I've had MRE's since I was a kid starting back in '84. The first ones I had would be crap by today's standards because one of the main meals was "dry beef patty." You had to add water to it to rehydrate the thing, otherwise you were eating beef flavored cardboard.

I've had MRE's regularly, though, since '92 and consistently since '03. Each iteration actually is better than the previous round of MREs that were put out. Some of the newer guys will have to take my word on that because I wouldn't want to feed anyone an MRE that is almost 20 years old at this point.