I read a mention over at SurvivalBlog that the Wise lawsuit has come to an end and Wise lost. (Some backstory and details) The gist of the lawsuit, as I understand it, is that Wise said their food would provide enough food for X number of people for Y number of days. Someone with a calculator and a knowledge of human dietary needs must have read the labels on the packaging because it was discovers that the whole X-days-for-Y-people thing only works out if those people are getting Bataan Death March portions and nutrition. Succinctly, on Wise’s schedule you would be getting less calories than many concentration camp prisoners.
What’s going to happen to Wise? Beats me. Maybe they’ll survive this, maybe not. What will be much more interesting is the repercussions throughout the industry. I guarantee you that the guys at Thrive and Mountain House are sitting down with their lawyers and nutritionists and double checking their packaging to make sure they are n’t setting themselves up for a similar problem.
Who got burned in this? Most likely the ‘casuals’. The not-really-survivalists who wanted to make one phone call, order one big pallet of food, and then say they were done with the food storage part of their plans. I’m all for turnkey solutions and one-stop-shopping, but having a backup plan for when the grocery store is empty is a serious enough task that perhaps a bit more homework is needed.
Who can you trust? No one. So when ABC Food Co. says their package will feed three people for a month you should…do what? Correct answer: read the labels and do the math. Anyone with basic math skills and a modicum of intelligence would have realized that 450 calories a day is significantly less than the ‘2000 calorie per day’ mantra that’s been drummed into our head by government food label laws. Sure, 2000 calories is a one-size-fits-all approach that isn’t necessarily accurate, but it does at least give us something of a baseline.
Sitting in a bunker for three weeks waiting for the fallout levels to go down? Might get away with less calories. Snowshoeing to the lake to get water to haul back to your hidden cabin? A lot more calories, please. Even using the somewhat questionable 2000 calorie yardstick, you could see that some of these prepackaged kits were way, way down on calories.
I’m a huge fan of the long-term foods. I’ve got cases of pork chops, spaghetti, corn, apples, chicken, teriyaki, etc, etc. But those are part of a layered approach. I add up all the short-, mid-, and long-term food and thats the yardstick I use. And I use that 2000 calorie baseline as my minimum standard. I have absolutely no intention on subsisting exclusively on freeze-dried food made twenty years ago. I figure on using some of the expensive and exotic stuff (freeze dried meats) to complement the cheap and boring stuff (bulk packed rice and pasta) with the everyday stuff (canned vegetables, jarred sauces, etc.)
Im sure most of you guys are doing the same thing, right? On the one hand we have nitrogen-sealed #10 cans of Pasta Primavera and on the other we have #10 cans of wheat and dried onions from the LDS cannery.
Moral of the story: avoiding starvation, and the desperate choices forced upon you by the threat of it, is too serious an issue to hand over to some marketing guys at a long term food company. Read the labels, do the math, make the spreadsheet, check other vendors, review other brands. It would be awesome if we really could make one phone call, write one check, and be done with it but that just ain’t gonna happen. Read the fine print, always.
Not Plan ‘A’
Your best bet is after you read the package and do the math, actually try the food you plan on storing. Best time to find out that brand Z gives you the runs is before you spend a couple grand stocking up.
Was watching a video by bear independent the other day and he made a great suggestion. Plan 7 meals. Monday is spaghetti, Tuesday is biscuits and gravy ect. Now go by 52 ingredients of what you need. For spaghetti you need 52 cans of sauces, 52 packages of noodles and whatever meat. If your like zero you buy a boatload of pasta on sale then get the case discount. For under $130 + meat you have Monday’s dinner covered for 1 year.
“Im sure most of you guys are doing the same thing, right?”
Yep, I preach Exactly what you say to my friends. Even saved some of them from buying Wise when they first came out. Now they preach to everyone else to ‘Count the Calories’.
Folks: if you haven’t ever used the LDS cannery, you are doing yourself and your family a disservice. Even if you have to travel.
The LDS store is a great place to buy long term food. Here is a link to their stores/hours: https://providentliving.lds.org/self-reliance/food-storage/home-storage-center-locations?lang=eng
They are polite and don’t talk religion, they just want to help you prepare. And they have good prices.
Personally, I go by the Mormon one-year supply list* with the addition of 2 weeks worth of Mountain House 2 serving pouches and I count the 2 serving pouches as a single serving. The reason for the pouches is that they are part of the short term emergency gear. The long term stuff is stored off site where my wife and I would meet the rest of the team.
* https://www.lds.org/topics/food-storage/longer-term-food-supply?lang=eng&old=true
It ain’t rocket surgery, just simple math. Example: not to pick on them in particular because lots of outfits sell them, but Augason Farms sells (among other kits) a “1 year/1 person” package that they identify as having 1750 calories/day. For a small, inactive person, that’s probably correct. For a 210 pounder doing before-dawn-to-after-dusk rural homestead chores in “manual labor mode” it’s about 1200-1600 calories short. So, my calculator says it’s not a 12-month “food unit” but (maybe) a 7-month one.
Dollars being what they are, when the impact of the Wise case metastasizes through the Prepper Industry, AF – and everyone else – will either change the labeling on that package to “6 months food package” or add enough cases of food to bring it up to 3K/day. Either way the cost will reflect the change because TANSTAAFL, quite literally.
It’s a simple solution: buy 2 of the food packages for a true 1-year plan. The calorie count, and cost, will probably come to rest somewhere near actual reality.
Actually, if this is your plan, get 4 – or more – of the packages for each person because “too much” is a storage problem, “too little” is a death sentence. Or, better yet, use a couple of the “food packages” – from any supplier or manufacturer – as a per-person basic level and add to it with canned stuff, Mountain House, Wise (if they will still exist), ThriveLife, Valley Food, Legacy, whomever, LDS store supplies, home-grown vegetables (and home raised protein), maybe frozen if you have a reliable power supply, bulk in 5-gallon buckets, etc. because Everything In One Box is just another failure mode.
I think if Wise is, well, wise they would come up with a way to make the calories up to their customers either by coupons or something.
Commander:
I suspect that they thought that by the time anyone found out, society would have collapsed and that no-one could catch and punish them!
Stupidity has its own rewards…
I learned early on when I started storing Thrive, Mountain House and other foods including Wise, that the suggested serving size was, if you will excuse the pun, “out to lunch”. A layered approach is the best way. Your observation about 2000 calories per day is also correct. That is the minimum for a sedentary life style. Drop below that and you will lose weight even sitting in front of a computer. For a normally active adult 2500 to 3000 cals is probably a better target for day to day nutrition. IMHO TTFN
I’ll admit that I’ve never purchased from Wise. I looked at their list of ingredients, noted the extensive use of soy and passed (soy gives me gas). Still, preppers are all about caveat emptor. It’s part of our creed, along with Murphy’s Law.
Wise didn’t sell bad food, like the embalmed beef sent to the Army in the Spanish-American War. It had outlandish claims of how long it would feed someone, but the calorie counts were accurate, AFAIK. A bit of basic math and science would show that the Wise rations wouldn’t last as long as they said. That’s positively open and honest, compared to most government agencies.
For the folks who bought Wise and believed the advertising, the food’s still as good as it was, you just need to supplement it. Given that you know now, instead of when it’s too late to do so, that’s a cheap lesson. Just make sure you learned that lesson!
I’m not a big fan of freeze dried provisions. The eggs and fruit products out there are pretty good so I do stock those. The rest? Meh.. As a poster noted above, it’s easy to plan menus (I’d do more then 7 for variety) and work towards stocking a year’s worth of the components. I like a lot of variety and I stock a wide assortment towards that end, however, the bedrock of my food preps remain beans, rice, and pasta.
Almost everything I have can be used to supplement and dress up those basic foodstuffs. Good way to stretch your supplies. I especially like canned fish so I keep everything from anchovies and mackerel to sardines in spicy tomato sauce. Not everyone’s preference but they are an especially cheap and healthy alternative to heavy, fatty, canned meats.
Regards
#10 cans are a really expensive way to store bulk provisions(rice,beans,oats,
wheat,etc),5 gal buckets,mylar liners,vac sealed w/oxygen absorbers seem the way to go or 55 gal drum of vacpacked provisions would probably be a good 3 month increment. The real plan is seeds or established perennials.
I suppose ‘expensive’ is relative. Rice, beans, oats, wheat, etc. are available in #10 cans, with oxygen absorbers, from he LDS cannery at ridiculously affordable prices.
https://providentliving.lds.org/food-storage/home-storage-center-locations-map?lang=eng