Whether you are putting together a disaster kit or gathering nutritional supplies for a camping trip, shelf-stable foods stand out as a viable choice. These products deliver your required nutrients and do so in a way that doesn’t seem bothersome in challenging conditions.
But whenever you get ready to buy these food items, you have multiple options at your disposal. While there are endless brands to choose from, Meal, Ready to Eat (MRE), Wise Company/Readywise, and Mountain House often stand out as the most popular choices.
While all of these options remain quite sought-after, they are not interchangeable. For instance, while MRE Canada is genuinely ready to eat right out of the pack, both Wise Food and Mountain House need you to have fresh water on hand. Having a detailed knowledge of these nuances lets you select your meals according to your requirement, so you don’t feel stranded without a stove or cooking supplies.
To help you learn more about these differences, here’s a lowdown on how MRE meals compare to Wise Company and Mountain House.
MRE Canada Meals Are Wet-packed
MRE started as an idea by the U.S. Department of Defense, which wanted its soldiers to have access to better means of nutrition. The development of MRE started floating around in the early 1960s. But it wasn’t until 1981 that the MRE we currently know and recognize went into production. At the time of writing, it comes in various types of meals that include but are not limited to beef, chicken, pork dishes, and nutritious snacks.
Since the MRE is purpose-built for consumption in the field, it comes with all the ingredients that you need for a meal. It is also wet-packed, which means that you don’t even have to add water to the meal. All you need to do is to open the package and consume your MRE without any additional measures.
With that being said, it is advised that you warm select MRE packages in order to get the most out of their taste. If you want to have a hot meal, you can easily warm your MRE package by accessing a stove or a source of heat. However, if you don’t mind eating your meal as it is, you don’t have to go through these steps. For further details, read now.
On the other hand, both Wise Company/Readywise and Mountain House meals require you to add water to them. It’s because the products that come through these brands are made by freeze-drying and dehydrating processes. Unless you add water to them, they are not ready to eat. While Wise Food recommends warm water and Mountain House explicitly asks for boiling water, this requirement stays in place and puts them behind MRE Canada and its wet-packed mechanism.
MRE May Come With a Heater Pack
Given that MRE is prepared for military personnel, it is packaged with the specific restrictions that troops have to face on the field. Due to this reason, it also comes with an especially-created heater pack that works with the addition of cold water and doesn’t need flames or another source of heat.
This heater or warmer package works through the redox chemical reaction. As such, it uses different elements that go through reduction and oxidation simultaneously. This reaction generates heat when the pack’s components are exposed to water. Due to this reason, this heater pack is also known as a flameless ration heater (FRH).
Once you have added water to your heater, it warms almost immediately. You can then submerge your sealed MRE packet into the heater and consume it after it has been adequately warmed. This particular FRH is only available through MRE brands or their authorized suppliers.
This is why neither Wise Company/Readywise or Mountain House offers such a mechanism. Instead, they require you to find a source for hot water in case you are inclined to have a hot meal. This particular requirement puts them a little behind MRE Canada suppliers.
This means that if you are in a remote location or can’t access a stove, you can use this MRE heater pack that warms water through safe chemical reactions. If you want to have hot meals even during unprecedented circumstances, you can purchase these flameless heaters with your meal packages.
MRE is Only Available Through Authorized Suppliers
Since MRE is manufactured and packaged for military settings, it is not available through standard retailers. Instead, it is only resold by recognized distributors and manufacturers of these meals authorized to offer them to civilians. This is in stark difference to Wise Company and Mountain House, which are retail brands and sell their products through their websites and other platforms.
With that being said, it is not difficult for you to access MRE Canada residents can buy without any hurdles. Through reliable suppliers such as 72hours.ca, you can find your MRE in different dishes with various packaging options. This gives you plenty of flexibility to choose your desired meals in your required quantity.
As long as you purchase your MRE from a reliable vendor, you can rest assured of its reliability and safety. More often than not, MRE packages that are available through authorized sellers come from surplus military stock. This means that they are not close to their expiration date. Instead, they are released after a recent inspection. The inspection itself is done after three years of their actual production.
By making sure that you are purchasing stock that was released after a recent inspection, you can enjoy delicious MREs at your convenience. These sellers may also have MRE heaters available at discounted prices or as a part of larger packages. But you don’t need to buy the flameless heater packs to get your MRE.
As compared to Wise Company/Readywise and Mountain House, MRE brings more comfort, convenience, and reliability to the table. At the same time, the meals remain quite delicious. To summarize: If you want to have a wet-packed meal that doesn’t need you to run from one place to the other to prepare it, MRE is the way to go.
