Mountain House makes a pretty good product, and some of their stuff is pretty good. I’m still a little annoyed with them over their snubbing small-time dealers several years back. But…personal feelings have no place intruding into logistics planning.
I have cases and cases of the Mountain House pouches in storage. Their ‘Pro-Pack’ stuff is just the ticket for stuffing into a 72-hour bag or caching in a bucket somewhere.
I usually figured the product would keep well past the seven year shelf life anyway, it’s nice to see a little confirmation of that.
H/T to The Metals Pimp for bring this to my attention.
As a small buisness owner I have had great luck with backpacker’s pantry meals as well. My rep over there has never been anything other than courteous no matter how big or little the order. I originally started buying from them because my son can’t have gluten and they have a pretty good gluten free menu. We rotate our meals regularly and use the oldest up when camping or in place of fast food on road trips or on busy nights. We usually cook 6 cups of rice with them and mix it all together. It helps stretch the meal out and makes them less powerfully flavored for our little ones.
funny you should mention this. the misses and i just ate some mh purchased for y2k and long out of date. they expired in 2006 but both pouches were just fine. this was my wife’s first experience with them and she was impressed.
I’m guessing Mountain House wanted to advertise a shorter shelf life in order to encourage retailers not to sit on years-old inventory, and also to encourage casual backpackers to buy new product prior to their occasional trips. Someone in their marketing department probably finally recognized that they were missing out on a huge customer demographic of preppers and long-term storage buyers.
Some places have a ban on a use by or best before more than X number of years which is why you find dates on bags of ice.