You’ve seen them at CostCo, Cabela’s, and other venues…and they are relentlessly promoted on talk radio and podcasts….yes, I’m talking about those buckets that supposedly have ‘delicious, nutritious long-life survival food’. Upon examination and testing they usually come up far short on nutrition, are a bit distant from ‘delicious’, but they usually do nail the long-life part. Then again, a rock is also long life so there’s that.
The biggest problem with these buckets or kits is that they provide a false sense of security. They’re marketed to the people who feel the need to ‘do something’ but just want to whip out their credit card, make an online purchase, and check “food” off their survival checklist. I would wager virtually none of them actually read the labels.
What are some of the problems? Well, in my experience, quite a few:
- Calorie Count
- Lack of meat
- Reliance on soups and stews
- Portions
- Variety
- Sodium
- Price
A few years back, Wise food storage got their cod in the crusher over the calorie count of their bucket of survival food. What they had marketed as a two-week supply was, indeed, a two week supply….if you didnt mind each meal having so few calories that it made POW camp rations look generous.
Succinctly, the amount of calories provided by the food in the bucket did not provide nearly enough of the daily recommended amount of calories for a healthy individual. Couple this with the increased caloric requirements from the stresses involved in whatever disaster you’re experiencing and you wind up on, basically, starvation rations. Say what you will about the USDA ‘recommended daily allowance’ numbers but they at least give us a benchmark to work with. Two thousand calories a day is what they usually recommend and most food bucket kits wind up shorting you on that. So, if you insist on buying one of these turn-key packages, check how many calories per day you’ll get out of it. If it isn’t close to 2000, you might want to explore other options.
One thing you’ll notice very quickly is that most of the meals are of the liquid/’mushy’ variety – soups, stews, pilafs, etc. Basically nothing you need a fork or knife for. Most notably, there is a very pronounced lack of meat. Again, read the labels..often youre not getting Chicken Soup or Chicken and Rice. You’re getting Chicken flavored Soup and Chicken flavored Rice. Meat is expensive and it doesn’t rehydrate well unless its freeze-dried, and freeze drying is an expensive process. As a result, you’ll get more actual meat in one tuna-can-sized can of chicken than you will out of the entire bucket of food.
The majority of the foods you’ll get are soups, stews, oatmeal, pilaf, and anything else that can basically just be mixed with water and served. Soups and stews are filling, yes…but in terms of satisfaction it’s a different story. If you think about it, any meal that says ‘just add water’ is going to be a fork-less meal…oatmeal, rice, soup, stew, cream of wheat, couscous, etc, etc. Some people don’t mind that, but I feel it gets old and makes appetite fatigue set in real quick.
The portions in these things are part of the calorie deficit that seems to plague these packages. After a long day of digging out from the rubble of the tornado, manning roadblocks, moving downed trees, and walking miles with a chainsaw and a drum of gas, the last thing you need is to get a bowl of gruel that barely amounts to more than a few tablespoons yet prides itself as being a ‘hearty’ or ‘generous’ portion. If you’re spending two weeks sitting on your hands in a fallout shelter waiting for the rads to go down, then maybe a coffee mug full of instant oatmeal or soup is enough for a meal. But, odds are you’re going to be doing stuff and you’re going to be doing that stuff in a stressful environment…this is no time for half-rations. Check the portions of whatever product youre buying and ask yourself if you really think eating that portion is enough to keep you going for six or eight hours between meals in a crisis environment.
Appetite fatigue is a real thing. It’s true that when you’re literally starving you’ll eat anything (or anyone), but it’s also true that sometimes the food options are so boring, repetititve, or unappealing that you’d rather not eat if you can avoid it. Thirty days of oatmeal for breakfast, chicken flavored soup for lunch, and beef flavored rice for dinner is going to get old very quickly and you’ll discover that not only are you no longer looking forward to eating, you’re actually kinda turned off at the whole idea. So, the more variety the better.
Sodium is a tricky thing. Most Americans get way too much in their diet. Salt is a big part of storage food and if you look at the nutritional labels on some of these foods you” see that one serving can equal almost 50% of your RDA of salt. Its not a problem for me, but for folks who are watching their salt for whatever reason…well, it might be a big deal.
These pre-packaged buckets seem like a good value but if you can’t stomach the food after two days, or it winds up translating into only a few days worth of calories, then where’s the value?
So whats a person who wants a simple, no-fuss way of checking ’emergency food’ of their list supposed to do? Well, it isn’t exactly hopeless…you just need to be willing to make more of an effort than just buying a plastic tub from some outfit you saw advertised on infowars.com or some similar venue.
The most common refrain in the preparedness community is “Store what you eat, eat what you store.” There’s a lot of truth in that but it isn’t that easy. You need to store what you eat that will store well. That means you have to determine what you think is the window for ‘long term’…is it a year? Two years? Five? You have to think about it because whatever that threshold is, it means you’ll have to use or replace your stuff at that point.
These buckets seem like a good value when you think “price divided by number of meals”, but when you read the label of what you’re getting (or not getting) in each meal, the ‘value’ quickly diminishes.
Is there a a use for these prepackaged food buckets? Probably. They are better than nothing, there’s no two ways about that. And they might be nice as a supplement to an already existing supply of ‘real food’. Or they could be a ‘last ditch’ sort of thing you hide under the floorboards at dad’s cabin. But the sober truth is that when your options have dwindled to the point that you are digging into your ’emergency food supply’ your life has hit the stage where the last thing you need is substandard nutrition and a calorie deficit.
If you want a ‘bucket of emergency food’ go get yourself a good five gallon bucket, lid, and a rubber mallet. Fill that bucket with canned chicken/beef, canned soup, instant soup, instant rice, canned fruit, instant potatoes, instant oatmeal, canned pasta, bouillon powder, freeze dried entrees, MRE entrees, etc, etc. Drop in an esbit stove, some matches, a canteen cup, and some plastic utensils.. Then hammer a lid on the bucket and know that you put together something a good bit better than what some ‘patriot’ was shilling on AM radio.
Be adventurous…be curious. Think what you want your post-apocalyptic meal to look like and then go wander the aisles at Kroger. Look at whats available in pouches and cans. Think what you can do with those food items, how you could combine them, what meal options they offer. Buy some, go home, and try making a meal. Theory is great, practice is better. Grab a canteen cup, a P38, a spork, and see what you can cook over an esbit stove.
At one end of the spectrum is a basement full of expensive-but-delicious freeze dried entrees, at the other end are 2-liter pop bottle filled with rice and beans. It’s in that area between the two where most of us will be, I think. Those pre-packaged food buckets are in that spectrum but they aren’t where I want to be. For me and mine, it’ll be a mix of all of that – FD entrees, bulk food, canned food, pouch food, etc. And, yes, some self-made ‘just in case’ grab-n-go food parcels. There’s not going to be any awards issued after the apocalypse for the person who made it through on the cheapest, least amount of food. Food is far too serious a subject to be dismissed with a credit card and a plastic bucket of potato granules and chicken flavored rice from CostCo.
Yup.
Even Mountain House leaves a lot to be desired, when “breakfast” amounts to 230 calories. [Hint: “Serves Two” is barely enough, at those numbers, to be properly labelled “Starves One”. Unless you plan on eating eight meals/day.]
On the plus side, I’m noticing chicken, beef, and pulled pork entrees at the local grocers served in mylar retort pouches, just like tuna has been for almost two decades, and MREs have been since the 1980s. Retort pouches save a lot of bulk over metal cans. The next test is longevity.
Seven years’ supply with the same period of longevity untouched is what I’m shooting for.
And as the host notes frequently, there’s nothing wrong with dining tonight – and all this year – at prices from 2015.
I started doing something like that with canned foods.
canned chicken, pasta and alfredo sauce. and a can of spinach
cook the pasta, add salt, olive oil and some garlic powder.
drain the chicken, save the water for your dog or cat food- they love it
cook the alfredo sauce on low-mid heat with the chicken added
when the pasta has 5 minutes left, add the canned spinach to it.
it turns out great and almost never any leftovers too.
canned beef mixed with rice is okay if you have other spices to add with it.
I think it might be better to learn how to cook with canned meats and other stuff
NOW instead of when you have no other choice.
you can do almost the same thing with canned ham. one thing I do is boil the ham first to get a bit of the salt taste out of it, drain it , add alfredo sauce and spices to it. pasta and then some canned peas.
I already had too many bland meals in my life- c rations to eat just anything.
and the MRE, I have tried really suck. maybe they have gotten better, I don’t know. peanut butter is a good staple to have on hand with crackers.
I don’t plan on going anywhere. so canned goods is the way I went instead of
just a lot of freeze dried stuff. although I do have some of those.
but buying a bucket of whatever, no thanks.
I am one of those fellows whose cooking knowledge does not go much beyond placing a cup of water in the microwave for instant coffee.
Even if you don’t consider yourself to be a modern day Julia Child, rather than have my missus guess, would you mind sharing which spices you use for the food you mentioned? Any help with the amount would be appreciated, too.
Binging with Babish on YouTube had a sunseries called Basics with Babish. Short-ish videos on all the basics of cooking and are well done.
I would recommend checking those out.
He does some great stuff.
basic spices for the most part. garlic powder, onion powder
pepper,
the cheap spice classics Italian seasoning works with any pasta meal.
remember one thing. you can always add more spices to any meal. but too much of anything can wreck the meal.
used to carry small spice packs back when I was in the army. a little something to make c-rats taste better
and for close to 400 years, a oz of black pepper was had the same value as gold did in Europe.
both salt and sugar keep well. black pepper
and I had to learn how to cook as a single parent.
that sucks, but I learned to make meals on my day off and freeze then. pull one out before going to work and put it in the fridge to cook/heat up that night.
get yourself a good cookbook and learn how. it is not hard to do really. funny thing, it after my kids left the house they realized how good they had it
start small and find out what YOU like to eat.
Buy and store whole spices as processing shortens useable life/flavor
I have a slow metabolism (difficult to stay warm) and a very sedentary lifestyle. I still have to consume at least 2200 calories a day just to keep from loosing weight. So many of the survival rations are as stated above, very deficient in supplying calories. When I was still somewhat active, it was a minimum of 2400 calories. I suspect if I had a level of activity such as would be required in a survival situation, it would possibly take as much as 3000 calories per day.
I monitor calories every day due to my diabetes. It is a daily balancing act between medication, activity, and caloric intake in order to control my diabetes. I prefer keeping it under control to loosing body parts due to uncontrolled/poorly controlled diabetes. Been there, done that. Not going to be fun if unable to get meds in a survival situation.
I have a few of these buckets
https://bacontime.wordpress.com/2022/01/03/adding-to-the-stash/
I am using that for a long term supplement for other food with only 2-3 year shelf life.
Being a freak for numbers, I have a spreadsheet with all of the food in my stash and I know how many days per person depending on how many people.
Lots of canned soups, SPAM, canned chicken, rice etc.
“Appetite fatigue is a real thing” Yes it is but I am looking at my stash as a survival situation.
If my wife would ever clean out the basement, I would rather have large stores of daily use goods that I could use and rotate.
I’ve got Mountain House, mixed boxes with added in oatmeal, tea, koolaid, and plastic utensils. I’ve got some on a shelf in the garage, some off site, and two boxes in my truck. They are lightweight, and low effort. They also don’t require a lot of fuel to cook.
I’ve got mostly canned veg and beans, frozen meat, and buckets of dry staples. Canned meat too. And yes, the pouch meats in our stores are very tasty, and I’ve got some that are more than 8 years old without any visible degradation. VERY different from my cans stored here in Houston.
The MH gives us a choice if we don’t have the time or energy to make something else, gives us a very light package to throw in the truck if we have to bug out, and could be used in place of MREs if it ever gets to a “grab something for the patrol” situation…
When I needed to quickly stand up my new BOL I bought a bunch of buckets, black with red labels, at steep discounts in a surplus auction. The menu sucks, the calorie count is underwhelming. So I doubled the buckets. And I added several cases of canned and pouch meat. They should make good breakfasts, ok lunches, and sides to go with the additional meat. The main goal was to get a lot of meals stored in a hurry.
As I’ve been working on the place I’ve been taking up the same stuff I have stored at home. Flats of canned veg. Canned chicken, pouch beef and pork. Buckets of dry staples. I have enough up there now that the buckets are supplemental.
One great thing is the number of choices we have for meat now vs 20 years ago. Pouch meats in regular flavors, and hispanic flavors. Flavored fish, including filets, in pouches. Canned meat from foreign lands, so we don’t have to stack Dinty Moore beef stew and canned chili. I’ve got canned chicken, canned beef chunks, pulled pork, Hot Wings pork, canned ham, canned whole chicken (sweet sue), canned hot dogs (from Denmark), and chili…as well as spam and a few cans of dried meats for variety.
I recommend trolling the “international” aisle at your big grocery or in the city, as well as ‘asian’ markets, or any stores that cater to an international crowd. The choices there are MUCH broader than purely US stores, as people want ‘home food’ and in most of the world refrigeration still isn’t common.
SO MANY different canned fruits at the asian market. Canned cream for arabs or hispanics (nestle medium table cream), many different flavors and manufacturers of “spam” type product as well as the real thing. Canned biscuits and breads, weird crackers and snacks from asia, TONS of indian dishes in pouches, and other ‘weird’ stuff that will certainly help combat appetite fatigue…
And for desserts, I stack fruit pie fillings (and other pie fillings too.) They are canned, so last a long time. Don’t degrade in sunlight or break if dropped like jars, have lots of sugar for energy (and sugarless choices too), can be eaten out of the can, made into pies, or served over ice cream (so you will use them at home during normal times.) I use pre-made pie crust and little ramekins to make individual “pies” when I want to up my dinner dessert game. A can of filling makes about 6 or 8 of the little treats. Heck, the cinnamon apple filling is BETTER than my MILs recipe for apple pie and so much easier that we prefer it…
FWIW, I cycle thru the canned chicken by using it with Taco spice packets for taco night, or adding it to boxed meal “chicken helper” meals. For extra flavor, don’t discard the water in the can, use it in the recipe instead of plain water… my kids love chicken taco night.
The vast bulk of my stored food came from the regular or local ethnic market. Some is specifically long term storage, and some is very specialized, but most is normal food.
I like to eat, and I’m well on the way to long term food security.
n
Excellent post.
Thanks to lots of advice and blog topics like this one, I’m relatively well off on long-term food stores, as well as having what I call a “deep working pantry” that I draw from and rotate. What really worries me is the government giving police lists of addresses and ordering them to knock on the doors of hoarders.
It’s a sure bet the feds only have food stored for their own, but they know that there are at least a few preppers who have food stored. Every time I order a case of Mountain House or Augason Farms #10 cans, that information is retained in the database of Amazon and other suppliers. We’re beginning to learn that any time the authorities want those records, they can get them, either through legal means or simply by stealing them. So, they’ll know which “hoarders” have food stored, and the vast majority of our fellow citizens will fully support the police as they knock down doors so that this food can be “shared fairly.” I’m honestly not nearly as worried about looters and rampaging hordes of starving zombies as I am of having the “authorities” come for my food.
Then why would you not simply order under a false name and have the goods shipped to a delivery address that was different from the goods’ final location?
“Simply order under a false name?”
So to order from the Internet you have multiple credit cards using various false names and with different “shadow” addresses linked to each card? Doesn’t sound simple to me and actually might draw attention.
I suppose you could have a dozen different friends order for you and have them use a confusing trail of different delivery addresses, but that would mean compromising OPSEC by actually increasing the number of people who know you have stored food.
Maybe I could buy a healthy amount of military hardware for Ukraine and their president would be so grateful that he would make a cash donation to an anonymous bank account or make a straw man purchase of #10 cans on my behalf. 🙂 Not saying anything like that has ever happened, of course.
Its a lot less complicated than that. You buy a thousand dollars worth of Visa gift cards for cash at your local Walmart, Target, or whatever, order online, and have it delivered to your buddys muffler shop or somesuch.
Also, use your local public library computer as a no library card guest.
OK, now I understand, and I apologize for being difficult. I get a little distressed when I realize how much control our government has and how much of that I have blindly surrendered. Your gift card approach should indeed work.
Bonus points: Rotate out a small percentage of the oldest stuff, and ship it to overseas charities, missions groups, etc., and keep the parcel post receipts.
“I shipped all of that stuff to starving hordes in Trashcanistan” is a much better story than “It fell in the lake while I was fishing”.
It should go without saying that if you don’t store your stash where they can readily find it, they won’t.
“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
Duh.
That info is also saved and recorded by all banks whenever you make a bankcard purchase.
I have tried several brands of freeze dried and otherwise storage food. In my opinion, Mountain House is by far the best in terms of taste and texture – having said that, you have to figure out the right amounts of water and the right mixing technique for each meal.
I figure it will be a useful to fill in gaps in food availability – and I have purposely gone heavy on vegetables and freeze dried meat since pasta, rice, etc store well and I expect to be more available than the essential nutrients. I have some complete meals, but mostly I have ingredients, with the complete meals for when I don’t have time for more.
(And yes, freeze dried meat is really expensive!)
Keep in mind when you store food that you have ALL the prep supplies. In particular, I noticed the need to have something to heat water in; I found that some cheap stuff stores have inexpensive metal cups ($1 or so) of which I bought several to store so that I can heat water for freeze drieds, tea, etc.
I think back to the ’90’s, where Bill Pier at Survival Inc. (435 W. Alondra) had a year of meals having 800 calories PER DAY was being sold. About enough energy to walk to bathroom and back to bed for two / three times a day. Rat On A Stick – no, not the package I read. I think $400 plus shipping was the price – it was a long time ago.
It doesn’t happen anymore, but up until Covid some of those buckets went on sale periodically for very good prices. So, I bought several to use as “handout food” and barter; if someone has nothing at all, a food bucket can be a lot.
I’ve also bought – very selectively – “one year food supplies” paying very close attention to the protein content and in what form is the protein. As expected, the calorie count was inadequate, so I look at them as “7-8 month food supplies” not “1 year food supplies.” We tend to look at 2000-2200 calories/day as the goal, but it should be 2500-2800 because we’ll be doing more things manually, and doing them for longer; a target of 3,000/day is not unrealistic.
The extra sealed longer-term mylar pouches one purchases, and canned food, is what makes those “8 month food units” moderately successful – adding turkey, chicken, beef, pork, tuna, etc. to the “gruel,” and a large supply of spices and seasonings, is the best DIY route I’ve found – “food fatigue” is a real thing. In fact, using the pouch food and some of the brand-name freeze dried stuff and vacuum-sealed dry goods (aka “rice ‘n’ beans”) is a pretty good way to build your own food buckets. If I had money and space for a freeze dryer, and the time to use it, that could take DIY buckets to the next level.
The two things that gets me with these food buckets is that they claim up to 25 years of storage with zero data backing their claim since it’s basically just dehydrated soups and oatmeal. Second, nobody looks at what a actual serving size is with them. Most are 1/3rd to 1/2 cup of prepared product. The average person eats 2-3 servings of a single item per meal. So that 60 serving bucket in reality will feed a person just for few days instead of the few weeks they silently claim to be for.
I’ve made up some short term easy to eat MRE type meals (more like a first strike ration) out of tuna and chicken pouches, some single snack packets, drink mixes etc that lasted 3-5 years in storage but I’ve always thought of food storage into the three categories of short, medium and long term.
Many of these companies, yes they haven’t been around long enough to back up their claims. Those companies extrapolate from lab data.
However, Mountain House has been around since the early 70’s and they do have data to back their claims.
I’ve eaten MH lasagna so old and worn I couldn’t read the date, but I bought that meal at a garage sale and had had it for 20 years before I ate it.
If you search through my older posts, theres several links to people eating decades old MH foods.
No “survival buckets” here, but you do bring up a good side point. While cans and other packaged foods have the calories listed, I haven’t totalled up the amount of calories I have stored. Might be a good thing to do on a snowy day, and see how many 3,000 calorie days I have. Thanks again for all the good advice.
Agreed. That is mandatory.
And it can be difficult to do since some manufacturers make the information hard to find…
I’ve eaten a “3 serving” pouch comfortably in 1 sitting!
If all you truly can do is whip out the CC, then go see the mormons. Their canned stuff is exactly as advertised. AND cheaper than walmart/etc, even sealed for decades of storage. And if youre too lazy for that, then shop on their website and wait in your chair for the FedEx man to unload it onto your porch.
The LDS store is the best bargain out there on long-term canned food storage. Years ago I ordered cases of rice, wheat, oats, potatoes and apples for around $30 PER CASE (6 #10 cans) delivered.
Ditto, I Dig Au.
The good thing that most people who are interested in preparedness do not know is that the LDS stores sell their very low-priced staples to ANYONE, and their prices cannot be matched by other survival food vendors. Good luck in trying to find otherwise.
I am not LDS, but I have found them to be welcoming. They seem encouraged to see that people of all faiths, or none, are getting prepared for hard times that might be coming.
You’re exactly right and I spent a day working at my nearest storehouse twice a number of years ago. At the end of the day, those who worked were allowed to buy as much as they wanted. My understanding is that outsiders are no longer allowed to come in and work due to changes in FDA or local food safety laws, but I think an individual could still drive to the warehouse on certain days and purchase canned food with cash, thus pretty well avoiding a paper trail.
Canned Goods, Rice, Beans, and Pasta are my Long-Term supplies. For Rotation, I add Fresh Vegetables to Canned Soup and Stew – then some Spices, and a relatively Bland Meal becomes (more) Edible. The Freeze-Dried stuff may well be Sawdust with Chemical Flavorings, IMO. Current MRE’s are Edible if you are Hungry, but Cost way too much for Bulk Storage of Food.
Plant a Garden, keep some Chickens if you can. I Garden, and Eat the Rabbits it attracts. MAKE SURE your Horses can’t get to the Garden. Two Draft Horses can do more Damage in an Hour than than 200 Rabbits all Night… Ask me how I know.
I’ve had a harvest right freeze dryer for around six years. Don’t use it as much as I should, but it truly is a game changer. Got my stores in place (some going back to y2k) and my wife and I are in the process of developing a 28 day meal plan all made from food storage. As you might imagine, more failure dishes than good ones. Last year we went to a culinary institute to up our game. I got a certificate in culinary arts and the wife got one in baking and pastries (you can teach an old dog new tricks–I’m 76.) We also have a couple of Aerogardens that supply some herbs and greens year round. At the moment we’re snowed in but the herbs and greens are doing just fine.
CZ,
You have scored again with this posting.
I will admit that I used to say that the good reason for storing as much variety with food as possible is the need to avoid diet fatigue. This is always good advice.
I found a comment on a web site perhaps two months ago that is worth considering, however. The person quoted said that he had been to numerous foreign countries. In these poverty stricken countries, people often ate the same thing day after day, and they were simply glad to have any food.
When he would meet them, often they would invite him to share a meal. They would serve him their paltry dishes and say, “Is good, no?” His point was that anyone staring abject hunger in the face will probably eat whatever they have.
Having said that, anyone who is seriously interested in preparedness who does not put aside a wide variety of food, and who only sticks with beans and rice, IMHO, is as dumb as a bag of hammers.
IIRC it’s the French who said “Hunger is the best sauce”.
LDS warehouse, aka Home Storage Center. Closest one to me is Worcester, MA, a couple-three hours away. I make a multi-purpose road trip out of it with several stops along the way about twice a year for the 25lb bags of hard white and hard red wheat, among other items. This one opens Thurs and Sat, 9 to noon. Warehouses do not always stick what is on the national website. I usually call ahead to make sure. Credit card only.
https://providentliving.churchofjesuschrist.org/bc/providentliving/content/content/english/self-reliance/food-storage/home-storage-center-order-form/pdf/HomeStorageCenterOrderForm-US-short.pdf?lang=eng
I use the wheat primarily for bread and cream of wheat. i used the last of my hard red from 2007 a couple of years ago. The powdered milk from 2009 is still good, and so are the refried beans:
Sidebar: OvaEasy egg crystals are the best i have ever used and consumed; easy mix, easy cook, easy cleanup. NOT Cheap, though. Extremely palatable!