By: Samantha Biggers
Updated: August 14, 2019
The MRE Star we tested contained the following items:
Beef Stew With Potatoes and Carrots (290 calories)
Military Crackers (170 calories)
Orange Drink Mix (90 calories)
Hot Sauce
Salt
Pepper
Wet Napkin
Spoon and regular napkin
The beef stew entree tasted as good as any commercially canned stew. It reminded me a lot of Dinty Moore. You can clearly see individual pieces of veggies and meat when you open it and serve it. MREs are designed so that you can eat them right out of the pouch, but we poured our entrees onto plates for the purpose of this comparison article.
Good but not enough of it to get me through a lot of the day.
On left is the crackers included with the MRE Star and on the right is the shortbread that was included in the Warfighter. The crackers in the more expensive MRE Star were fairly bland and starchy tasting. They were similar to a saltless table cracker. I tried to give them to my dog twice and she refused to eat them. To me, it is always a bad sign when my dog will not consume something. The shortbread from the Warfighter MRE tasted pretty good and it was packaged with a moisture absorber which undoubtedly helped maintain the quality over the years it has been sealed up in the MRE.
The orange drink mix came in the MRE Star while the dark purple Raspberry drink mix came in the Warfighter MRE. I liked the Raspberry better since it had more flavor and could be used in a larger volume of water. The orange was kind of bland so I don’t feel like I could add it to more than a pint of water without it tasting too watered down.
Calorie Count: 550 versus 1420!
First of all the amount of calories is ridiculously different. The price of the MRE Star is very high for what you get. My cost was $7.50 + tax for a single MRE. There may be a little discount if you get a case.
If a person is working hard then they would need 4–5 of these to keep up their body condition. That is not a good deal for those trying to put back food.
The actual military Warfighter MRE has enough calories that you would only need two of them to get through a day in most situations.
The important extras in an MRE can make a big difference in your quality of life
One of the big differences between the two MREs was that the Warfighter included items like gum and toilet paper that could help morale out in the field. Toilet paper is something that you really miss when you don’t have it. The MRE Star brand just contains a wet wipe and a tiny napkin.
Hygiene is important to your health so the extra toilet paper, wet wipe, and gum in the Warfighter can really help. While gum is no replacement for brushing your teeth, a sugar-free gum like that included can help clean your mouth a bit. Having enough toilet paper can prevent a variety of problems, and the wet wipe can be used to wash off with.
The Warfighter MRE tasted quite salty but they also included a large salt packet while the MRE Star just had a packet similar to what you get in take-out food containers.
While we both considered the entrees from both plenty salty for us, it is important to remember that when you are sweating a lot and times are tough, you may need a lot of salt. Having some extra salt on hand could make a big difference when your body is under stress. Also if you find other food to eat or forage for food, extra salt could help improve the flavor.
MRE Star includes a very small salt pack while the Warfighter contains a lot of extra salt that might come in handy at times.
Coffee
The MRE Star had no caffeinated beverage. The Warfighter MRE included two cups of Irish Cream flavored coffee. The flavor is quite sweet and not what I am used to for sure but it would be better than nothing. Having a little caffeine to help with fatigue can be very helpful.
Manufacture dates and codes
The MRE Star simply said it was good for up to 5 years if kept sealed. That is fine but I could not find any manufacturing date or expiration date stamp on the package. So how long is 5 years? Was the MRE made in 2018 or 2019? I could not find a way to see how much shelf life was left at the time of purchase.
The Warfighter MRE has a stamped code that you can look up online to see when it was manufactured. While a simple date would be easier, at least there is something I can go by to determine how much shelf life is left on my discount MRE. Without a date or stamp, I would be hesitant to buy any food in quantity for storage or SHTF.
It is important to note that MREs technically do not expire, they just go down in quality. Just because they are past the recommended shelf life doesn’t mean it is not okay to eat. There have been many cases where MREs were eaten many years after the recommended date.
How you store MREs is a major factor in how well they maintain quality and how long they will last. High heat, as well as freezing temperatures, can all have a negative impact on your shelf life.
Always check dates and codes before purchasing
If you run into a good deal on MREs you should take the time to double-check the date of manufacture. You can get some exceptional deals sometimes but part of the reason for this can be that the MREs are an older manufacture date so technically they have less shelf life.
I am not saying that it is not worth it to buy them necessarily, but that you should use them up faster and make sure you are getting a good enough price to make up for the fact that they are older.
Here is a link to a code checker so you can verify dates. There should be a stamped code at the end of your MRE.
My experience using MRE heaters
This comparison is my first time using MRE heaters. Both MREs had the same heater or so it seems. While the instructions say to give them 10–15 minutes to heat your food, I think that is awfully hopeful. In the case of the Warfighter MRE, the entrees were so large it was hard to fit them in the heater. I have to say that the larger the entrees, the longer you can expect it to take.
After 15 minutes the food in both the Warfighter and the MRE Star was lukewarm. It will take the cold edge off but if you want your food really hot before you eat it, you are going to be waiting a while. Maybe I did it wrong or just got impatient. I will be trying out others and making a note of the results of heating entrees.
Personally, if I was in a rough situation, I might not even bother using a heater unless it was so cold outside that I really needed to add some heat to a very cold MRE.
A trick that Matt read about for heating up an MRE when it is sunny and a bit warm is to just leave the entrees in the thick plastic coating and sit it in the sun to warm. Solar energy can heat up an entree pretty fast. Consider how hot the water in your garden hose is after laying in the sun for a short period of time and you will see how well this could work.
Conclusion
So far, civilian MREs appear to be a bit of a rip off that do not provide adequate calories or value. I cannot justify spending nearly $8 on 550 calories. Perhaps some of the other MRE Stars contain more but they would have to do a lot better for me to even consider them for any emergency. I have some other MRE Stars to test that are packaged more similarly to the Warfighter MREs. I am hopeful that these will be better even though they cost about the same as the MRE Star we taste-tested in this post.
I would advise either making your own fast meals to seal up or making an effort to find true military MREs. I will be testing out other MREs in the future and showing you how to put together your own MRE style rations.
For those on specialized diets or that have food allergies, I don’t recommend a lot of MREs. There are a lot of ingredients that a lot of people are sensitive to. If you are not used to eating typical commercial foods and ingredients, it will probably take some time for your body to adjust to a sudden diet change if you have to eat MREs for any length of time.
The day of and the day after we tested these we didn’t feel that great. The meals were very salty. We had parched mouths all night and they made us bloated.