Vanity Best MRE s

n/a ^ | charlespg

[FourPeas]

Is sodium content an issue? One thing to watch is some MRE-type meals are very high in sodium. I’ve found that to be particularly challenging since one of our clan has high blood pressure.

[shredderman]

chicken tetrazini, spaghetti, beef stew, jambalia would be the ones to get IMHO.

[Goldsborough]

This is another area in which canned goods beat standard MREs. The vast majority of service personnel will not have any form of hypertension and so the formulation of the meals have little regard for how much salt is in them.

Many canned goods, from soups to Spam, have lower sodium varieties available for purchase.

My favorite "survival" meal is jasmine rice cooked with a can of S&W chili beans with some lightly fried low sodium Spam thrown in at the end.

Folks should not forget at least two of the "Mormon Four," honey and salt, which are tremendously difficult to render unfit for consumption.

[TexasTransplant]

I must be weird... the Lima Bean C Rats and any of them that had Fruit Cake were my favorites (I still drool for that WW2 canned Fruit Cake) topped off by a couple of Lucky Strikes and some warm Canteen flavored water...

TT

[Screaming_Gerbil]

Thanks for the suggestion. Will give them a look next time I am at the grocery store.

Then there are these. http://www.hormelfoods.com/brands/hormel/HormelCompleats.aspx
I don’t know how you’d heat em but they are dirt cheat. They have all the downfalls of an MRE, but I keep several as back up.

Canned meat and veggies is superior, but this stuff is ready to go with some heat

[mylife]

I think you can get those for $2 to $2.50 a piece.
Some are pretty good.
Usually the meat and potatoes ones are good.
The fancier stuff isnt as good IMHO

[JD_UTDallas]

Agreed on the canned foods, in theory metal canned foods never go “bad” as long as the hermetically sealed can is intact the food is still edible. Cans of over 100 years old have been opened and tested and found to not only be still sterile but also contain almost all of the original nutritional value. The MRE plastic pouches are not as oxygen tight as steel cans so one would not expect the same to hold true for them. As a personal note for a right of passage at my old reserve unit our first meal in the field was not modern MREs it was C rats from the Korean era mummm C rats; they still were in edible condition circa 2001 after sitting in an Quanson hut for at least 4 decades. The look on the new Privates faces was always price less. SRT leads the way hoooaahh!

[JD_UTDallas]

There was an article in “National Geographic” a few months back saying you can take ordinary clear plastic water bottles filled with water as clean as you can get and place them in bright sunlight for 6 hours and it will kill all bacteria, virus and parasites. It is best to place them on a reflective surface and don’t bother them until the 6 hours are over.

That method of water sanitation is called the SolDis method the water needs to be in a PET container PVC or polycarbonate containers block the UV light that is doing the killing. Also the water has to be clear if it is turbid the UV cannot penetrate deep enough also not more than 3 inches deep again UV cannot get very deep in water even clear water. 6 hours in full sun 2 DAYS in slightly overcast.

[yarddog]

Thanks for that info. Now that you have pointed it out, I remember it did say PET plastic. How do you tell if it is PET instead of the other types?

[Allegra]

My favorite thing in MREs is the spicy cheese spread

Everything else pretty much sucks.

[McGruff]

Don't forget most of these things are no good without water.

[JD_UTDallas]

PET has the triangle and number one in the center

[JD_UTDallas]

[mad_as_he$$]

“best MRE” is an oxymoron.

[yarddog]

Thanks.

[Vinnie]

ping for more input and reference