Prepackaged Food?

msdamato

msdamato

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I've been reading up on disaster preparedness and ordering a few items as I go. I have two five gallon buckets filled with some cans and pastas but feel like it is very incomplete. In my younger years I did quite a bit of mountaineering and we packed three weeks worth of food in our packs at a time. After that experience I feel like packing my own meals may not be the best option. While it may be cheaper shelf life is an issue and cooking from scratch on a camp stove takes time, alot of time!! I feel like in a disaster senario the option to heat water and pour it in to a pouch for a meal may be better. So now I'm thinking of ordering some prepackaged food.

I've had Mountain House before and MRE's and now I see alot of people liking eFoods, but in my search I ran across this and think I may give it a shot.

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Produc...itempageVerticalRight|PurchaseCP#BVRRWidgetID

What do you think? The reviews seem good and I like the 6 Gallon bucket for storage. The price seems comparable if not better than what I can find elsewhere.
 
I can only speak about the mountain house and provident panty foods, but I have been stocking those for a while now. The ones I have tried have all been very good and I was surprised by the taste. The biggest thing to watch is the sodium content. It is pretty high on most freeze dried / dehydrated foods. The other thing is to check the calorie content of the listed servings per can if you are using that as a guide for how much to store. They are usually pretty low.
 
That looks pretty good, although it seems a little heavy on soups and stews.

I have a couple of these, although I have not actually tried them yet. The meals are packed into 4 serving pouches, so I have been hesitant to fix a whole pouch. I found out after they arrived that they are 100% vegetarian.

http://www.survival-supply.com/serv...p-5058.html?osCsid=8mevakp3khr828musvgk6mn4j2

If you get them, let us know how they are.
 
Freeze dried &/or MRE type foods are OK for short term but if you want to get serious I'd suggest you look into home canning and bulk storage.
 
I'm not really up on nutrition lately but the interweb says 2300 grams of sodium daily is average. Going by that it looks like you could have three of thease meals per day and stay under that limit.
FYI if yo go to the product details tab and click the hyperlink that says Nutritional Info it shows all of the meals and some good looking pictures[smile]
 
Mountain House Chili Mac = sodium 540 mg (23%) But that meal only supplies you with 240 calories. A tenth of the daily calories (rounding up) for a quarter of the daily sodium.

This was an item I chose at random. Most of the entres are equally high in sodium. You will of course have to suppliment the freeze dried meals with rice, oats, veggies or bread.
Even regular canned food like Dinty Moore beef stew is astronomically high in sodium. For 200 calories of Dinty Moore, you are eating 970 mg of sodium!

This is a scary thought for me, because I am on meds for high BP and if I had no access to medicine, I am basically SoL if I have to live off cans of food [sad]
 
Might look at eFoodsDirect. They have a sample pack for free (less shipping) so you can try them out. They have a potato soup and cheese noodles that are outstanding. I live on packaged foods and I really like their stuff.
 
If you are healthy 20 year old, 2300 mg might be ok (I assume 2300g is a typo). However, if you are over 35 and or not in best health, 800-1200mg should be your target. Keep in mind that these are recommendations for those with plenty of available water and not under stress. In state of emergency you are likely to be under high stress and low on water. Most packaged foods are low on nutrients and too high on sodium. For short term disaster (2-3 weeks) or a camping trip Mountain House is a reasonably convenient solution. However, most packaged foods are inappropriate for a long term disaster.

There are some obvious choices for easy storage and cooking like beans, wheat, oats, etc., but try to also think outside the box. You can get canned sardines, mackerel, etc. Most come with easy open tab. They are ready to eat. Much easier to digest with much lower water loss than meat. Nutritional with lots of healthy oil inside the fish, plus oil outside the fish in the can. That oil can be used to cook or add to other food. FYI, for this and other reasons I keep a few cans in my BOB. Real leaf tea is another example easy to store and cook nutritionally high “food”. Honey is another great example. Just get a high quality local honey and not some cheap WalMart crap. 3 tbsp is about 1K calories with lots of health benefits – do I need to say more?

As MrTwigg said, home canned fruits and vegetables are great. But I get a feeling you are not ready for that. So, just think healthy easy to digest raw food and you’ll do well.
 
OPM said:
If you are healthy 20 year old, 2300 mg might be ok (I assume 2300g is a typo). However, if you are over 35 and or not in best health, 800-1200mg should be your target. Keep in mind that these are recommendations for those with plenty of available water and not under stress. In state of emergency you are likely to be under high stress and low on water. Most packaged foods are low on nutrients and too high on sodium. For short term disaster (2-3 weeks) or a camping trip Mountain House is a reasonably convenient solution. However, most packaged foods are inappropriate for a long term disaster.

There are some obvious choices for easy storage and cooking like beans, wheat, oats, etc., but try to also think outside the box. You can get canned sardines, mackerel, etc. Most come with easy open tab. They are ready to eat. Much easier to digest with much lower water loss than meat. Nutritional with lots of healthy oil inside the fish, plus oil outside the fish in the can. That oil can be used to cook or add to other food. FYI, for this and other reasons I keep a few cans in my BOB. Real leaf tea is another example easy to store and cook nutritionally high “food”. Honey is another great example. Just get a high quality local honey and not some cheap WalMart crap. 3 tbsp is about 1K calories with lots of health benefits – do I need to say more?

As MrTwigg said, home canned fruits and vegetables are great. But I get a feeling you are not ready for that. So, just think healthy easy to digest raw food and you’ll do well.
Click to expand...

3 tablespoons of honey is not even close to 1000 calories. It is about 200.
 
mclina said:
That looks pretty good, although it seems a little heavy on soups and stews.

I have a couple of these, although I have not actually tried them yet. The meals are packed into 4 serving pouches, so I have been hesitant to fix a whole pouch. I found out after they arrived that they are 100% vegetarian.

http://www.survival-supply.com/serv...p-5058.html?osCsid=8mevakp3khr828musvgk6mn4j2

If you get them, let us know how they are.
Click to expand...

Try them and get back to me. They are good folks at Wise Foods, but the taste on the samples I had were pretty poor. I know they were working on adding more flavor so you're might be fine but you should check. It would suck having to eat them for an extended period if they were bad.
 
I stand corrected. Sorry, I did not mean to misinform. It’s over 1K in a cup and a cup = 16 tbsp.
 
coastie said:
TO get the claimed 2100 cals a day, you need to least one serving of each of the meals in that kit. Add up all that sodium and it is over 4700 mgs. Look at the nutrition and there isnt much else in these.
Click to expand...

Ahhh...
Now I see. Maybe not such a good deal then. Or maybe a option to suplement my own meals. Looks like its time to pull out my old NOLS cookbook.
 
Look at bulk stuff like rice, beans, lentils, oatmeal, pasta etc. Stock some spices, sugar, salt, dried fruit to flavor. It would be a fairly bland diet but it would be a good base that you could add either things from a garden or wild stuff to for more variety. You could probably fit something like 10 lbs rice, 10 lbs of beans, 10 lbs of pasta, 5 lbs oatmeal, 5 lbs lentils, 1 lb of honey or sugar and some salt and other spices in a 6 gallon bucket. Get some mylar bags and O2 absorbers to pack it in. Alternatively you could order it from the LDS. That would keep you going for a month and be cheaper and healthier. All of those items if proerly packed would last for many years. It is not food that can be quickly prepped but for cooking you could use a thermos. Very efficient and easy. Beans and lentils can be sprouted for added nutrients.
 
Question about honey:

Why do you say that we should store locally harvested honey instead of the cheap store brands? Does walmart honey not last as long? The reason I ask is because I have about a half gallon of walmart honey as part of my preps. If it's no good, I will donate it to a food pantry. Is there a good local source around?
 
If you have allergies then local honey if the way to go. There are multiple health benefits of eating honey. I have seasonal allergies, in the springtime I'm fairly miserable for six to eight weeks. For the past few years I've made a habit of substituting honey for sugar in my coffee and local honey from the farmers markest helps me get some relief in the spring. Its not a complete immunity to the pollen but it makes the season bearable for me.

As an additional observation: I haven't had a cold or the flu since I started eating honey on a regular basis.

Also it does not go bad and needs no refridgeration but it may crystalize. When this happens place the container of honey in a pan of hot (not boiling) water and it will re-liquify.
 
In God We Trust said:
Question about honey:

Why do you say that we should store locally harvested honey instead of the cheap store brands? Does walmart honey not last as long? The reason I ask is because I have about a half gallon of walmart honey as part of my preps. If it's no good, I will donate it to a food pantry. Is there a good local source around?
Click to expand...

I believe there are several beekeepers on the board who sell honey.

The thing I worry about with store honey is where the honey originated from. A lot of honey comes from overseas and can be of questionable quality and purity.
 
Check out this link. This is what I do for backpacking trips and GOB food. I dehydrate most of my own now (just started this winter though I did this in years past). I do have a few MH foods but more for variety than anything else or when I don't have time.


Just boil water. pour. wait and eat. Much cheaper than buying MH meals.
http://www.trailcooking.com/
 
+1 on the efoods meals, but it's not the be all end all of foods. I will supplement with bulk beans oats and other long term bulk foods. Plus the efoods meals are very delicious. I'm willing to try anything once..
Pennypicher that's a great idea I haven't dried food in a looong time I should really re visit that. I used to do it for backpacking when I first started. Then I got lazy and started buying MH and Alpine Air..

As for honey I love the stuff and it does keep forever well at least 5000 years has been proven lol..
http://www.honey-for-health.com/honey-storage.html
 
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