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Opened up some 1977 fruitcake and had a taste. The lid was still concaved and gave a nice hiss. The cake was good so I ate all of it. Crackers were great and I think the grape jelly was fine, but it wasnt good enough to bother eating. Ive got tons of these mci's in this condition is anyone is interested.

Wow! A MCI fruitcake that isnt rancid? I heard those go rancid very easily. Anyways thanks for sharing.

Very cool! The fruit is still bright and not black! Gotta be very careful with those Jams though.
Drop me a DM if you're looking to part with any.

I’ve wondered if there are still yet today any MCIs held in climate controlled conditions somewhere in the bowels of the DOD. They should be in good shape.

The quality of ingredients were often actually better than the modern rations. The Cocoa, Coffee, and Beverage powders for example, and it isn’t even close.

Tedster wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 30, 2025 10:40 am

The quality of ingredients were often actually better than the modern rations. The Cocoa, Coffee, and Beverage powders for example, and it isn’t even close.

The biggest problem with this old rations (+40 years) is, the acid of the food, e.g. citric acid, starts to react with the inside of the can and rust them from inside out. Also the food get a very nasty, metallic, taste after a "certain" time. I had to dump several of them. They tasted ok when they were cold, but after heating up they tasted as licking a metal sheet...

Absolutely, canned foods react with the liner. Acidic foods containing tomatoes especially. There are actually different levels of can quality, “store brand” labeled foods are less expensive in part because of a lesser quality can. Pinholes are evident much faster with these. The MCI cans were likely a good quality, but everything has its limits.

They used lead solder to seal cans in those days as well. I was buying MCIs in the 1980s at Army/Navy Surplus for camping and road trips, and they were getting a bit long in the tooth even then. But controlled warehouse storage conditions just above freezing slows this considerably. I think they would be OK.

We were issued “fresh” MREs in the field once in a while, fairly direct from warehouse and they were noticeably better. The pound cakes were amazing when “fresh”, I’d have paid good money for a tall glass of cold Milk.

Tedster wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 31, 2025 9:28 am

We were issued “fresh” MREs in the field once in a while, fairly direct from warehouse and they were noticeably better. The pound cakes were amazing when “fresh”, I’d have paid good money for a tall glass of cold Milk.

We got "fresh" MREs once, I never had a "fresh" cheese spread before so I wasn´t used to that bright, yellow color

Yeah, I liked the Cheese spread. Lots of Vitamins too. They cheaped out on it in recent years I noticed, it just doesn’t taste as good, less cream or butterfat I suppose. And then they reduced the size of the packet from 2oz to 1.5oz. Wankers