MRE means "Meals Ready to Eat."   

     The US military's food scientists came up with this great little high tech food kit, using the best of several new food preservation technologies, and named the kits "Meals Ready to Eat," because of their pre-cooked condition and their easy-open packaging.

     "Meals Ready to Eat" soon became simply "MREs."  (Americans certainly like to shorten and simplify their language!)

     Oh, but we're getting ahead of ourselves in the "Meals from Outer Space" story!

     MREs were born on Earth, but grew up on Apollo flights to the moon, in Skylab floating workshops and on every US space Shuttle flight from Enterprise to challenger.

     In the 1970's retort pouches (the popular name for thermostabilized, laminated food pouches named after the retort steam cooker) were put th their first real test by the US space Program. The Space Program was looking for delicious, easy to prepare, "normal" food that wouldn't increase human stress the way that freeze dried food and "toothpaste tube food" sometimes did.

     More than any other technology, retort pouches have satisfied the program's needs. And so, over 30 years ago, retort pouches found a home at NASA, where all their unusual characteristics were much appreciated. They have been successfully feeding astronauts on the moon and in flight ever since.

     In the 1980's the US military research labs, which had hatched the pouch technology in the first place, took the lead in its use and development. The new pouches enabled the Defense Dept. to upgrade its entire field ration program to retort pouches, from the earlier, less workable technologies of canning and freeze drying.

     Over the past 20 years our the same research labs which invented them, have continually upgraded the taste and nutritional profile of the pouched meals, which have become better known as "MRE pouches" than as "retort pouches."

     Also over the past 20 years, our military has come to depend on the MRE Full Meal kits (made up of MRE pouches) for most of their operations. Hundreds of millions of MRE Full Meals have been produced and eaten. They have gone to Grenada, to the war on drugs, to fight forest fires in Alaska and bring relief after hurricanes. They fed Desert Shield and Desert Storm and they've just done the job again in Afghanistan.

     While all this was happening, Resourceful Foods Co. and its successor, Long Life Food Depot, opened and continually upgraded a clearing house for MRE Contract Overruns from the MRE ration program. In recent years this has expanded into a full fledged "Smorgasbord" of MRE style, full moisture pouched food.

      The Big Breakthrough was the Pouch!

     The big breakthrough was the POUCH.  Its three special layers allow the food to be sealed and then cooked inside and never exposed to the air again.  Thus, the food is sterilized in the pouch and then blocked from future contamination. This condition delivers an almost unbelievable shelf life, and food which retains its natural moisture and juice. The resulting taste and texture are much more realistic and naturally delicious than those of dehydrated and freeze dried food.

    The big difference is the TASTE,but look at what else the MRE pouches give:
 

What is in an MRE Full Meal

     We build our MRE Full Meals with all the Basics...and we refuse
to compromise on these basic parts, unless the customer requests it.

     Over the years, all real MREs have contained these basic
elements or components.   Ours do too.
 
   
Outer Bag and Spoon     Entree              Side Dish         Dessert     Crackers or Bread     Spread        Beverage Base   Accessory Pack

    We allow YOU to make the decision to buy individual components or pre-made kits like the 72 Hour Emergency Kits or the MRE Full Meals. 

     Our 72 Hour Emergency Kits, which concentrate on main entrees, are the best buy for emergency preparedness.  

     We also sell all the meal components separately, so you can study your needs and order the meal components you prefer.      

     Either way, you can order with assurance that food experts with 30 years of field research have carefully designed these meals for nutrition, familiarity, and TOTAL convenience!

     We sell our pouched food by the pouch, the case, the pallet, or the truckload. 

How to Heat MREs.

U. S. soldiers and thousands of Emergency Relief workers aroundthe world have been forced to eat MREs cold. They weren't intended to beeaten cold exactly, but one of their great advantages is that they canbe.

MREs have served their purpose well with no reheating in personal emergencies,family emergencies, and city or state emergencies (earthquakes, toxic spills,hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, floods,etc.).

In most situations, however, there is time and opportunity to heat thisfood. Here are the best ways:

1) Boiling for 3-5 min. - take the pouch from outer cartonand place it in clean boiling water heated from available sources: fire,heating tabs, or stoves.

2) Placing next to a non-liquid heat source: radiator, engine block,or even the human body. Be careful of burning or melting the pouch if theheat source is too hot.

3) Placing in a chemical, non-flame heater. There are a couple kinds of civilian market heaters for retort pouches. One of these, Zestotherm, has even been adapted to Olive Drab format for military use and officially called the "MRE Heater". We sell these in bundles of 12 and also sell a version of our MRE Full Meals which includes an MRE Heater Pouch in each meal.

4) Microwave 2-3 min. after removing from the pouch. The pouch containsan aluminum, non-microwaveable layer which gives the pouch such a longshelf life.

MRE Shelf Life:

    A main concern in the development and testingof rations for our armed forces has always been SHELF LIFE. An amazingamount of research has been done in the development of the retort pouchand the MRE to determine the exact length of time and the exact conditionsunder which it is safe to store the entrees and the side dishes.
    The main thing we have to work with is the shelflife chart (shown below) compiled by the Army's Natick Research labs. Thisgives a very good overview and summary of all the findings gathered fromall the testing of MRE products. However, it leaves many questions unanswered.Here are additional facts and observations we have gathered about MRE shelflife:

    1) The shelf life ratings shown in the chart belowwere determined by taste panels, panels of "average" people, mostly officepersonnel at the Natick labs. Their opinions were combined to determinewhen a particular component or, in this case, the entire MRE ration, wasno longer acceptable.

    2) The shelf life determinations were made solelyon the basis of taste, as it was discovered that acceptable nutritionalcontent and basic product safety would extend way beyond the point wheretaste degradation would occur. This means that MREs would be safe andgive a high degree of food value long after the official expiration ofthe products as determined by taste.

    3) MRE pouches have been tested and redesigned wherenecessary according to standards much more strict than for commercial food.They must be able to stand up to abuse tests such as obstacle course traversalsin field clothing pockets, storage outdoors anywhere in the world, shippingunder extremely rough circumstances (such as by half trackhalf over rockyterrain), 100% survival of parachute drops, 75% survival of free-fall airdrops, severe repetitive vibration (1 hour at 1 G vibration), 7,920 individualpouch drops from 20 inches, and individual pouches being subjected to astatic load of 200 lbs for 3 minutes.

    4) Freezing an MRE retort pouch does not destroythe food inside, but repeated freezing increases the chances that the stretchingand stressing of the pouch will cause a break in a layer of the laminatedpouch. These pouches are made to withstand 1,000 flexes, but repetitivefreezing does increase the failure rate by a small fraction of a percent.
 

MRE Storage Life Chart