I just placed an order for these to compare with MREs for my 72hr kit.

I've read all the descriptions of SOS's standards, criteria, certifications, etc, etc. But they never go into detail on what these things taste like

I'm specifically referencing the Survival Food Ration bars, not the Millenium Bars. Can anyone tell me what these taste like?

To me, they are like a lemon flavored sugar cookie - kinda.

If you would like to eat a Shortbread type cookie,as your Main Staple for 72hrs of Survival,Then by all means-Go For It! MRE's are going to take up,Alot more room & add some more weight but... They taste a Whole World Better & You'll have a Variety to choose from! YMMV

Mine tasted like a really dry coconut cookie. Maybe I should get my taster tested....

I have some of the Mainstay Emergency Food Cookies and, while they might sustain life and be better than foraging for other sources of nutrition, I would have to be pretty desperate to eat them for an extended amount of time. They are like a compressed cookie.. very dense/heavy and sickening sweet.

They taste like cookie dough to me (just the dough without the fun chocolate chips).

The Millenium bars are tasty, too. If you've tried a vanilla Millenium, then you know what the SOS bars taste like . . .

The SOS bars are MUCH better than Mainstay, which taste as though their major ingredient was sawdust.

There seemed to be a difference of opinion here about these products, so I did my own taste test. I purchased the Datrex, SOS, and Mainstay bars. Here are my personal observations and opinions:

All three are rather crumbly in nature and seemingly dry. At first, I was concerned that this dry texture would cause increased thirst, but it was not the case. Of the three products, the Mainstay bars are the only ones that are not individually wrapped. The downside is that they do not stay as fresh if you are trying to ration them. However, the upside is that they do not have the slippery coating that seems to be present on the others, presumable to help separate them after being packed so tightly. This lubrication gets on your fingers and requires some cleaning up to get rid of it -- not something I wish to do in a survival situation.

The brand most pleasing to my tastebuds was the SOS bars. It has a coconut-ish flavor, sweet enough to be pleasant, but not too sickening. I could imagine eating several bars without wishing for some insect alternatives. The next best were the Mainstay bars. These are lemony in flavor and quite sweet, more suitable for your post-MRE dessert than survival. As stated elsewhere, these are too sweet to eat consistently for a day or two. The Datrex bars, to me, were quite unusable. They were void of taste altogether. If it came down to eating those or a string of roasted scorpions, I'd probably eat the bars, but not before giving it some serious second thought. It's one thing to eat something you find disgusting because you have nothing else; it is another thing altogether to have something else and STILL find it disgusting !!

For me, the bottom line is this: I will use the SOS bars in any small, one-day emergency kit that I assemble. For longer-term kits, I will use them to supplement other foodstuffs, like MREs or dehydrated meals.

As always, YMMV.

i wonder if they are made to just taste ok and not great?
otherwise you might wolf down too many at once..the canned water in the WW2 kits is said to have something in it that spoils the taste for the same reason..

I wonder if my mother-in-law's cooking tastes the way it does for a similar reason...