“Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.”
―
Was up at CostCo and beheld this:
Five Day Meal Kit, eh? Hmmm. Lets run some numbers. First, lets grab the data off the back of the box:
So, this is supposed to be five days of food for …I’m guessing one person. Without evidence contrary to that, let’s run with it – five days for one person.
According to the box label, you’ve got a total of fifteen pouches in there. Makes sense, right? Three meals a day for five days is fifteen meals.
The next thing of interest is the caloric value of each meal. This is going to be a tad misleading. Lets take the first item listed on the box…Beef Lasagna. The box says 220 calories. Thats about 1/10th of your daily recommended calories (if you follow USDA guidelines of 2000/k per day). But keep reading…each container is two servings. So, each pouch of that Beef Lasagna is actually 440 calories, or about 1/5th of your daily calories. Slightly better.
So keeping an eye on those calories-per-serving and servings-per-container, you can see that if you add up the entire caloric value of this box you get…an average of 1488 calories per day. Thats about 75% of your daily 2000 calories. And thats 2000 calories for just sitting there doing nothing. Factor in chainsawing downed trees, hanging looters, hauling supplies, etc, etc, and you’ll see that 1488 calories is better than nothing but you better plan on adding a few notches to your belt.
Does that mean that a package like this has no value? Heck, no. I’l take 1488 calories of freezedrieds stored in a 5-gallon-bucket in the back of my truck over the 2500 calories of food that got destroyed/looted/washed away/burned in my house. Something is, usually, better than nothing.
Now, if you took this box, dumped out the pouches and sealed ’em up in a five gallon bucket with some pouches of tuna, packets of oatmeal, instant coffee packets, Gatorade pouches, and maybe a few small cans of Dinty Moore….well…you’re sitting pretty when the dinner bell rings in Heleneville.
The takeaway from this post isn’t that freeze-drieds arent the Perfect Solution. You should already know that. The takeaway here is that you need to read the labels and do the math. Don’t plop down $320 for four of these, stick ’em in a closet, and pat yourself on the back thinnking you, the wife, and kids are now ‘taken care of’.
Two thousand calories per day is a baseline. And there are a lot of people who think that number is of questionable value. Only you know what kinda caloric stockpile will work for you. Run the numbers. Being prepared is sometimes a pain in the butt, but do it anyway. We can all probably stand to miss a few meals and wind up being the better for it, but in a crisis there is very little that calms you down and gets your brain on an even keel more than a tasty hot meal at regular intervals.
So, yeah, pick up some of these at CostCo…at $6 per pouch its not a terrible value. But don’t think youre done once you throw that box in your cart.
I commend to you the Humanitarian Daily Ration for cheap meals with sufficient calories, about 2200 a day, or slightly more, for about 5 bucks a day.
Admittedly, they are meat poor (IOW there is none) and pandering to Third World religious preferences high, but they do work.
I’d rather eat my neighbors than those things. Buckets of beans and rice sealed and treated. Canned then get Freeze dried to stack up for light, compact and quick/easy . MH is arguably the best for one shot. MPS is probably best for multiple pouches supplying a meal.
6 months after the lights go out and anyone left will do anything for either. Hell they might even eat those disgusting hUManItaRiAn rations.
I’m sure we’ve ll seen the one year, all you need, kits that give under 900 calories every day.
But intermittent fasting is good for you
Yeah, but it should be voluntary.
This is why I love CZ’s blog so much. Before we know how we need to know how much. Amateurs talk tactics and professionals talk logistics. Six bucks per pouch is pretty good when a single one at the local hiker snob store is about $15 and $10 on Amazon before shipping. . Food, water, PMs and ammo are looking like pretty good investments right now.
Sounds like the Stalingrad Diet. Or the Dutch Winter of ’44 45 diet.
I read through the Nutrition Facts. That information can be interpreted in several ways. That is the information shown. The information NOT shown is just as important. That one is left to guess smacks of duplicity; it would not be difficult nor costly for MH to add the information required in the consumer’s decision making. This even though it is universally understood that information is necessary. It is left out on purpose.
For risk management, I lean towards reducing or eliminating the unknowns. Risk management enters here because these products are intended for extremis conditions. This is in addition to the typical decisions in determining value, if the product is worth purchasing.
True, something is better than nothing. That’s why I am known to not toss, say a broken mop until a new mop is procured. But this MH something is not your only choice for something in the larder. So I’ll pass on this offering simply because it is not clear just what I would be buying.
You state that “The information NOT shown is just as important.” but you don’t say what information you feel is being left out.
What number of people?
The packets are supplemental only, they do not meet the USDA guidelines.
That drives home your point about reading the labels and working the numbers.
They list the number of servings per container. With MH, two servings are barely enough for one person.
2k calories is enough to make most people fat if they’re not doing anything. Not enough to do much work with, but I think that would be adequate to supply a sedentary body with enough energy to subside. Not enough mass though to make your belly feel full.
Well, yes…..but in the sort of disaster where you’re compelled to break into your food storage it seems pretty likely your going to be anything but sedentary. I don’t think anyone rides out a hurricane or earthquake and then winds up not being pretty physically active in the immediate aftermath…I mean, someone has to be out there clearing trees, moving debris, manning roadblocks, stringing wire, shoveling mud, carrying supplies, etc, etc.
Even with multi-week events like IKE and Harvey, we never even got out of the kitchen pantry, let alone into the long term stuff like MH. We mostly stuck to easy to cook, low fuel cost, and familiar foods both for our comfort and for the kids’ sake. That means warm-and- eat canned food, and meat from the freezer. Simple, easy, quick, and familiar were the words of the week.
And yes, in a real disaster you are burning calories like crazy. Most of the robots we use to make running our households easier are not available, like washing machines, dish washers, and utility fed appliances. That means more of late 19th century chores, even if done with 21st century tools.
——–
Over the years I’ve accumulated a bunch of freeze drieds, primarily MH and Auguson Farms #10 cans, as really deep backup, because of their ‘get and forget’ nature.
My wife grabs some pouch meals when she goes camping with the Girl Scouts, both for “just in case” and for the first night in camp when time and patience are in short supply.
I keep one of the MH “essentials” boxes in my truck, after getting trapped at the kids’ elementary school one day by a sudden flood. If we got snowstorms, it would be in the truck for them…
I’ve got several boxes on shelves, as “throw in the truck as we leave” if everything goes to sh!te. And I’ve got #10 cans as zero worry long term backup to the other stored food.
All this to say that I consider MH and other freeze drieds as just another tool in the bag-o-tricks to stay alive and productive, no matter what comes our way.
They are neither the be all and end all, nor a useless waste of money. Just a tool, and I’m glad to have the option.
nick
Beans, Rice, Keystone canned meat.
Have you done the math on how much fuel you need to cook the beans? And to boil the rice?
Unless you meant canned beans, already cooked, the fuel and time costs are high, and both are at a premium in a disaster.
nick
Pressure Cookers help,especially with older beans that don’t soften up easily(add baking soda to help and a few drops of oil to keep foam down)
Salt,sugar,dried spices may go to preindustrial prices in SHTF.
Hey CZ, just went online and they were $20 more. maybe that trip would be worth it depending on How many you were picking up. TY!
And not sold in “my” Costco.
There’s definitely some difference between what is offered for sale “out west” vs what i can buy “back east”. Those keystone meats that are available at Walmart aren’t stocked here.
One thing that is often overlooked is how much protein and fat the brain needs to function well. In an emergency, your synapses will be firing non-stop and the exhaustion afterward is a well-known result. I would not want to be on patrol without a very good amount of both. I may need to can more bacon for the shelf…
(Yes, I did this and, yes, it worked very well.)
https://www.backwoodshome.com/canned-bacon/
Home canned bacon isn’t safe. That doesn’t mean you’ll end up with botulism every time you can it, but you’re still taking chances. The fat in bacon protects the botulism spores & there is no way to know with home canning if you’ve gotten the pressure up high enough to kill it.
https://enewsletters.k-state.edu/youaskedit/2022/11/14/no-recommendations-for-canning-bacon/
I would say the old saying ( or the saying for our times ) that you can never have to much ammo goes doubly for you can never have too much food ( stored ). As you Zero have pointed out rightly that you can’t eat bullets, and even though one can never minimize the risk to your habitat of violent intrusion, food and clean water are far more likely to be in great need in extremis than a case of 9mm.
What is the listed shelf life of these? I’ve heard that MH is reducing it on many products.
I’ve used pouches when traveling before, but as mentioned above, they are part of a larger approach.
I do feel they are not as heavy and different from my norm than MREs or HDRs, so they have that going for them.
Shelf life on MH is longer than most of us will be alive. MH still tests pouches that they made from the ’70s and all is good.
I would think that if you’re using a package or two to feed a couple people that a can of chicken or beef would stretch these a bit further as well as add calories. If times are really slim, a pellet rifle could add a few robins or flickers to the mix.
I think that many people overlook the fact that the smart person wouldnt be using these as their entire food storage, but rather as a part of a ‘well balanced’ food storage plan. I can’t think of anyone who utilizes freezedrieds as their entire plan. People I know use a combination of freezedrieds, canned, dried, bulk, and other foods.
The one exception I think I know about is one of our local emergency management orgs. Some time ago they auctioned a pallet of MH with only a few months left on the “best by”. **
It seems their strategy for feeding staff during a long duration event was to buy the MH pallet-o-food, and put it in storage.
I can’t see any problem with this, assuming they increased their purchase past the nominal calories per day, which anyone is free to do- just buy more and you can have as many calories per day as you like…
The nutritional listings are RECOMMENDED only, not mandatory or laws of physics.
The thing I don’t like about the MH packaging is trying to figure meals per box when some pouches are single serving and some are nominally 2 servings, but that is just nit picking.
The freeze dried meals are light weight, easy to store and transport, are low effort, and take little time or fuel to prepare. I think they should have a place in everyone’s preparations. The seeming prejudice against them because they are expensive per calorie is counter productive (and silly when many of the same people who complain about the cost will happily buy “tactical” pants, or multi-hundred dollar knives, or guns that go far beyond simple reliability and utility.)
nick
** State and local .gov can’t let their people eat “expired” food, nor can they sell it, so they usually unload it just before the date. Great opportunity for those of us that know better.
Indeed, that’s why we raise animals, garden, save seeds and maintain orchards for fresh and dried fruit. Freeze dried is but a part of the overall formula.
Eating backpacking food while backpacking as a young, healthy twenty-something, my waist dropped 3-4 inches on a 10-day trip.
Multiple times.
But yet again, ante up: Some 4-day weekend, subsist on nothing but 4 days’ worth of MH pouches.
While doing PT, and filling 200 sandbags/day, and then emptying them for the next day, to simulate any imagined physical activity.
Do a daily morning weigh-in, including pre- and post, and report the results to the class.
You will then heed CZ’s advice, and start laying in canned goods rich in protein and fat, if you know what’s good for you.
Slow starvation ≠ “survival”.
QED
Almost no freezedried or canned product has a decent amount of fat in it. As a product of the “fat is bad” hysteria it has been reduced or eliminated in most products. Replaced with empty cheap carbs,sugar ,salt and artificial flavors(fat is flavor and mouth feel). Be sure to include a decent amount of fat calories to maintain good macros
Back in April I drove from my home in NW Washington State to Wyoming for a friend’s wedding. The drive included a shakedown of my new (used) Jeep Wrangler Unlimited as an overland vehicle.
I brought as food for the trip the bucket of Costco purchased Readywise survival food. I had this bucket in my RV as a bugout food source. My goal was to test it out for ease of preparation and eatability.
Mixed reviews. Easy to prep, kind of boring, largely meatless. In between the time I bought it, (years ago) and my trip, my wife developed a mild gluten allergy, and most of the food contains wheat. The food would work for me, not her, and I found that each of the portions was too much for me, and spilt up, not enough for two.
Anyway, I see this as an emergency food source for on the road, and the Mountain House as a lightweight, packable food source for on foot. My at home preps involve less portable food sources. I think that each has its place.
YMMV…
CZ, In your comments you mention chain sawing trees and hanging looters. Shouldn’t you hang the looters first and then saw the trees? I’m a city boy so just saying!!
You can also just hang the trees and chainsaw the looters.
Looters + Morbark = fertilizer.
I was assured, many many times, by my drill instructors that “blood makes the grass grow“.
After TSHTF would seem to be an ideal time to test that proposition.
For want of a lamp post a looter escaped! I paraphrase of course. TTFN
I assume a predominance of evergreens at the higher altitude of Casa de CZ, so that begs the question…can you easily find a sturdy HORIZONTAL-ish branch at the appropriate height to hang a zombie? Perhaps a subsonic .22 round would be faster, easier and create less stress for everyone involved.
I’m thinking a ATV & trailer would be extremely useful for afterward.
You don’t want to throw out your back or anything.
I’m forced to liquidate my freeze dried food storage if any is interested. 10 cases assorted meat, veggies, dairy.. 1/2 cost
Also 10 Pails rice, oats, wheat, new.
Contact me if your interested.
daleruth29@gmail.com
Id imagine this would be much more useful to people if you told them where it was located so they know if hey want to deal with the shipping.
Dollar Tree had 0.6-ounce freeze dried strawberries, bananas, apple chips and berries, every pack was $1.
Now they’re $1.25 but still the same size.
They also used to have 1-pound vacuum-packed ground-coffee bricks, but who knows anymore.