they all do taste like donkey shit. especially the beef enchiladas. but it does matter if they are fake, because of, as mentioned before, food safety reasons. the taste might be the same, but the ingredients or safety procedures might not be the same. it could contain anything. personally, i had diahreah the whole time i was at rci.
and they gave them out all the time at R.C.I, not just when we were hiking. 90% of the food we ate while indoors in the barracks was M.R.E's, and they gave us so little we even tried to steal a few boxes from the supply room. when you try to steal M.R.E's you've got to be starving. sometimes they gave us kitchen leftovers, but that was once in a blue moon and the good meals never had any leftovers. and the whole backpack weight issue did not matter, they usually followed the hiking group in a pickup truck, where they'd keep boxes of mres, water, and first aid shit. it was only in the last week they made us carry our own food, and only a day's supply.
