About that "Survival food" on sale

As always you need to know your products and purchase accordingly. It is generally an impossibility that you will find one company whose product offering provides everrything you want/need. I prefer to buy/grow my own food and then process it accordingly. For example, I buy and then dry frozen vegetables. I purchase, because I really enjoyed, the potato pearls that you could obtain from LDS Home Storage Centres (now replaced with Potato Flakes I believe). They have 20mg sodium per 21g serving.

Obviously it takes more work and effort to locate and process the food yourself but I find it more worthwhile.

 

One thing I've learned along the way is that it's important to actually try the various freeze fried foods before you commit to buying a large quantity. All the manufacturers offer small sizes you can sample without risking too much cash. You'll probably find that there is no one single brand that has everything you like.

I've tried them all. None of them are great. Mountain House seems to be the top brand everyone talks about. In my opinion they are overrated. A few years back there was even a detailed scientific analysis that showed MH had better long term storage properties. It all looked very impressive until it came out that MH paid for the research. Their marketing hustle is the best in the industry.

Auguson Farms gave me the most "bang for the buck", meaning, they had the most stuff I liked and were not too expensive. Costco is even less expensive but some of their options, the broccoli-cheese-rice dish in particular, was beyond inedible. I'm not sure what battery acid tastes like, but I'm pretty sure this stuff was close. Other things, like the oatmeal, were as good as the 3x the price Mountain House.

The Auguson Farms vegetable stew blend and alphabet soup mix was so good, I use it for everyday cooking. The dried butter flakes were a horrible mess. The powdered milk...after letting it cool in the fridge for a few hours I swear I could not tell the difference from the real thing.

I did my homework so when society implodes I'll know what to keep and what to give away. I'll push off the broccoli-cheese-rice swill on some sucker and keep the oatmeal for myself.

Water use is an always going to be an issue. Since most food is 90% water to begin with, it's kind of obvious that you'll need a lot of it to restore preserved food to an edible state. It's dried food. Duh. This is another reason why it's important to sample what you store. When SHTF you don't want to use several quarts of scarce water on something that you can't stand to eat.

As for shelf life, if you are rotating your stored food like you should, then the shelf life should not matter. I would not trust a 25 year old can of freeze dried beef no matter what glowing claims the manufacturer makes. I will throw out anything unused after 10-12 years. I think of it like an insurance premium. A few hundred dollars every ten years is not going to break me.

This is the kind of stuff you need to know before SHTF. You can't just buy a pile of food and cram it in the basement and forget about it.

 

Me and my shorthand, sorry. Country Of Origin. that is to say - did this stuff come from China or Peru?

 

This is the kind of stuff you need to know before SHTF. You can't just buy a pile of food and cram it in the basement and forget about it.
Quote for Truth.

Sadly, too many fall for the hype and buy expensive packages - having never tasted the product.

Much of the problem, IMO, is that too many no longer cook the food they eat. I mean - , how many still make their own bread, tortillas, or even cook beans - as opposed to dumping a can of something in a pot and heating it?

 

My three coworkers and I tried a wise foods bucket in a series of lunches at work.

Nothing tasted very good but nothing tasted bad either. It was just fuel.

The allotted servings weren’t large but they were filling and appropriate.

One important note we learned: simply adding boiling water to a bowl with the meal wasn’t enough. A little cooking was required to finish reconstitution.

 

No one mentioned Mypatriotsupply.com. I have been grabbing some of their stuff for years, and I rotate it because we actually like and eat it. Their travellers stew is some great stuff to us, but I realize everyones tastes are different. I threw out the Auguson sample pack they sent me. Yuck!
The Patriots Supply stuff requires 20 minutes of cook time for most items. I repack buckets with a variety including rice and pinto beans to mix in, and spices. A cup of rice cooked with a pouch of freeze dried turns it into a meal for three instead of one.

 

The one month food buckets have a place in my food storage. They are at my primary residence to supplement what I have in my pantry until I can leave for my BOL. What I don't need will be left with neighbors. To base a food storage plan on these one month buckets is foolishness for all the reasons mentioned. As a quick grab and go, they are certainly convenient, light weight and better than nothing if you are hungry. Try carrying enough can goods to feed yourself for a month.

 

I called 'Raining Day Foods' and the lady I spoke with was very nice and forthright. They do not manufacture any of the foods. They are a repackaging plant, buy in bulk then package it for resell. I asked if any of the products come from China and she said some are grown in China, shipped to the USA where they are FDA inspected, processed into freeze-dried or dehydrated food, then sold in bulk to companies like Rainy Day Foods. Shelf life of their vegetables were generally 20-25 years in a temperature controlled environment. They are located in Montpelier, Idaho which is why I was so interested in them. I think if one researched this, you would find this is exactly what most of these survival food companies are doing, simply repackaging and distributing....

They sell something they call "Ova Easy Eggs" in a #10 and #2.5 cans that I find interesting as they are not powdered dehydrated eggs but are more crystal in texture (egg crystals), taste better, look better and more potent as 1 teaspoon = 1 egg. 13 oz. #2.5 can cost $26. I am trying to figure out what these eggs crystals might be as the lady didn't know...perhaps freeze-dried eggs? Anyone got an idea?

They have a pretty good deal on MREs $55 a case so I asked her for date and she said Manufactured Date was 2015 (didn't know the month) which is why they're on sale just in case anyone was interested...

 

They really are eggs

How We Make Egg Crystals

 

Thanks, DKR. I am going to try these Ova Easy Eggs....

 

I do have Mountain House but it's a back up to my other stores of food. It is meant to supplement not to be a primary.