy reviews all of the MREs

(i just like to watch it out of curiosity and he is a fun guy)

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Love that channel.

Always wondered what kind of small, stable items I could add to my bug out bag for enhancing MRE foods. Like maybe a thing of salt or pepper or maybe some garlic powder.

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Of all the freezes dried I have tried mountain house is pretty good. Use it while camping and keep a weeks worth around in case of a hurricane.

Keep another two weeks in canned and pouch food.

Have about two weeks of water at hand because my city is infamous for it’s bad water.

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How are the Mountain House scrambled eggs?

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They aren’t bad recommended the skillets because they have veggies and taste way better.

Mind you Mountain House requires boiled water to make.

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MRE videos give me nightmares

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This thread gives me nightmares.

10 days in the field on this stuff doesn’t do your insides much good;

The last time I ate US MRE’s would have been 20 years ago now. The inclusion of M&M’s was the best bit, otherwise they seemed as bad as the British Army stuff :slight_smile:

If I was prepping for long term usage I’d definitely not want to exist on military rations for too long :face_vomiting:

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That’s when I was in, probably about 3 of the meals were good, 3 decent and 6 you tried to ensure the box was just opened and you got your pick of the other ones.

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Weirdly I still like eating cold baked beans with mini hotdogs in them. It’s been a long time since I had to do that, strange how some things stay with you…

My brother is back in and left me a gift of some left over 24 hour rations for a camping trip; they’ve not changed all that much from what I can tell.

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We didn’t have that… I hate beans so that is probably a good thing. There were also a couple of meals you could make decent by heating. Always had a problem finding something to lean the heater on when rocks were not present

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I tried to use one of those water heaters by stuffing it in my BDU leg pocket…

…I didn’t try again and just ate them cold. What I really disliked was that the US MRE’s gave no provision for hot tea or coffee. How uncivilized :smiley:

For long hikes/camping I’ll always take some way to have hot food or drinks, it probably depends on climate but if it’s cold & wet something hot cheers me up.

I used to only have a small camping gas stove but I actually prefer a Trangia cooker most of the time. It’s no quicker than gas but I like the way it packs and you don’t need to carry much fuel for a weekend. https://trangia.se/en/

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The heaters could also be used to make a real loud boomy that officers can get quite pissed about.

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Nice thread. There are some good taste testing vids on YT.

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You mean I was stuck on an ROTC advance camp for 6 weeks as an exchange cadet and no one taught us that? I’m appalled by the discipline!

At least when it was the other way around we demonstrated to the US officer cadets how Hexamine fuel was edible (it’s not, it’s vile, but looks a lot like Kendal Mint Cake which is just about edible.)

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20 ounce or 1 litre coke bottle, water and heater powder. Pour powder in, then water, close top, hide.

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