I love how when he tries to coffee, he smiles and says that it was the worst coffee he'd ever tasted, but when he drank the chocolate shake, he damn near spewed it back out and proceeded to say it was actually pretty good.
Here I’ll give you my recommendation since I’m currently serving in the Marines. This was not an accurate taste test lol. He didn’t heat up anything properly. The key here is heating up the pizza and cheese spread and laying down on the pizza. Warm up the cobbler as it’s actually one of the better tasting deserts. Trust me, when you’re in the field, this tastes like a 5 star meal. Civilians need to try these when you haven’t eaten for hours and have been humping 5-10 miles. It’ll change your mind for sure how these taste then lol.
i think its fine tbh. a lot of times my uncle who served told me that sometimes in camp he had a certain amount of time to eat so eating them cold was the fastest way. had a few of them cold myself and i say *a few* taste good cold. like the spegetii pack@@StephenJ117
Glad to see you tried an actual MRE we'd be given out in the field. I see a lot of people trying third party MRE's off camping/prepper sites and stuff that are much better / fancier lol. Pizza is a bit newer than my time, but you got the general gist of how our meals were with this. I always felt like it was too much sweet stuff too but at the end of the day we're burning a ton of calories and sorta just demolish these things for fuel anyway. I don't know about other people, but in my case most of us just kind of ate them cold straight out the bag to save time and get on to whatever tf we had to do for the day lol. There were only a few jackpot MREs like chili mac where I'd take the time to make an elaborate heated meal if I could
Yeah, same here. The pizza one is overrated and tbh the beef stew one or the shredded beef with bbq sauce is the best ones but I still never took the time to heat them lol.
@@andycalhoun6471 Not sure when you served, but this is well-representative of what I had hundreds of times 2011-2015. Packaging is exactly the same. LRP's were the only other iteration of MRE I saw that would be significantly different and they were giving those out for some special forces guys during a training exercise.
Is it true that they came out in 1981 as he said, i for some reason thought they originated as early as WW2 even earlier, or did i miss something here? Ive seen so many MRE vids, some are lame as, and being as i havent served, reading your comment was refreshing such as i was in a way that watching something Authentic for the story and knowledge now.
@@RobertJ77 Hi Robert! I personally don't know specifics about the release years for some of these. What I can say is that they go through iterations and design changes, so as an example if you look up "C-Rations" you'll see what we used around WW2 and the Wikipedia would include years and stuff like that. They had tins and I'm assuming way less variety than we do today. The "MRE" we have today is its own iteration of ration, and usually is characterized by these big brown bags and lots of plastic packaging. We also update this one more frequently, as you can see there's pizzas and stuff now whereas even just ~12-13 years ago I wasn't having that.
I’m DEFINITELY down to see him do a kind of, mini series of mre’s from around the world. The Korean one would be a good start lol. Seeing these every once in a while would be dope
No joke, this is probably the only BenDeen video that I've seen from the very first second to the very last... no pauses, no cuts 😂 it really was fascinating to see what MREs look like. Of course, a pretty cool video as usual. "Nice salt." Classic! Love you man. Keep doing your thing.
As an army soldier who has eaten probably over a thousand of these, you’re supposed to keep the cardboard on the outside so it retains the heat when heating your food. Kind of like an insulator
Try a Korean MRE !!! would love to see your impression :D and compare it to its civilian counterpart ! maybe have both the "MRE version" and "version you can order" and compare the two meals and see how close they are in terms of looks/flavour/smell/texture!
the trick is to put the pizza slice in the heater with the cheese spread then put the melted cheese onto the heated pizza and add the crackers to the bottom of the pizza to have a crunch , sorry in osut during chow i would always end up with a pizza slice and then trade your cobbler for a beef stick so u can have a bit of a pepperoni by slicing it with your cac or peanut butter to put on the oatmeal
If you ever get the chance try the ones with blueberry cobbler it’s amazing and I love the chili Mac ones! I ate them in basic training I also like the meatballs and spaghetti ones
As someone who was in the army you damn right that jalapeno cheese spread was like the holy grail 😂 we would be trading all types of snacks just for the crackers and jalapeno cheese combo.
Hey Ben I'd be more than happy to send you a couple different types of USA MREs, I have a couple boxes full and think it'd be dope to see you try some more of them!
Take a look at the nutrition facts for all the items. The mains and some sides are the only things with really substantial nutrition requirements, so when i go on long hikes i always say screw the heater and empty calories, i duct tape a main and a side together and those two packets are enough for a meal. It cuts 75% of size and about 35% of the weight, meaning you can pack more. Plus duct tape is a good way to start a fire in the rain, so wrapping a tape band around the "waist" of the two packets a few times will be more than enough for if you need to stop and make a fire quick. I keep the coffee and utilities in a separate waterproof packaging (ziplock bag) for retreival if i need them.
Something else you can do with the cheese spread: knead it first, then put it inside the cardboard box (when it’s used correctly) so the heat warms it up while your entree is cooking.
They could've literally made a pizza hot pocket, that'd be way better imo. They do have like a pepperoi "sandwich" but it's still dry af. Be happy you never had to get the veggie omlet.
I looove when people try MRE's on RU-vid! Thanks Ben! I think it's the second time you do something like this if I'm not mistaken. MRE rations just seem so appealing, so yummy to me. Kind of like canned food! I know it's weird LOL but I can't help it!
The one thing you have to understand with MREs is LEGIT......taste is a fucking luxury....its something to boost your morale as much as can be.......the MAIN objective of that MRE is a fuel stop....its to give you the nutrients you need to fucking keep operating. If the military could put EVERYTHING we need in a day , into a tube of toothpaste and make it taste like something we could keep down without throwing up in the field they would do it. As a combat vet, man everything is made that way. Shit i still eat canned soup cold half the time.......just remember that when youre trying this stuff.....Flavor is a luxury
I'm also fascinated by MREs, I have no idea whatsoever why the heck it just rubs the brain in such a way which manifests a deep state of Mania where none of the MRE videos on RU-vid are safe from my touch.
The dry elements of an mre are always the best tasting. A lot of sacrifices to taste and texture have to be made in order to make the wet elements shelf-stable. Overall a satisfying meal when hungry, which is when this would be naturally eaten. I very much prefer the MREs of other countries, in which they include commercial canned foods.
We got the cherry blueberry cobbler in our MRE too. We tried the meatball one. We also have the chili and a chicken noodle bake that we haven’t tried yet.
In the army we used to chew in the coffee crystals to stay awake. Lots of time in training you are operating in complete sleep deprivation. Literally falling asleep exercising 😂 on top of that u are in a perpetual need to piss along with being sleep deprived
bruh, it's been a looong time since i last watched any video of yours, & you just randomy popped up in my feed, I was a kid when i used to watch you, miss this.
At least its not the veggie omelet or asian beef strips. Theres a reason why they call it the "Vomelete" and its not just a way to make the name shorter.
Just like most other foods, there are good and bad MREs. My personal favorites from out on the field is the meatballs, chili Mac, and all the ones with candy in them. There are some foods that I definitely don't eat tho.