I should caveat that with I've only taken the Canadian military ones that someone got me a few of. I think they're pretty close to what the US ones are, not sure. same kind of deal with the heater and stuff. The shepherd's pie one was particularly good, at least to me. I've also taken some civilian commercal brand packaging of what appears to be exactly the same stuff.

I've also never served in either military, so I've never been forced to eat the same pile of 4 to 6 MRE meals every day for months on end while deployed somewhere either. So to me, at least, they didn't taste bad at all. I've never eaten an actual honest to gosh US military issue MRE. Only the Canuck one, and the commercial one.