DIY MRE

The MRE or Meal Ready to Eat Has been the go to combat ration since 1975 for the US military.  Each MRE provides an average of 1250 calories(13% protien, 36% fat and 51% carbohydrates) and 1/3 of the military recommended daily allowance of vitamins and minerals. A full days worth of meals would require three MREs. (I got this information here MRE INFO)  Bulk alone in my opinion makes them a poor choice for a 72 hour bug out bag. Nine MREs will take up a huge portion of your bag.  Another consideration is cost. A quick google search shows a case going for $83 plus shipping on Amazon.  If you were to purchase this case of MREs each has a price tag of $6.92,  three of them total $20.75 and a 72 hour supply would run you $62.75.

Putting together your own MRE will save you both money and valuable bag space. Making your own MRE is as simple as gathering what you want for a days worth of food and stuffing it in a bag. I used a vacuum sealer for mine.  Every item in the one we will be working with here is prepackaged for both expediency and simplicity. The drink mixes, sniffle pack(pills), tea bag, condiment packages and bullion cubes I scrounged around the pantry for so they will not show up in the final cost we will talk about in a bit. I purchased all of the rest of the food at discount grocery stores for very reasonable prices.

Here is what I put in one. It contains 3 meals plus snacks. 

             

The finished package measures 9"x7" and is 2 1/2" thick

Three day supply stacked on end all  three of these MREs are identical with the exception of small differences in the package shape and dimensions

Contents:

Breakfast

Instant oatmeal packet x2

Jiff to go peanut butter 1.5 oz

Powerbar Harvest energy Double chocolate twist

Snack

Snickers bar

Emerald almond pack

Jiff to go peanut butter 1.5 oz

Lunch

Starkist salmon creations pack

Ramen noodles

Ritz Crackerfuls 

Snack

Powerbar Performance Energy Peanut  Butter Flavor

Chicken of the Sea Sardines 

Almond packet

Dinner

Old el paso tortila stuffers carne asada steak

Jack links beef & cheddar

Misc


Bullion Cubes  These cubes make a tasty broth all by themselves but they really shine if you're fortunate enough to forage edible plants or harvest game and make a stew.

PLEASE DON'T DO NOT EAT A WILD PLANT  UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING, IT  CAN KILL YOU!!!
Oinion     x2
Cilantro   x1
Chicken  x1
Tomato   x1


Condiment packages:
Ketchup x1
sugar      x4
salsa       x2
honey     x2
Single serve drink mix x4

Sniffle Pack 
zip lock bag  x1
Tylenol x2
Excedrin x2
Benadril x2
Tums extra strengh x6
Daily Multi vitamin x 1

Now that we have our MRE ready to go lets talk about cost and nutrition.

 MRE Nutrition I will be referring to this spread sheet I made up.

COST

Like I said before to keep the cost of these mres down I did my shopping at discount stores. This dictated a lot of the contents as I was looking to make these as cheap as possible. You can look on the spread sheet I linked for a cost breakdown per item. I came up with a cost of $6.43 per MRE. A three day supply totals at $19.29! That is less than the cost of a single days worth of the commercial MREs.

Calorie Content and Nutrition


Again referring to the spread sheet we can see the the breakdown of individual food items.

Calories: % Formula Key

TC Total calories

Total: 3130 F Grams of fat

Calories From Fat: 39.97% Cb Grams of carbs

Calories From Carbs: 44.60% P Grams of Protien

Calories From Protein: 4.54% S Grams of sugar

Calories From Sugars: 3.64%


To figure out the percentages you need to know that fat equals nine calories per gram.
multiply the total grams of fat by nine then divide that number by the total calories of the MRE multiply that number by 100 and you get the percentage.


F x 9 / TC x 100 = % calories from fat 139 x9 /3130 x100 = 39.97


Protein,Carbohydrates and sugars all equal 4 calories per gram so you can simply plug in those numbers intothe same formula to derive their percentage.

• If you add up the above percentages they don't come out to 100% I'm not sure where the missing 8.25% is but I believe this is close enough
• One very alarming statistic came to light as I was gathering the data from the nutritional information on the item packaging. This MRE contains an astronomical 6640 MG of sodium. This to say the least is not good.
• The contents of these mres were bought at discount stores most of the items are either close to or already beyond the pull date so in theory the shelf life is much shorter 
• Protein seems a bit low to me but I have not yet looked at the RDA so I am not positive it actually is 

When its all said and done I have enjoyed making these and I feel some sense of accomplishment in having at least a small part of my BOB complete. These MREs are not the most healthy or nutritious meals a person could put together but they are certainly better than nothing. In the future I will be working on improving them. Home made meals dried in a food dryer comes to mind both to reduce the sodium content and overall weight of the package.

This has been a great project and along the way I managed to learn a thing or two I hope you have as well thanks for reading.