Yo /k/ can you redpill me on MREs? What are goods and what are

>>31901916
>What are goods
the ones you like
>what are bad
the ones you dont like

>>31901947
Can you break this down for me?

>>31901965

Not him but I think his point is that you get what's written on the package. It won't taste like your grandma made it but if you like beef stew you'll most likely like an MRE with beef stew in it.

They're ok for shtf stocking if you have enough storage room (half of it is plastic).

They're good for short term storage and camping/hiking trips. Shelf life is supposed to be 5 years in a cool dry place. The typical US MREs can be bough commercially for around $5-$10 a meal, and obviously buying cases is cheaper. The FRHs are pretty good and do what they're supposed to do as long as they're not old or used incorrectly. There's a lot of variety in terms of the entrees and sides so look around and see which ones look good to you. The vegetarian ones and the omelette/egg ones are normally disgusting though.

>>31902004
What I meant is what ones are good in terms of fucking up or not your health. Also what countries MRE should I look for? Because I don't feel like buying something chinese or indian and end up with food poisoning. Should I stick to rhe European and NA ones?

>redpill

How the fuck do you redpill someone on MREs? It's goddamn good, not an ideology.

>>31901965
yes because I know what foods you like to eat

>>31902064
It's just retarded newfags completely misusing the term. Fucking Redditards don't lurk a day before they start posting.

>>31902051
>$5-$10 a meal
That's quite expensive, it's mostly dehydrated food, isn't it?

>>31902079
No, that's just a meme. The food is not dehydrated, just chock full of preservatives so that they have a shelf life of <5 years.

>>31902079
At least for most MRE's I've eaten it's all been just vacuum packed. You can eat it cold and it'll just be like cold leftovers. The only dehydrated thing is the coffee and drink mixes.

>>31902091
Sweet, sweet maltodextrin.

>>31902054

The french ones are good. The german's are the biggest I think.
Just buy the cheapest.

>>31902091
>just chock full of preservatives
That doesn't seem too healthy. Better stick to tuna cans and cereals then. Thanks.

>>31902004
Field strip yo shit nigga

>red pill me on MREs

OK.

They are shit.

Traditional survival food meant to last people in between crops is healthier and cheaper.

Even hard tack won't give you sepsis from making you shit actual bricks.

Traditional salami, pepperoni, and cured hanging meats will last a very long time at room temp. Honey lasts forever and is healthy as fuck. REAL cheese that's cultured and waxed will last decades, same with pemmican.

Honestly, frontier style foods last the longest and are the healthiest.

I'm actually impressed at how long meats cured and fermented at room temp can last, especially with a protective coating of mold. Same with real cheese.

>>31902138

And the Estonian MREs are by far the best.

http://youtu.be/Znmo1dMXerc

Mis-info in this thread is astounding.
mreinfo.com

>>31902151

Still too much plastic for bug in food

>>31902148
>don't like preservatives
>better switch to canned mercury and simple sugars

>>31901916
If you're looking to stock best deal right now is
https://www.preparewithcr.com/

>>31902170
Can you point me in the right directions for instructions or supplies to start

File: koshermre.jpg (195KB, 800x562px) Image search: [Google]

195KB, 800x562px

>>31902148
MRE's are only a quarter of my emergency food. Its expensive, and not that great for your health.

>>31901965
You like the ones you like.
You dislike the ones you don't.

MREs are like marmite. You either like them or don't. If you can stomach the worst of them then you can make sweet monies from other squaddies because they will actually PAY you to trade your food for theirs. This has been around for decades and it's a lucrative business for men with bowels of iron.

Used to get £5 just to change main meals and desserts when I was in the British Army. Used to make an extra £500 on every deployment just taking the shitty meals. More on some occasions when people were more desperate if they start bidding.

Heard its less prolific now though since they have new meals that arent utter shit like the old MREs tended to be other than the hotpot.

>>31902054
They all contain way too many calories and way too much sodium for anybody to be eating long-term outside of a legit survival situation.

They're bulky and expensive, and field-stripping them ruins their shelf life because that thick-assed plastic bag is an oxygen barrier.

>the good thing about MRE's
-don't have to be cooked, or even heated (though definitely taste better when heated)
-contains flameless heater
-not dehydrated or freeze dried, so doesn't exorbitantly increase water requirements
-includes toilet paper
>the bad thing about MRE's
-even a good MRE doesn't taste great
-half of it is preservatives and salt, very unhealthy for long-term consumption
-the breakfast omelette legitimately makes most people sick. Not "a little nauseated", I'm talking "shitting yourself violently while loudly throwing up blood" food poisoning.
-the included toilet paper is literally skilcraft sandpaper, and only enough for half a wipe
-assuming you didn't eat the omelette, expect bowel-cementing constipation even with copious water intake (sorta-kinda negates the above point about too little TP)
-don't use the MRE heater in extremely enclosed areas, it gives off large quantities of CO2 and can actually suffocate you without some ventilation

>>31902516
aren't the candies/gum that come with them supposed to be a laxative?

>>31902529
Supposedly.

And of course the diuretics (tannic acid, caffeine) in the tea/coffee also kinda help things along.

Most people still get the brick-shits.

>>31902312
>simple sugars
I was talking about stuff like rice, oat, quinoa and such not your random sugarized breakfast cereal.

File: dry-as-hell-4ad0314c-d0bc-4f52-ad6b-c31edf2e47ae.jpg (123KB, 1000x667px)

123KB, 1000x667px

>>31902051
>cool dry place
Good luck with that in southern states in the summer.

Are there any MREs that will survive temperatures above 100F at least?

>>31902593
>this niqqa hasn't heard of a cellar

>>31902516
What do you recommend then for long term food?

>>31902618
we don't have cellars in the south, they tend to become ponds

>>31902593
Yes, MREs (govt issue) can survive something like 2 years at 125°F. But up to 20-25 at ideal temps.

You should probably store a lot of water and get dehydrated food if storing at high heat is a concern.

>>31902170
I think peanut butter lasts forever too, although it separates after a while. Very calorie dense.

>>31902643
>hasn't heard of sump pumps either

>>31902618
>southern states
>cellar
nigger, you don't have a cellar in decent portions of the South

>>31902618
Niqqa, I'd like to see how many thousands of gallons of sweat you'd shed while digging a cellar in Arizona hard as fuck soil.

>>31902656
>store a lot of water
Wonder what container to use. Plastic deteriorates (often to the point of disintegration) in heat.

>>31902064
They're made by the digestive Jew to perpetually constipate you. There, redpilled.

>>31902699
is that similar to a digestive biscuit

>>31902666
Trips confirm. Peanut butter, cereals (rice, millet, oats, etc.), canned meats, and cured meats are your best bet as someone looking to make their own stores. If you're not some .mil logistics wizard looking on ways to trim $$ off procurement, who's looking to simplify the supply chain in field, then don't really fuck with MREs. Maybe get a few, but as other dudes have said, it definitely shouldn't be your main source of emergency food. iirc MREs have like >2500 kcals per unit in addition to all the other gripes above. If you're not hauling ass cross country with >20 kg of kit, you're probably not burning enough energy to warrant eating one MRE let alone two.

>>31902464
Best thing to do is look around and take notes, /ck/ despite its massive amounts of shitposting and inability to leave bait alone, has decent guides on home food preservation.

Also look at older MRE reviews like steve1989 to see what works and doesn't but a cliffnotes is

>dark chocolate lasts a very long time
>anything with fat baked in like crackers will go rancid in 5-10 years
>>anything with milk will go bad in a couple years
>freeze dried food in the proper packaging lasts pretty much forever
>nuts and breads containing nuts go rancid in a couple years though peanut butter seems to be an exception to this
>freezing MREs will preserve it very well for the duration it is frozen but something seems to happen to them that makes them go bad faster after freezing

For pemmican you need to find suet, either boxed or render yourself from kidney fat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_vLuMobHCI

If you really want to go deep into the madness of home prepping look into a home freeze dryer, you can pretty much ignore most food preservation warnings with that provided you package it properly.

also what is important to know is that plastic breathes and is permeable, mylar and aluminated plastics will slow it down by a decent margin but not forever, tin cans will also eventually leak because either it will corrode out the liner or the seal itself fails because it is essentially a contact seal rolled on with a layer of plastic or epoxy between the top and most times the bottom.

Kind of a moot point because food degrades a lot within 10ish years in terms of nutrition though raw protein and fat as long as it's not rancid will provide the basic blocks.

>>31902643
Making a raised hill celler helps if your watertable is barely above the water table or below sealevel but if you live below sealevel you are shit out of luck unless you get dried food

>>31902693
It's not the heat. It's the sunlight. Make sure it is well shaded.

In Iraq Wed get giant pallets of plastic water bottles. They got stored under cammy netting, still exposed to partial sunlight. After 8 months we used to throw them at each other like water balloons. Plastic became so brittle they would rupture just from tossing them.

And if you're a health nut, maybe chemicals leaching into water?

TL;dr

Completely shade your plastic containers and you should be alright.

>>31902715
>is that similar to a digestive biscuit
I honestly have no idea as to what that is.

File: 20161012_114756.jpg (4MB, 5312x2988px) Image search: [Google]

4MB, 5312x2988px

>>31901916
It is 100% down to taste. Just go on Ebay and look at MREs by country.

Thanks to this method I learned that I really like slav style stews and that the Chinese do not know what food is.

>>31902693
Concrete cisterns are underrated for long term water storage but you need to know what is around your soil because it will absorb chemicals, look into basalt or fiber rebars and reinforcements.

That being said you will be fine with a plastic water storage tank rated to be buried or just build a shed around it

>>31902677
>hand digging
You are doing it wrong

>>31902516
but civve mres like meal kit are actually good

>>31902745
Unfortunately, it's not just sunlight. Heat makes volatile chemical in plastics and rubber evaporate much faster than it otherwise would. I've seen internal parts that couldn't have been possibly exposed to sunlight crumble to dust in as little as five years.

>>31902823
Concrete is porous and can't be trusted. Also, it cracks.

>>31902638
Storing your own wheat flour, honey/molasses, bagged rice and beans, and learning to hang/dry your own root veggies like potatoes and onions.

As nice as it would be to make your own hams, curing a ham is a goddamn art that takes years to perfect with modern culinary machinery. I suppose if you started now you might be able to learn it in time (whenever SHTF actually happens, idunno) but if you really wanna preserve meat I'd look at hard-smoked jerky or the hard, smoked+greased sausages for fat and protein storage.

Besides, it's far more "socially acceptable" to have a shelving system in your basement crammed full of sacks of flour and salt than it is ammo and WISE FOODS brand WISE BUCKETS.

File: absolutely not.gif (981KB, 200x200px) Image search: [Google]

981KB, 200x200px

>>31902822
>the Chinese do not know what food is.
You're right about that, Chinese MRE food is literal dog shit. And probably the dog too.

>>31902948
Heat increases oxidation but I'd imagine if you keep it filled with water and stored in complete shade it would last a while

>>31902963
To do it well to the point you can earn a profit takes years of experience, if you just want to preserve the hog you killed and keep it edible it isn't particularly hard.

>>31902866
nah it still hot even if you're using a backhoe or whatever

>>31902963
plus you can keep your ammo behind your flour

>>31901916
You're better off just stocking up on your favorite canned foods and snacks. That's basically all MREs are.

>>31903026
Not to mention doing this is cheaper.

Also get Tapatio isntead of tabasco, shit's so much better

>>31902079

The only mres I've seen that sell for less than $7 get delivered with like 6 months to expiration date

>>31902734

Thank you

>>31903060
And?

If you're active duty you're fortunate to get one that hasn't been expired for 6 years.
>tfw last field op before ETS get a "pork patty" MRE
>hasn't been on the menu since before my dad retired in 1994 because he liked them and bitched about them taking it out of rotation because of kosher/halal
Obviously I didn't eat it.

>>31903418
To be fair it's just spam with probably a couple more doses of nitrates and salt to keep it fresh, it was probably completely edible.

>>31902464

I have a store near me called "Fermentables" and its a wine, beer, cheese, etc supplier that sells yeast and bacterial cultures.

Pretty much any cheese that has a living culture can be waxed and stored for years. Any meat that cures, ferments, and stores at room temperature will last a long time with a protective mold coating.

The only limit is the quality of fat you use. High quality fat means it won't go rancid as fast, if ever.

Just do a little googling and watch a few YouTube vids.

The trick is using good Bacteria and molds to preserve your food because the good cultures will keep harmful mold and bacteria out of your food.

Also storing dried grains and legumes is a great prepper thing.

>>31902734

Thanks for mentioning dark chocolate, totally forgot about that one.

>>31903542
lol, no it wasn't.

It was literally a boneless porkchop they'd vacuum packed.

And it was crunchy. It's not supposed to be crunchy.

>>31902473
cholent is good as fuck

i make my own all the time

>>31901916
Try and get some Thai MRE's those looked fucking amazing when MRE bro was reviewing them. IIRC he was very impressed with them.

>>31901916
Advantages: large portions, calorie dense, has lots of goodies, reasonably cheap, hot meals without fire or prep work, and doesn't dehydrate you.
Disadvantages: high sodium, reasonably heavy, limited menu, lots of waste materials, some dead weight, shorter shelf-lives than anything freeze-dried.

If you have cool storage space (storm shelter, basement, etc) then they're decent to have a few cases around. 1 is enough for 1 day if sedentary, 2 to 3 depending on levels of activity. They are an emergency prep, not anything long-term. Say a case of 12 lasts for 1 week (5 active days and 2 sedentary); 2 or 3 cases cover almost every disaster that occurs in a decade. The economics get better if you like eating them and go hiking/camping or live in disaster-prone areas (and can reasonably plan to shelter-in-place).

>>31902054
American MRE's are pretty good (compared to most other countries) and are actually available commercially under a number of brands (who incidentally also make military MREs).

Safety-wise, nothing American will kill you or cause you severe lasting harm (unless you are on an incompatible diet--like low-salt or are allergic to ingredients). You're not going to get food poisoning if the MREs are stored correctly.

>>31902148
Of course there's preservatives. One of the main for processed food (MRE's and freeze-dried) is sodium. Lots of salt. MRE's work by killing contaminants while sealing them up against pretty much everything.

>>31902170
Lots of this. We've gotten away from proper survival foods. Everything is processed. The tough thing is finding properly cured sausage and meats. It used to be that every butcher made their own, smoked or cured or whatever. The meat would be curing for months before planned consumption and could hold for months more. Final prep would be cutting away the casing. Instead, your grocery store salami is flavored to taste cured and won't last outside of its package. Pepperoni is shelf-stable except when opened.

>>31902074
This

>>31901916
MRE's are pretty good for field survival food, but for something like SHTF you want more conventional canned goods. Save the MRE's for camping and whatnot.

I actually keep a French RCIR in my car during the winter. It's been useful once or twice when I've gotten stranded blizzards, especially up north. Those are probably some of the best rations, though the lack of an FRH is annoying.

>>31904461
>though the lack of an FRH is annoying
Would be more than annoying in the winter here, considering the MRE would be a frozen fucking brick.

>>31901916
Stay away from the brownies, they get shitty quick. Camping yes, SHTF depends on if you're on the move or holed up somewhere. Best for on the move; should split up MRE throughout the entire day. Unwise to unpack everything at once to eat in one sitting, something might happen and you might need to bug out fast. This is where each item being packaged separately is a good thing, though creates a lot of waste. I suggest before you head out, prepare your MREs in a way that you take all the calories with you, while dumping all the extra shit you won't use.

You can repack an MRE to take up half the space this way, and either carry more MREs or other stuff. Flameless heater is a luxury item, if you're in a situation where water is scarce just leave that behind.

It's intention is to feed a soldier that is fighting, working, patrolling, other hoorah shit all day. If all you're doing is sitting on your ass, find something more balanced to eat if you can.

My personal favorite is chili mac. I also like the peanut butter and crackers. It includes toilet paper but I discard those. If people actually love you they'd send you rolls of toilet paper that won't be sandpaper to your asshole. Tabasco sauce packs are a godsend. Do not waste a single calorie, eat every molecule in a MRE.

>>31904641
Also forgot to mention, they will block your shit for a couple days. They're designed for that so boots aren't leaving shit everywhere.

>>31904695
No they're not, they do that because of the shit food that is so dense and has so much preservatives and shit.

Not so joe doesnt shit, wtf.

>>31904835
Geez what won't they lie to us about?

>>31902734
The things /k/ shows me. Now I'm going to be baking 18th century bread all weekend.

>>31905794
It's a dark hole to go down, I'm fourty episodes into a Japanese documentary series about literally everything about Japan narrated by a half brit/jap

It was useful at first because it had some novel food preservation and intensive agricultural information but now I'm just watching some guy talk about his hot water bottle collection. Though it did give me the idea to put a canteen filled with hot water on the foot of my bed. It's pretty comfy.

>>31906154
Link to the Nip documentary?

>>31906221
Begin Japanology, different channels have different episodes and some the audio cuts out.

>>31904625
Keep some esbit tabs wrapped and foil and plastic and a messkit for long term solid fuel strange.

Or just an alcohol penny stove or gell.