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Hi, I came here off youtube after some mre reviews.

I've never eaten one before and would be grateful if you could give me some advice of what to look out for.

Thank you^.^

Just use your "5" senses.

If it looks, smells, "seems" suspicious - don´t eat it.
If a meet containing pouch is "swollen", do not eat it. Botulism causes pouches to "swell" and get you real severely sickness.

If do you ate anything, that causes you a "numb" mouth/tongue, don´t swallow it!

Do you have a cat? Let it smell on it. Usually cats don´t eat spoiled food.

Any butter/oil containing food (nuts, peanut butter crackers etc) loves to get rancid after a certain time.

The coffee turns into "gun powder" after ~ +5 years

Like Housil said, use your senses. Check for any telltale signs of any small leakage. If it's an MRE retort pouch, put a little pressure on it to see if there are any signs of a pinhole. And like he said, if it appears to be swollen, discard it! When sampling, chew it a little and hold it in your mouth for a minute, if it tingles or causes any numbness like Housil mentioned, spit it out and don't eat it.

Since you asked about food poisoning, here's a link to the Mayo Clinic page about different things that can cause food poisoning:

http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-cond ... n-20031705

Rations are pretty darn safe to eat though, if they have stored and handled properly, and you use common sense. They are essentially sterile as long as the pouch remains intact and oxygen doesn't get in. There can be some degradation in quality / taste over time due to the normal chemical breakdown of ingredients, but it can be safe to eat for many, many years beyond it's "warranty" date. Myself and many others on here have eaten / reviewed rations that were 27 years old and sometimes older, and found them to be perfectly fine. The true military rations go through a pretty rigorous quality assurance program to ensure that they are safe, and a lot of amazing scientific minds have put years of research into the packaging that keeps them shelf stable for so long. After all, if you give contaminated rations to troops and render them combat ineffective, that would be really bad, and no MRE contractor wants to be the one that caused that.

Go slow, use those five senses, and have fun! Old rations can be like opening a time capsule, which is part of why we like to share our experiences with them on here. Good luck!

Thank you for the advice guys=]