Survival Food - Freeze Dried & MRE

The Defense Logistics Agency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are shipping 660,000 military Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) to Kentucky and Arkansas storm victims. The MREs, designed for use by the military, are safe to eat and will replace the commercial meal kits that have been distributed to the storm victims.

All military MREs are safe. While many of the meals contain peanut butter, they do not contain peanut butter products recalled by the Food and Drug Administration, according to the manufacturers of the MREs. DLA’s Defense Distribution Center, New Cumberland, Pa., is arranging shipment of the meals, scheduled for delivery today.

In addition, 1.5 million self-contained packaged meals, a commercial version of the military MREs, are being readied for distribution to FEMA. Although some of these meals also contain peanut butter, the manufacturers have certified that the meals do not contain products recalled by the FDA.

The recall has prompted the Defense Logistics Agency and its industry partners to increase surveillance of the peanut butter suppliers to ensure the products are safe to consume.

The Defense Logistics Agency provides the military services, other federal agencies, and joint and allied forces with a variety of logistics, acquisition and technical services. These include procuring and distributing food, spare parts, clothing, medical supplies, construction material and fuel. Headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Va., DLA is the one source for nearly every consumable item, whether for combat readiness, emergency preparedness or day-to-day operations. For more information on DLA visit www.dla.mil

SOURCE Defense Logistics Agency

There is a story on the US Army news site telling how Iron Chef Roberto Donna took 2 MREs and turned them into “five-star, restaurant-quality dishes”.

While at first this sounds too good to be true, it turns out that it is. They were allowed to use 5 ingredients and unlimited spices and herbs.

Once you read the story it is clear that the dream of just spicing up or adding some simple ingredient to enhance your MRE flavor is just a dream.

There is not much practical ideas you could use for survival food unless you give up the convenience and ready to eat benefits plus storing a whole lot more of other foods.

If they could have limited themselves to one or two ingredients requiring little preparation it would have been more useful. However basically they are really preparing a new dish with some MRE thrown in for the exercise.

Iron Chef gets creative with MREs

One online store I have found to have the lowest prices on MRE cases is MREfoods.com

MREfoods has full MRE meals from A-pack, MRE Star, and Sopakco.

MREfoods is one of the few online retailers to offer free shipping to the continental US for MRE cases.

They also sell Mountain House freeze dried food pouches and 6 packs of #10 cans. They do not have special pricing for 3 month or one year supply packages.

According to their website;

MREfoods.com is part of a non-profit organization that provides services to disabled individuals within our community. Net proceeds from our sales help fund the programs for these individuals with disabilities.

They are located in Evansville, Indiana.

The US army has shown new MRE and new “first strike rations” today, the associated press and ArmyTimes reports.

The demonstration featured new menu items for “Meal, Ready-to-Eat” and “First Strike Rations”.

The new items won’t be available anytime soon, with buffalo wings slated for release in 2009, and southwest beef and blackbeans coming out in 2010.

The first strike ration for more mobile forces are less bulky and lighter. They are scheduled to be released this summer. The meals are packed with high-protein, high-carbohydrate foods upto 3000 calories to provide energy for fast moving forces.