I was the guy who ate the Ham and Mothers, and even the Green Eggs. One thing for sure, if that was what you could eat, you always had plenty of it available. I liked the Ham and... at least; maybe, just maybe, nobody liked the Green Eggs.
Prior to my Induction in early 1966, my Scouting unit had substantial access to C-Rations, but the ones we had were pre-Korean Conflict, with three meals in one box, about the size of a shoe box. They even had an entire pack of 20 cigs, but the oly filters were Viceroy, and sometimes we ended up smoking Lucky Strike Greens.
There was a lot more variety, and that's what we mostly ate on camp-outs. The novelty was a huge enticement for a bunch of teenage ruffians, and we never complained about any of the selections. Each of us would toss our cans into a large common pot of boiling water to heat them. It served the purpose, and simply heating cans in that pot saved a lot of time end effort. When we were done eating, all the cans got stomped flat and went into the campfire, to be buried the next morning.
By the time I was actually in the service and in combat, I was long used to the Charlie Rats concept and never gave any of the choices a second thought.
When Patton was dishing out his complements about the M-1 Garand, he missed another War Winner, Charlie Rats. For me, all the fancy-nancy newfangled field rations that came afterward were in a distant second place.
I think that sometimes, a subject can get overthought, and that when entire organizations get created, with an entire dedicated civilian contractor support element established firmly in place; things can go off the rails fairly predictably. The old C Rations had much longer expiration dates, provided more bulk and nutrition, looked and tasted a lot more like 'real food', and I think they were more satisfying than "Meals Rejected by Ethiopia". But that's never going to change while the entire subject of field rations has taken on the status of a sacred cow.
Bad cans could be easily identified because the lids were designed to bulge when they went bad. If you missed the telltale and a can started spraying, the quick fix was to simply turn it upside down. This reduced the mess to a small puddle.
Our ration heater was a shallow can filled with sand, holes in the sides, with gasoline or diesel fuel wetting the sand.
Greg