I started using her meals this year and love them. The meals get a lot higher percentage of calories from fat versus other meals which get them from carbs. This is more how I eat at home, so this works well with my dietary routine. This may shorten the shelf life of her meals, but haven't seen anything definitive on that. Probably won't get the 7 years that you do with MH, but these are for back packing so not an issue for me. I really like the smaller packaging as well. $15 for a specialty food entree doesn't seem unreasonable to me, especially when the protein is elk, bison, wild caught salmon or venison. I won't be going back to MH.