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Look at the images on this page. The 2008 ones are the current revision. Notice specifically the text that says "FLAMELESS RATION HEATERS ARE PROHIBITED ON COMMERCIAL AIRLINES UNLESS SEALED IN ORIGINAL MRE MENU BAG."

Or, in non-all caps, it's illegal to open an MRE container on an airplane, because then you'll have access to the chemical heater.

Anything beyond a week is excessive imo.

Suggesting dried fruit, pasta sauce and oatmeal is outright shortsighted. How often are you going to replace those to keep them fresh?
Dried Fruit is 6 months: http://www.eatbydate.com/fruit...
Pasta Sauce (depending on preservatives) is 1-2 years
Oatmeal is 2-3 years: http://www.eatbydate.com/grain...

He doesn't mean supermarket food. He means disaster preparedness food like these. They're 10 lb. tins that last 20-25 years.

MRE's are 20-25 years! Seems like a better ROI to me...

Ha, not hardly. It depends strongly on the storage temperature and, if you're buying actual surplus MREs, how they were stored. See the chart here for more realistic numbers.

actually the meals are fairly good, probably because a MRE meal has 1,250 calories, nearly 200 calories more than a McDonald's Big Mac Meal. Not hard to make something taste decent when you're shoving it full of calories.

I found it quite humorous while living in the sandpit that was operation Desert Shield that although we were in a country where we couldn't get even a slice of bacon, four of our twelve MRE menus were pork-centric. Worse still was that we were supplying the saudi army from our MRE stocks, but they could only eat the 8 non-pork menus, which left a huge surplus of pork ones. I swear, nearly every meal I ate there for six weeks was goddamn Omelet with Ham or nasty, nasty BBQ Pork w/Rice. One of the disadvantages to beeing a "bottom feeder" in the infantry-- everyone else higher up in the "food chain" was undoubtedly taking what little non-pork was left...the bastards.

Checking the current MRE menus, it seems they've cut it down to one menu item (#2 - "Pork Rib") out of 24. So we can't get a can of deviled ham from our mother, but Uncle Sam can feed us a bagged and processed pork rib meat patty?

Here's a picture of the heater included in the French rations: French Ration Heater. It looks like a hexamine-based heater similar to what the British use: British Ration Heater.

The hexamine tabs are just little blocks of burnable stuff, simliar to the trioxane the US Military uses. You put a tab of it on your cooker, light it, and put a canteen cup full of water on the cooker, insert the entre pouch in the water, and wait until it heats up.

It works ok but not near as quick and simple as using one of the Flameless Ration Heaters in the MREs.

Here's a picture of the heater included in the French rations: French Ration Heater. It looks like a hexamine-based heater similar to what the British use: British Ration Heater.

The hexamine tabs are just little blocks of burnable stuff, simliar to the trioxane the US Military uses. You put a tab of it on your cooker, light it, and put a canteen cup full of water on the cooker, insert the entre pouch in the water, and wait until it heats up.

It works ok but not near as quick and simple as using one of the Flameless Ration Heaters in the MREs.

Here's a picture of the heater included in the French rations: French Ration Heater. It looks like a hexamine-based heater similar to what the British use: British Ration Heater.

The hexamine tabs are just little blocks of burnable stuff, simliar to the trioxane the US Military uses. You put a tab of it on your cooker, light it, and put a canteen cup full of water on the cooker, insert the entre pouch in the water, and wait until it heats up.

It works ok but not near as quick and simple as using one of the Flameless Ration Heaters in the MREs.

Here's a link to the full instructions for the flameless ration heaters.

These heaters are great...they get the food nice and hot pretty fast...just be careful about storing and shipping them:

Meals: Ready to Explode
The Meals: Ready to Explode have exploded