About 25 years ago we enjoyed our young high school daughters (still do but grand kids come attached). Loved taking them to the Cayman Islands. Easy flight from Houston back in the day. Once I suggested we should “tough it” and although catching rays on the Seven Mile beach outside the condo rental.. I cracked open MREs and proclaimed.. “NO expensive restaurant meals this trip!”
Groans and head slapping occurred but we all survived! They returned to high school with good tans from the beach! I neglected to tell them the MREs I bought were “outdated” then so they were probably >10 years old then. No upstanding bacterium would dare to live through the gamma radiation they ran that food through.
Of course I ate a few during my military days even though I was a doctor. On one TDY we were escorting a nice lady Assistant Secretary for Health Affairs back in the Clinton days. She was a psychiatrist.. and no military experience of course. We were at Ft Polk (I won’t mention the Army nickname for Ft Polk) but — I did offer her a window seat on the flight out to the deployment area where we were show casing a field hospital setup. I might mention the window seat was a UH 60 helicopter with the door off.. and I was sitting there turned sideways in the wind, Awesome. She didn’t accept the seat offer.
Once we got there, what awaited us after the hospital tour? MREs — yum. Needless to say I had to help her rip it open..To get to the goodies.
But here I read there is some sort of water reaction in the new MRE packages that will heat the innards to 100C. Wow. Not back in the prior millennium.
Recently I was cleaning out my garage, ran across a box of those MREs from the Cayman adventure.. Took one in and Susan and I open a ham steak and a chocolate bar. Both were inedible.. But we didn’t get sick from the one taste. Even “survival food” has its limit I reckon.
Here is a great article from SOFREP publication I get..