FAQs,
Frequently Asked Questions

How long do MRE products last - what is their Shelf Life

We guarantee our MRE products to last 5 years from the date of sale, in a room temperature environment (70 deg. F), no matter what the production date.

Of course, the production date is visible on all our entrees and on most side dishes, desserts, and other components.

The production date is a four digit number (date code) on each item, example "5156." In this example the 5 represents the year 2005 (a "4" would represent 2004, etc.), the 156 represents the 156th day of the year. See the top of the individual box or look on pouch for the Date Code.

At this time nearly all of our MRE products were manufactured between 2006 and 2007 and have always been kept in a climate-controlled warehouse to ensure freshness.

The official MRE Shelf Life Chart, created by the Army's Natick Research Lab, gives the whole picture and explains why we are prepared to guarantee our products for 5 years from date of sale. It is clear that the wholesomeness of the products extends well beyond 5 years. To see this chart and a more complete discussion of MRE Shelf LIfe, click here.

Do your MRE Full Meals come with Heater Pouches?

We're prepared to go either way!

Most of our customers prefer MRE Full Meals to come without Heater Pouches. However, many customers do want the Heater Pouches and we find that it depends on your plans and the resources available. If you have a fire or stove in your plans, then the Heater Pouches may be an unnecessary expense.

( We are referring to the standard US Military non-flame, chemical heater pouches which use a simple reaction between water and iron oxide to produce enough heat to heat an MRE food pouch very nicely without any flame or fire of any kind.)

We sell MRE Full Meals both ways in our On-Line Catalog:

1. With Heater Pouches - (Stock #C0092)
2. Without Heater Pouches - (Stock #C9001)

If you want Heater Pouches separately, we sell them by the bundle of 12.

Once again, we aim to please by offering common sense options.

"Would you like your Full Meals with or without Heater Pouches?"

What do you recommend for Food Storage Programs?

1st Recommendation:

Our 72 hour Emergency Kits, one for an individual and one for a family of 4, are the simplest way to make food preparations for a short term emergency. They provide the calories and other nutrients for 3 days of being cut off from normal supply channels. They provide the bare essentials of plastic sporks and accessories such as salt, coffee, sugar, creamer, wet nap, matches and chewing gum. This solution will get you the most for your money.

2nd Recommendation:

If you are familiar with our MRE and MRE-Style (civilian versions using the same high-tech pouches) products, you will be comfortable ordering only the exact meal components you are familiar with. We sell our pouches by the pouch and by the case, so you'll receive exactly what you want. With this solution, you will need to provide all the table setting and condiment items.

With this solution, just order entrees, side dishes, desserts etc. separately and dispense with the extra packaging of the MRE Full Meals. In this case, using the nutritional charts we provide for all the products we sell, you can calculate how many pouches of which items you want to stock.

3rd Recommendation:

Many people like the versitility and self-contained sufficiency of the MRE Full Meals. After all, this is the feeding solution used successfully by the US Armed Forces. It certainly does the job. However, if you have table settings and condiment supplies, the MRE Full Meals may be a less cost efficient solution because they involve lots of labor and extra packaging which adds to the cost.

If this solution is for you, we recommend 2 MRE Full Meals per person per day for adults and 1 MRE Full Meal per day for children under age 12. This will provide approximately 2500 daily calories for an adult and approximately 1250 daily calories for a child.

Calculate the number of Full Meals required and divide by 12 to arrive at the number of MRE Full Meal cases you will require.

Do you ship outside the US?

In the past we have experienced great difficulties in shipping small orders to countries outside the U.S. More often than not the packages have been returned to us by foreign Customs services according to various local protective regulations.

For large container sized orders, we accept responsibility for delivering the products to a US port or airport, but leave the export/import responsibility to the customer.

For smaller orders, if the customer will provide us with a stateside shipping address, we will be glad to ship to that address and leave the exporting/transporting to the customer.

We have many happy customers from Canada and elsewhere who handle the export problem in this way.