Alright Fellas What Site Won't Scam Me On MRE's

lel it's from puerto rico

You will always have noodles and sauce at home, so whenever you want to leave you just grab a bag of dried noodles (lasts forever) and a jar of pickled-whatever, as well as whatever tomato based sauce you had at home at the time, put these three things into your cooking pot and head out.
If you want to spice it up: bring pepper or some onions. Onions last months and since anyone in their right mind has them in their diet anyways you will always have some at home.
If you want to go really crazy you can bring a bag of rice (lasts a year or more), which you should also always have at home, and some boiled apple sauce in a jar. Rice is self explanatory, a kilo will feed you a few days at worst and more than a week at best. Apple sauce keeps good for a long ass time, especially when it was boiled and properly sealed.

Basically: any properly stocked kitchen already is an MRE you just need to stuff into a bag and spend ten minutes of your day cooking. If you won't have the time to cook innawoods you are doing something wrong.

Write the expiration date on the outside of the sealed bag as well.

Jerky, hardtack, and coffee is all your really need.

MRE's are a convenience food. They aren't really anything special, like you suggest you can probably do better yourself, but it's all put together for you already in a package. I guess you can argue that convenience foods are bad, and I can't argue objectively with that, but they've proven pretty popular for obvious reasons.

As much as I love MREs, dad was Navy growing up, ate so so many cases as a kid, they're not worth the money anymore.

Recently I bought a vacuum sealer, and I'm not sure how I ever went inawood without one. Hit up the 99cent store, big lots or whatever place has discount food and stock up. Organize into meal sized portions and vacuum pack that stuff with some napkins, m&ms, a plastic spoon, all the shit you normally find in MREs. For around $3 a meal. No flameless heater though, but I rarely used the when I had them anyway.

Protip, vacuum pack ammo, boxed, in a mag, or on stripper clips, it all works. It keeps it dry and it's more quite then loose ammo. Buy a bulk box of desiccant packs and toss one in if it's possible and it'll last forever.

What downside? MRE has no downside.
-t ate FEMA/US ARMY mre's for an month's

If they where from PR they would have been sold already here for an extra spicy premium

Aside from the potential opportunity cost of not getting something better I've heard they can really mess with your digestion. Did they improve them in later variants?

MREs are frankenstein food. They're full of preservatives and flavour enhancers in order to try and make cardboard taste like bread. They're closer to eating fast food every day than real food.

The only exception is some of the mains are real food but even then they have preservatives.

Daily reminder to eat EVERYTHING in your meal ready to eat.
Otherwise you don't get the caloric intake that they planned in the portion.