If you’re the sort of person who likes prepping for doomsday or even just enjoy ensuring you’re packed up for a long camping trip, then you’re already familiar with MREs. Meals Ready to Eat are entire meals with enough calories to keep a person going. They consist of an entree, one to two side dishes, one or two drinks, and desert of some kind.
The exact number of calories, as well as the types and amount of each food, depends on which MRE you’re using. And that’s before you take into account the difference between civilian and military MREs.
Since more people are wanting to know about XMRE, a specific brand of MREs available on the civilian market, reviewing them makes a good way to explain the difference between the two.
How To Buy MREs
Military MREs are only available to the military. Given that, how do civilians wind up purchasing MREs?
Military MREs sold in civilian markets are generally leftover requisitions or purchased directly from the PX. Since there several ways a person in the military may wind up with MREs, and they’re allowed to keep them since their food products, discharged soldiers will often sell what they have left over.
Military MREs aren’t allowed to be sold retail to the civilian market. That’s the first major difference. XMRE is a civilian MRE. MREs are designed to stay edible and nutritional no matter where they go, the truth is things get damaged over time. MREs that have sat out in the hot Iraqi sun for three days probably won’t taste very good.
With a civilian MRE, you have full control over your options. You can also decide how many calories you want. This helps you have a great deal of control over your options.
That said, it would be unreasonable to act as if XMREs aren’t expensive. Civilian MREs are going to be since they have to pass civilian regulations on health and safety. While military MREs have to pass an equally rigorous standard when given to the troops, there’s no oversight on what condition they have to be in when sold.
With XMRE, most of their products come in packages of 6. They do sell individual MREs (though not of every type, the Blue Line being a good example), but that’s generally cost prohibitive if you want to supply a good prep shelter.
Cost wise, you’re going to pay at least $100 for a case of 12. In addition, the higher the calorie count, the higher the price and the fewer the packages. Their 3000XT MRE, for example, comes in only a 4 pack. However, that product is a 24 hour MRE, meant to last an entire day rather than one meal.
So the prices might be a little higher than with military MREs, but you’ll get much better quality.
Types Of Meals In XMRE And Military MREs
If you’d like to look up the exact types of food and number of calories in a military MRE, you can’t. The U.S. government doesn’t allow that information to be shared with civilians.
XMRE gives you a huge amount of control. They have meals from 1,000 calories to 3,000 calories, and some of those are designed to last for 24 hours. While a military MRE will tell you what’s in the package on the front, there’s no guarantee it will be enough.
As if that wasn’t enough, XMRE offers Halal meals, as well as the option of making your own MRE out of available foods. XMRE gives you more options than even the other civilian MRE sellers, and that option can be incredibly beneficial. After all, you never know who you’re going to have with you when the bomb drops.
So if you’ve been wondering how XMRE holds up to military MREs or even other civilian MREs, now you know. These meals ready to eat are top notch, and you’re assured the ability to get what you want and need.
