I have a few MCI (” C-rations”) from Vietnam war era and decided to crack open one to see how it held up. Turns out it was completely edible still. The crackers and the chocolate and rice cookies.
As you can see, the crackers still look as good as the day they canned them. Pretty neat.
Scattered Shots 
Did you use a P-38 to open that can? Now try it again with ham and lima beans, a.k.a. ham and mother-fkrs. In the interest of science, of course. I shudder to think what those would be like after marinating in the can for 60 years or so. Throw those to the Vietnamese kids and they’d throw them right back.
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Im not opening any of the main dishes. they are swollen up and I’m sure a puncture would cause the entire thing to blow up in my face.
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Without doubt.
I have a can of pound cake and I’ve often wondered about the condition of the contents, because that was probably the best thing in C’s back in the day. Not swollen up, but I’m not about to ruin the can by opening it.
Did you ever see any Canadian rations from that era?
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No I don’t believe I ever have.
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Possibly the Canookians had other things as well but the rations I saw (early 70’s} were not individual rations, they were instead large cans sized for a squad to divvy up. One guy carried the meat can, another the vegetable can, etc. and the squad or section would mess together when it was time to eat. They had wrappers on the cans like commercial canned goods with pictures of the contents and Canada being bi-lingual, had both English and French writing on the labels.
Very alien compared to C-rations, and it seemed to me some obvious disadvantages to the system like how do you deal with groups smaller than a squad? I never thought to ask. But everything I ever traded for was good eating. None of those inedible things like ham and mothers or beef slices, etc.
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