Tag Archives: long term food

Why not those ‘survival food buckets’?

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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.

MRE dude

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So the big holiday crush is behind us now. I was traveling for the holidays, unfortunately, but managed to not get stuck in an airport so…there’s a triumph. However, I did have some interesting experiences after all….I got to meet, and pick the brain of, the head honcho of a company that makes MRE’s. Funny who you meet in the course of your travels.

I had a lengthy and technical conversation about MRE’s, packaging, development, cost accounting, whats new on the horizon, who are the big contracts with, calorie requirements from various customers, who are the international customers, etc. All in all, a very informative and illuminating conversation.

I have a goodly stash of MRE’s simply because theyre the epitome of grab-n-go food. They are bulky and they are heavy. But…they are literally everything you need in one place. I don’t view them as a long-term solution but rather as a short-term solution to a particular episode. For example, if I was simply staying home through a blizzard or the aftermath of a hurricane….no need for them, there’s plenty of ways to create better, tasteir meals from my food stocks. But for a ‘get everything in the truck, we have to leave nownownnow!’ sort of situation, they’re pretty much ideal.

Same story on the freeze drieds….they’re not a three-meals-a-day-for-months type of food but rather a specialized item for particular situations. Most notably stowing them in environments where space is at a premium, and long shelf life is paramount. For example, a big sealed drum of them in the closet at your bug-out cabin.

But MRE’s have always had that interesting history of military and .gov development and use. Sure, Mountain House has an R&D department, but it’s probably constrained by the relatively limited resources of a private company. Uncle Sam, however, has no such limitations on how much cash he can swing around if he really wants something. And then he orders five million at a time to get the quantities-of-scale advantage.

Anyway, it was definitely a highlight of this seasons travel experience to meet and talk to someone who is ‘in the know’ on a topic that I’ve found interesting for so many years.

ETA: This was a conversation that was casual and ‘off the record’. I don’t want to say anything that would come back to get this guy in trouble for divulging company secrets or anything like that. So, I won’t say which company, and I won’t say the exact title. What can I say? I was told shelf life of current MRE’s is “five years”. Biggest bottlenecks? Labor and packaging supplies. Biggest customer? .mil and various FEMA-types. International orders? Very few since nations want the stuff made domestically and you cant just build a food-safe facility for one contract.

 

Mountain House MCW overruns

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The folks at Mountain House were offering for sale what appears to be some MCW rations that I am guessing were part of a contract overrun. Spaghetti w meat sauce, chicken with rice, and breakfast skillet. I actually have, literally, 15-gallon drums filled with pouches of freeze drieds, but I got these anyway.

These are slightly more compact than the Pro-Pak series of meals MH offers, and I wanted something for where space is at a premium. Most notably, for when I travel by air and risk getting caught in an airport overnight without food options. A couple of these, an electric immersion water heater, and a plastic spoon make for dinner.

How big? About the same footprint as a 20-rd AR mag, although thicker.

Weight is approx. 4 oz. and calls for 16 oz. of water, so in theory you’re looking at a 20 oz. meal.

Given the compact nature of these, I’ll definitely tuck them away for the situations where space/weight/size is a big factor. But they should do quite well for my airport-layover-kit.

They are available on MH’s website, but the retail price is a bit painful. Dealer is about $5 less per package. Twenty to a case. Might be worth checking out.

Article – How Long Does Frozen Meat Last? Here’s What You Need to Know About Freezing Meat

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When it comes to stocking up on food, there’s nothing as convenient as filling up your freezer with a variety of frozen meals and ingredients, since freezing your food is the best way to guarantee freshness, long-term.

If you’re like many people and keep key meat items — such as raw chicken or ground beef — in the freezer, there’s probably a question you might be wondering: How long can you freeze meat before it goes bad?

I have something this article does not – empirical data. And I feel rather qualified to say that this article is utter and total BS. IF you vacuum seal the meat and IF you store it in a deep freeze (not the freezer in your fridge) I can say without any trace of doubt that it will last years.

I routinely eat meat out of my freezer that is a couple years old and it’s fine. In fact, I have half a turkey from 2016 thawing out for dinner tomorrow. I believe the oldest meat I’ve eaten out of my freezer was over ten years old and it was fine.

Articles like this try to be helpful, and I know many people would be aghast at the thought of eating meat that is years old, but I and my content gastrointestinal system are here to tell you that IF you freeze it properly you can get years and years of storage life out of your meat.

So when you see a big deal on bulk meat, don’t hesitate to purchase it because you’re worried it’ll “go bad” or “Won’t keep” until you’re ready to use it up. Seal it, freeze it, and it’ll be good for a decade. Thats years of personal experience talking.

 

Wheat at WinCo

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WinCo has that little corner of the store that carries what could best be described as ‘preparedness minded’ products….bags of flour, rice, salt, sugar, 5-gallon buckets, lids, etc…but one thing that was notably absent was wheat. Oh, flour they’ve got plenty of..but wheat? Not so much.

So, I was a bit surprised to se this today:

Hard white wheat in 25# bags. I wonder if they’ll get more varieties or if this is a one-time ‘gauge the response’ sort of offering. Regardless, it’s a welcome offering.

Winco for the win

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I’d mentioned before that Winco has a little section in the corner of the store devoted to ‘long term food storage’. Well, apparently Winco, after selling out of 3- and 5-gallon buckets and oxy absorbers, thinks there might be a market for long term stuff. So, when I was over in that corner of the store checking to see if the buckets had been restocked I saw this:

They had banana chips, apple slices, butter powder, lowfat milk, potato shreds, and egg powder. Sort of a post-apocalypse breakfast selection. I’m curious to see if this is just Winco testing the waters and possibly bringing in more products.

For those of you who are local, or semi local, this is the Winco that is on Reserve and South Avenue, across the street from Rosauers.

Costco Powdered Eggs review

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I’ve never heard of anyone in the military who had to eat powdered eggs and had anything positive to say about them. Perhaps the military gets a lower grade of product…or perhaps military food preparation is abysmal.. or all of the above. My experience with powdered eggs has been okay. Theyre not “Ohmigod these are awesome!” but they aren’t “What the hell is this crap?” either. On a few occasions I have fed them to people without telling them what they were and no one said anything. I find them to be acceptable, and certainly a better alternative to no eggs. Anyway….All powdered eggs seem to be extremely distasteful before cooking. You get this orange-colored thing that looks like pancake batter and smells like burnt cheese from a toaster oven. It isnt until you start cooking them that some sort of transformative process begins and they become more appealing. These eggs, branded as “WildRoots” and picked up at CostCo, were exactly like every other powdered egg product I’ve tried. Not bad, not great, but definitely a worthy addition to the food storage. As mentioned a couple posts back, my local CostCo had them on closeout, marked down from $6.97 to $2.97 which is a stupidly good deal.

For those of us who, at the moment, don’t have a backyard full of chickens but want to maintain a semblance of ‘normalcy’ when it comes to breakfast, and have some protein on hand, these would be an excellent choice. Canned bacon, dehydrated eggs, hash browns, biscuit/muffin mix, powdered milk, Tang, canned fruit, pancake mix, honey, and you’ve got a pretty decent breakfast with a shelf life of several years. After a long night of manning the barricades, chasing looters, and guarding the house, a breakfast like that would be rather welcome, I should imagine. In a slightly more realistic vein, these are an excellent choice for hunting cabins and other non-grid locations where store-bought eggs aren’t an option and you’re not around often enough to keep chickens.

They are packaged in a foil-ish paper pouch but I would vacuum seal this stuff up to be extra sure it is protected for long term. If you can’t find these at your local CostCo, here’s the nutritional and company info:

Don’t get annoyed if you can’t find them at your local CostCo. It seems that powdered eggs are powdered eggs are powdered eggs… there doesn’t seem to be much difference between ones I’ve tried. Augason Farms sells #10 cans of powdered eggs and I’d bet they are identical to this stuff. Only major difference is packaging and CostCo’s remarkable discount.

At $2.97, it’s worth buying a box just for the experimental value.

 

Costco eggs closeout

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Remember a few weeks back I discovered that Costco was selling powdered eggs? Well, I was going through Costco and saw this:

The price ending in “7” instead of “9”, as well as the asterisk in the corner of the placard, indicate that this product is being moved out with no plan to restock it. So, if you’re close to the Missoula Costco and want a smoking deal on some powdered eggs…this is your chance. Hell, I have cases of #10 cans of eggs and I still picked up three packages. For three bucks you’dbe crazy not to. How are they….thats a post that’ll be ip in a couple days.

 

A couple CostCo finds

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CostCo, once in a while, winds up selling something worthy of catching the interest of those of us who share our rarefied interest. Notably, their canned pork and canned beef, which are surprisingly good. Todays discovery was that the Idahoan potatoes, which, according to the blog, I came to love about 16 years ago(!) are now being sold by CostCo in ten-packs.

And, much more interestingly, we have powdered eggs now.

Six 6-oz. packages per box, $6.97/box

That was a real eye-opener. You don’t normally see large-ish quantities of this sort of thing for sale pretty much anywhere except maybe restaurant supply stores. The Deb-El show up in supermarkets, but its a small quantity for a large price. My original experience with powdered eggs was way back in 2004. Interesting to note that fifteen years later the CostCo product is actually cheaper than the 2004 product. However, to be fair, the 2004 product was purchased at REI… a place not known for being a bargain hunters paradise.

I already have several cases of #10 cans of powdered eggs from Mountain House and Augason Farms. And, in fact, I still have a 5-gallon bucket of vacuum sealed powdered eggs from that initial 2004 encounter. (I should crack one of those open and see how it held up.)

Powdered eggs are 13g of protein per ounce. For comparison meat, like, say, canned beef, is about 5g per ounce. A nice option over shooting your dog and eating it. But, of course, if protein is all youre after you could probably just store some protein powder from the gym-shop…but it wouldnt make scrambled eggs, omelets, french toast, or any of the other foody things that you can do with eggs.

Anyway, for those who are interested, you may wanna hit your local CostCo and see if they’re carrying these. I’ll be trying them out over the next few days so I’ll let you know how they cook up but based on my previous experiences I expect nothing but positive results.