Discover What's Inside a US Military MRE & Its Cost 🍽️

Food for the field, whats in US military MREs and how much do they cost?

MRE simply stands for meal ready to eat. These things need to last for at least 3-5 years and provide armed forces members with everything needed to stay alert in the heat of battle with minimal preparation time.

Inside an MRE you’ll get a Main dish, this can vary wildly from chicken a la king, possibly the most hated dish to pepperoni Pizza, a relatively news edition to the MRE world.

These dishes can be eaten cold as they are all pre cooked.

However, in your pack you’ll also get a FRH or Flameless Ration Heater. You open up the bag, place the Dish in whilst it’s still in it’s packaging and simply add some water. It’ll then fizz away as the heater contains magnesium alloyed with some iron and table salt that reacts with the water to creat heat. Usually heating your entree up to 38°C in 12 minutes without any flame.

You’ll also get an accessory pack including the likes of chewing gum, matchbook, moist towelette but most importantly seasonings. If your main dish tastes bland, which it probably will, you can spice it up, quite literally with some tabasco sauce that’s included in the mre along with some salt, pepper, sugar and creamer.

Although you're a hardened soldier you don’t have to eat with your hands either, they do include a spoon.

On top of this main dish you’ll get a side dish such as rice, corn, mashed potatoes. You’ll also get crackers or bread. Both the side dish and your crackers can be supplemented with peanut butter, jelly or cheese spread that’s also included in the mre.

Of course we can’t forget about dessert, you’ll get the likes of cookies, cake or cobbler as well as some candies such as M&Ms or skittles.

To wash all this down you’ll get some beverage powders such as a gatorade style drink, coffee and cocoa.

So how much do they cost? Well legally you can’t resell the official US Military ones, however, some do appear on the likes so ebay for around $90 per pack of 12 or $7.50 per MRE.The US doesn’t seem to openly state how much they purchase the MREs for but in a letter addressing the issue of MRE Resales, they state that their distributor, DSCP resells MREs to other governments for $52.57 per case which works out at $4.38 per MRE. However, this was back in 2006. Scaled for inflation that works out at around $6.50 per MRE.