What is the best Civilian MRE (Opinion) ?

[DonJa]

So, everyone will have different criteria for the best civilian MRE in their opinion: weight, number of calories, number of vegetarian menu options, etc. But in terms of quality and overall preference in terms of taste, what is your favorite ? Use a 1-10 rating upon:

1. Ameriqual A-Pack
2. Meal Kit Supply
3. MRE Star
4. Sopakco Sure-Pak
5. Wornick/Eversafe
6. XMRE

[WorkmanMRE]

Ameriqual is my favorite with the double wrapping.
There products have held up the best for me. The civilian mre company's like xmre, I have had mixed experiences. The most obvious was the outer inspection date being a year or two older than the components inside. Like the peanut butter was a 2013 and the entree was 2014 and the inspection date was 2015.....hmmmm. But otherwise the civilian company's seem to have more accesable MREs. I don't have a 1-10 for ya, but ameriqual is a solid 8 in my book. (canadian, norwegian, and British are all 10/10 soooo good!)
Hope that helps a bit...

[DonJa]

Ameriqual is my favorite with the double wrapping.
There products have held up the best for me. The civilian mre company's like xmre, I have had mixed experiences. The most obvious was the outer inspection date being a year or two older than the components inside. Like the peanut butter was a 2013 and the entree was 2014 and the inspection date was 2015.....hmmmm. But otherwise the civilian company's seem to have more accesable MREs. I don't have a 1-10 for ya, but ameriqual is a solid 8 in my book. (canadian, norwegian, and British are all 10/10 soooo good!)
Hope that helps a bit...

Oh, I've had them all at some point, but never thought to do a side-by-side comparison. I had my own opinions on each (I would find it hard to believe that MRE Star or XMRE ever come back as the highest scoring examples), but was interested to know what others thought.

[WorkmanMRE]

I like your list, Its in good order!

[steve1989]

1. Ameriqual A-Pack - - 5.5 out of 10
2. Meal Kit Supply - - 8.5 out of 10
3. MRE Star - - 6 out of 10
4. Sopakco Sure-Pak - - 3 out of 10
5. Wornick/Eversafe - - 4.5 out of 10
6. XMRE - - 2 out of 10

[DonJa]

My scores:

1. Ameriqual A-Pack —> 8 out of 10
2. Meal Kit Supply —> 7.5 out of 10
3. MRE Star —> 3 out of 10
4. Sopakco Sure-Pak —> 5 out of 10
5. Wornick/Eversafe —> 6 out of 10
6. XMRE —> 2 out of 10

That’s with a ‘10’ being equivalent to the best US DoD MRE and a ‘1’ being equivalent to worse than what I could cobble together from old/expired accessory packs and whatever I could buy for $2.50 at 7-Eleven. Others may use different criteria.

[Simon2002mre]

I've only ever had a couple a-pacs and XMRE,
I really like the XMREs but the a-pacs are pretty amazing too!

[gschultz9]

1. Ameriqual A-Pack — 6 out of 10
2. Meal Kit Supply — 8 out of 10
3. MRE Star — N/A
4. Sopakco Sure-Pak — 6 out of 10
5. Wornick/Eversafe — N/A
6. XMRE — 7 out of 10

That’s with a ‘10’ being equivalent to the best US DoD MRE and a ‘1’ being equivalent to worse than what I could cobble together from old/expired accessory packs and whatever I could buy for $2.50 at 7-Eleven. Others may use different criteria.

I think that's a GREAT list of criteria DonJa! I'll go with that!

This is a nice idea for a thread, and I JUST stumbled on it now. Sorry for the late reply. First off, as much as I hate to say this, I've NEVER had an Eversafe or MRE Star MRE yet ( ). So I can't really put a number in for them. I put Meal Kit Supply and XMRE at the top for a couple reasons. I kind of think of them like Avis, they "try harder" than the "Big 3" of Ameriqual, Sopakco and Wornick. I appreciate the fact that the three government contractors bother to put out a civilian product for people, but I kind of feel like they don't put a ton of effort into them (since they already have a nice, profitable gig with the government and all). They certainly have a high quality product (since they have direct access to genuine MRE components). But they tend to have limited numbers of entrees, which can lead to menu burnout pretty quickly. THey also seem to have slightly smaller menus than true MREs (more in line with TOTMs I suppose). MKS and XMRE are the true independents here (along with MRE Star I suppose, but like I said I haven't tried them yet), and they need to find ways to compete with the big guys (and each other). I think that in the end the competition is good for the consumer (us). I've always felt that MKS puts out a good product (their old FRHs were kind of lame, but they responded by replacing them with standard FRHs. XMRE is newer and I think had some growing pains at first. Their first MREs were not very good (to be honest). Too dependent on peanut butter as a spread. But they learned over time and kept putting out better and better product (expanding the spreads they use and even packaging some of their own snacks and desserts). I believe that XMRE is the only commercial MRE manufacturer that included a Hot Beverage Bag--a small touch, but I think a very nice one!

Alright, I suppose that's a lot more information than you were bargaining for (and there's still more to say, but I'll spare you). I suppose that now I need to find myself some MRE Star and EverSafe MREs to try out!

[Vifam7]

I have a couple of MRE Star packs that I can trade.

I've tried 2 of MRE Star's menu (1. Cheese Tortellini with Marinara sauce / 2. Pasta with Marinara sauce and veggie crumbles) and they were OK. One thing I noticed with both menus were that they both contained the same 2 snacks (sugar cookies & dried fruit mix) and same candy (Smarties).