The last thing you want in a crisis is to rely on old food that may or may not have gone bad. And if you let them expire, you’re going to be less and less likely to eat them, and they will just sit around taking up space that could be used for other, more useful food.

You’ve got a year to eat your MREs before they hit their expiration date. Figure out how many you need to eat a month to get through them. Make a plan, execute the plan.

If, after eating a few, you like them, and think they will work for you in a crisis, then plan to replace them with new ones as you work your way through them. That way you will always have as many as you have now, but they will be fresh when you eat them.

The whole goal of planning ahead is to put you in the best position to get through a crisis with minimal difficulty or risk. Storing expired food is not a good way to approach that goal, especially when you can simply eat the food before it expires, and replace it with fresh food that will provide the nourishment you need during a crisis.