[dredmorbius]

The recommended shelf life may be three years, but the meals can almost certainly be used long past that point, with only modest degradation.

I'd agree that a month's supply is excessive. Three days to a week would be far more reasonable in most cases. The goal is to tide over until other resources can be found, which in most cases will be a few days.

Where longer-term nutrition is required, far more conventional long-lived foods will be more appropriate: bulk grains, dried beans, canned goods, powdered or dried foods, and freeze-dried foods. These can come from normal household stocks, and simply be rotated as part of normal food purchase and preparation.

Refrigerated or frozen goods will of course spoil quickly without power in most cases (though could be viable for cold-weather climates where cold storage ... comes with the territory).

[dredmorbius]

Not to put undue weight to YouTube's reliability, but there's at least one channel devoted to eating long-out-of-date MREs and other military emergency / survival rations. From as long ago as 1906 (117 years ago):

<https://yewtu.be/watch?v=562nQKR3_3M> (1h35m runtime, first bite at 16:24).

There are multiple selections from the 1940s (WWII era), and selections from numerous militaries (US, UK, Canada, Vietnam, China, Japan, Sweden, Israel, South Africa, ...).

<https://yewtu.be/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA>

[dredmorbius]

And ... having developed a new hobby ...

Not all experiences are positive. A 1986 MRE prototype, tested in 2018 (32 years old at the time) is decidedly stale:

<https://yewtu.be/watch?v=qhCmUoDnzmk>

Watching a sampling of videos might give you an idea of what to watch for in terms of damaged / stale / degraded food. There's also good information on nutritional choices in emergency situations, including "metabolic water", the amount of water that's consumed or released in consumption of carbohydrates and fats (net positive) vs. protein (net negative), as well as caloric density by unit weight (4 kcal/g for protein and carbohydrate, 9 kcal/g for fats), vitamin, and fibre content.

A friend also reports that organisations often sell or auction out-of-date rations which can remain usable for some additional time.

With careful storage (cool, dark, dry place, low humidity, no degradation of packaging), emergency food should store well.