Review- Valley Food Storage

I have found a new food storage company and thought I would share. Valley Food Storage is a long term food storage company that comes in Mylar packs, 5 servings per pack. These packs can be resealed easy which is a bonus because with many long term food storage products once you unseal it, you have to use it all. You can buy in individual packs or their emergency grab & go buckets.
Healthy Long Term and Emergency Food Storage | Valley Food Storage

If you look at the comparison chart below; you will see many of the companies that sell the emergency buckets count beverages as servings. Yes, nutrition can be obtained from beverages but when I buy a product with 100 servings, I don’t want 25 of those servings to be powdered milk or orange drink. With Valley Food you can customize your 3, 6, or 12 month food supply.



Valley Food specializes in natural food ingredients and a nitrogen flushing process that helps to ensure shelf life up to 25 years without any added preservatives, MSG, or GMOs. I was highly impressed with the ingredients which includes sea salt vs other companies that use basic table iodized salts and all those other words I cannot pronoun. Best bonus so far- the kids like it. They usually complain about too salty but they seem happy so far. I use Thrive foods vegetables and found I can throw some extra peas, corn etc. in to add more veggies if desired.

The one downside that I saw was no real meat products. I saw a chicken but the rest were dishes that had pasta or beans. The white bean & lime chili is one of my favorites along with the Irish Pub Cheddar Potato Soup (which is gluten free). Check out the ingredients:


I also liked Food Storage emergency bucket. Never have I seen one come with anything but food & drink. If you have loved ones that refuse to store food, the 1 week bucket maybe what they need.

http://www.amazon.com/Valley-Food-Storage-Supply-Servings/dp/B00N29GYMY

Please note: in no way am I associated with or a representative of Valley Food Storage. I am a consumer who is happy to find a long term food storage company that is focusing on a healthier product and being able to build my own supply is bonus. I have signed up for their e-mails and so far have been impressed with their savings/coupon codes.

 

Look into it, Moto. Wife needs Gluten Free (celiac)
I can scavenge just about anything

 

As you noted many of these bundled products advertised to feed you for X months don't have any actual meat protein, just textured vegetable protein. Also look at the calorie count, many are just 1200-1400 calories per day. Unless you are just setting in a fallout shelter for a couple months, that calorie quantity isn't close to what you'll likely need.

Also beware of Mylar pouches regarding shelf life. Generally they are only good for 5-7 years UNLESS there are multiple pouches sealed in a larger bucket. It is only the combination of these TWO packaging method that can get pouches into the realm of number 10 steel cans. Open the bucket to look at them or try a meal or two and your 20-25 year shelf life was just chopped to maybe a third of what you started with.

Nitrogen flushing is good but oxygen and water vapor can slowly permeate Mylar over time and O2 absorbers inside is vital to long term storage. When I pack grain and beans inside Mylar bags inside 5 gal pails, I flush/purge my packages with argon, add an O2 absorber, seal the Mylar, flush the bucket, add an absorber, then pound the lid on.

Personally, I generally go with cans when I buy FD food. For resealing opened cans, I figure that is why God invented ZipLoc bags and Tupperware.

 

Beware the selling point of "sea salt", most of all our salt is "sea salt". The salt that comes from salt caves is "sea salt" In fact you could consider any salt refined from the Great Salt Lake is "Sea Salt"... it's a selling point and nothing more, kind of like grass fed beef, rather than grass fed beef that's moved to the feed lot to fatten up with corn and marble the meat.

People are so gullible.

Rancher

 

So my thread on dehydrated food turned into a salt thread. Well alrighty then. I was hoping folks would share if they had found other dehydrated foods/long term storage companies that were using more natural ingredients.

** not touching the gullible remark.

 

About that "bucket food"

Before you go out and buy a large amount - consider this fellows 'test' of the "Augason farms 30 Day Food Storage Emergency All-in-One Pail".
Augason Farms 30 day bucket trial. - Survivalist Forum

His comments - like "The Hearty vegetables - Well OMG tasted like cardboard, No flavor what so ever, I think next time i will have to add something to it to make it palatable maybe some curry powder or ketchup." Priceless.

Most of the stuff sold as "bucket food" is, at best, horrible in terms of nutrition and calories. The lack of flavor is just a bonus.

As for LTS - consider dehydrated chow. Rainy Day Foods (Walton Feed et al) have been in business since the early 70's. Worth taking a look at what they offer.

Another option is to roll your own using COTS. (Commercial Off the Shelf) foods.
Affordable One-Year Emergency Food Supply by Robert Wayne Atkins, P.E. - Grandpappy
is a site run by an engineer - he lists a 1 year/1 person/2000 Calorie per day 'package' that is assembled by the user. This 'package' is far more likely to be rotated, ensuring you are familiar with cooking the food and will have fresh food as well.

HTH

 

Did I call you gullible? , but you did bring up the topic that sea salt was special and salt is pretty much natural, unless it's the Himalayan pink salt, ... which I would be carefull with, table salt does have iodine added to it, but our Morton "Sea Salt" shakers do not have that added. I haven't contracted goiter yet.

But for long term storage, I'm going for the buggy rice first, more protein...

Rancher

 

My wife's grandmother, in an attempt to "help us out" sent us 2x buckets each year for a couple of years. These were round and came from Costco. Everything was supposedly stored in airtight packages within the bucket (no O2 absorber within the bucket) we we cracked one open just to see how it was packaged. The outside made it sound great but was also forthcoming about the fact that there was ZERO meat within the product. There was a hint of...well it's been years so I can't remember exactly what it smelled like but, of processing and some seasoning I'm not familiar with (wasn't horrific but wasn't overly pleasant). Sealed it back up and put it aside (inside, cool, dark, etc.).

Jump forward about 5 years (this was a couple of years ago), well within the 10 year limit. Cracked one open and almost got sick. The smell of whatever the spice was had become overpowering. Almost every single bag had worn through, ruptured, torn or come open in some way. This happened with literally zero movement of the buckets. Every bucket was the same and some of them smelled, of all things, rancid. The thought of having relied on the buckets was disheartening.

Long story short, I don't remember who it was but I have little to no faith in "buckets of food". I'll go with #10 cans and pouches from a trusted source (Mountain House for example) and/or rotating my stock of grocery store fare.

The contents were so gross and the smell so strong that even after dumping it out in the trash and using bleach water on the inside, we couldn't reuse the buckets to store food.