Thanks esbfan,
Your reply confirms several sources that said the date code is actually yddd, where ddd is the julian date (from 1 to 365).
So, my SPC6311 pears were packed on the 311th day of 1996. Likewise the Grilled Chicken Breast 7093B1 was been packed on day 93 on 1997.
I also learned that MREs are 1300-1500 calories and supply 1/3 the active military nutritional requirements. FYI death-by-ar15, for comparison, a top ramen only has around 500 calories.
For more info on MREs check out [url]http://www.dscp.dla.mil/subs/rations/meals/mres.htm[/url] . These guys have several universities, reps from USDA, logistics from ARMY, NAVY, AirForce and Marines. Never knew that so much went into an MRE.
Hey, they may not taste so good, but lots of people thought a long time about what goes into an MRE.
... watchman