LongLife Foods

[rationtin440]

I'm just curious if anyone has any experience dealing with LongLife food http://www.longlifefood.com and if so what you think of them. I may be getting a decent income tax refund and I'm trying to find the best company to deal with for a few cases of MREs, thanks for any imput!

[Ruleryak]

I've bought tons of UGRs from them - it was always a really good deal. They don't sell the trays individually anymore though, you have to buy a whole pallet at a time. As for the MREs -the individual items are definitely a better deal when you buy in bulk of course, but overall it's pretty fair. I'd recommend them, although I also recommend theepicenter.com if you haven't taken a look there. Certain items can be a great deal, but not necessarily everything.

[rationtin440]

Thanks Ruleryak! I'd like to get some more MREs at some point, hopefully with some of my tax refund, but the army surplus stores in my area which sell them are not real trustworthy. They sell MREs which are several years old (2002-2003) and being they're surplus, who do I go after if My wife and I get sick before tshtf? At least with longlife and these other companies, I don't have to worry about how long the cases were sitting in a hummer in the desert or festering in an underground bunker in the middle-east.

[SierraTangoDelta]

Man, I have nothing but good things to say about LLF. Ruleryak said what I was going to say, but yeah! They're great! *Insert Tony The Tiger* Highly recommend them!

[RockyRaab]

I've not heard anything bad about The Epicenter, either. Their review vids on youtube are pretty honest, if predictable. Their selection of products is incredible, prices reasonable.

http://theepicenter.com/

[rationtin440]

Thanks for replies guys! I'll look into the epicenter as well since Itoo have heard good things about them.

[cavguy]

I have ordered from The Epicenter and Long Life Foods, both were positive experiences, back when I ordered The Epicenter had better deals on fudge brownies and a Tray Packs.

[rationtin440]

I'm curious about the tray packs' shelf life, back in the day when we ate them I had not really considered someday storing them for shtf.

[cavguy]

From Natick.army.mil;

Shelf life of the UGR-H&S was dropped from three years to 18 months at 80 degrees F to allow for more commercially-available items.

Not sure if they are talking about the older metal meals or poly trays.

From Epicenter;

Stated shelf life is 3 years.

These are the poly trays, essentially the UGR-E (express) entree's.

Now we all know these things last alot longer than that! But I imagine taste and color will be effected by aging. The meals always tasted funny to me anyway. The dessert items like the cakes last a LONG time trust me (I have had some from 2005).

[bushnut]

Last month (Dec '13) I decided to buy a box of 12 MRE's from Long Life Foods and my experience was really disappointing and just thought I'd share it here. It took a couple weeks to receive my order but they were ordered towards the end of the month and wasn't expecting them overnight or anything. I didn't notice this until much later, but there is a dated label on the outside of the packing box on one of the sides. However, not having seen the label I opened the box and reviewed the contents to check which entrees I received and noticed that the individual MRE's are not dated on the outside. I opened one of the MRE's and checked the date codes (thanks to this site) on the little cardboard containers. To my surprise, the main Chicken Fajita entree was made in 2010. It was disappointing because I was expecting them to be more recent.. like 2013 dates. I contacted LLF to return my shipment because I wanted to keep these on hand for an emergency. They said that they were sorry and they must have used parts from a pallet of returned MRE's that had expired that they recently accepted back from a government customer. They did send a new box of MRE's and while I appreciate that and understand stuff happens, it was my first purchase with them and I don't think I will be buying anything from LLF again. So, buyer beware and no matter where you buy your MRE's from, open one up to test it and ensure the dates are what you're expecting.