After we got out of basic sure. But you got watched with a hairy eyeball to make sure that you ate everything that you got.
There was a ton of trading that happened but if you were the sap that got one of the really gross ones, corned beef hash. Ham and cheese omelette, or the boiled steak cubes you were completely stuck with it.
I remember that there was always the rumor that the officers got issued a different package with good food in it.
The only thing worse to be honest was on long plane trips and bus rides you got the boxed lunch with the sandwiches that I swear came out of a gas station vending machine, and the military generic version of a juice box.
Army mess food and field mess food was decent and you always got a ton of it because of the amount of energy that you burned in the field especially in winter ex's with the major portion being potatoes.
I also remember on the last night of our basic field excercise after a month sitting in the field that they bought in raw steak for us and let us grill them, of course it was the army in the late 80's budget crunch so the steak was actually beef from the rejected parts of the cow.
Have you ever tried the old canned hard tack that the military used in Korea? Canned meat, don't know what kind of meat it was but it was meat with no expiry date. When we did a nuclear attack readiness test in the bomb shelter under a southern alberta college that I won't name
we found of a pallet of the stuff and decided to try it out.
I can ascertain it was meat, from what animal and what part I don't know.
Actually one more thing about the MRE packets, the best one bar none hands down was the beans and weiners in a bag.