MREInfo.com

i happend to stumble on some US Military versions of MREs *ahem* and i read on this site that they did NOT stamp packing dates on the till '03 and yes i noticed that i had a few with printed info on them like :

" MENU NO.18 TURKEY BREST WITH
GRAVY AND POTATOES 3254 09:27 16"

and yes those are the dates. but i did have some that did not have this information on them and so i figured they were pre-'03. and i wanted to find out how old they were. so i tried the menu vs. production year method and it didnt help too well. and so i went on and placed them back in the boxes and i noticed something as the packaging reflected some light. there were stamped numbers on the outer packing. not printed but stamped. they read "3205 11" or "3253 8" and etc. i have a bunch. Are these dates? try and find them and you'll see what im talking about. or maybe you all know about it already. but i was just wondering if these are possible packaging dates? or what not?

Hi HellRider - welcome to the forums!

You are right about those datecodes - whether they're printed or stamped, those seem to be the dates when the MREs were produced. As near as I can tell, around 2003, the different MRE producers (Ameriqual, Sopakco, Wornick) started experimenting with different ways of marking the outside MRE bag with a datecode. Some stamped the dates in hard-to-read form and some printed the dates and menu item info on the front of the bag.

As of 2005, it looks like they might have settled on printing IN BIG NUMBERS, the datecode on the back of the MRE bag. I think I posted a picture of one of these bags a while back but I don't recall which message it might have been in.

yeah i thought so. i think i prefer the ones printed in huge font better. haha. thanks for the info.