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10K views 40 replies 23 participants last post by  cactusross 
#1 ·
Hey, I was thinking of getting a 3-month supply of freeze-dried or dehydrated food, like this, when I can save some money:
http://www.providentmetals.com/3-month-food-supply-1080-servings.html
It would be reassuring to me, because I have a big family, and this would last a long time (25 years on the shelf?!), is easy to store, and hopefully be nutritious, but in looking on the internet, there are tons of options. How do I know where to get it? and what is a good deal? I assume it isn't all the same, different nutrition content, etc.... Has anyone else ordered anything like this?
Thanks.
 
#4 ·
If you have the money and want to get a kit that you can simply forget about for a long, long time.... then do it. It doesn't matter if you have 5 years or 1 week, start somewhere. Many people will scoff at spending that kind of money since you can put so much more into long term storage for the same amount.
Everyone should start somewhere and once you get the product and some water stored up, you will feel a lot better.

Taste, quality, etc. will honestly be about the same and you can get good and bad reviews on every type of product available. Lots of sodium content in most of it but it's not supposed to be a gourmet healthy feast, it needs to keep your family alive and functioning.
 
#38 ·
Thanks for letting us know your thoughts about our freeze-dried backpacking food. We are excited to announce our new freeze-dried meals with less than 300mg of sodium. We’d love to send you a free sample! Please DM us your name, email and address and we will be sure to get it in the mail. Feel free to out check us out on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MountainHouse and Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/mtnhouse (@mtnhouse)!
 
#7 ·
I did the store bought freeze dried/dehydrated food thing myself for awhile. Worse waste of money I ever spent.

Do yourself a favor. Buy a good quality dehydrator and do it yourself. It's very easy and with a few mylar bags and O2 abs you get the same thing.

Having the benefit of a dehydrator also gives you the ability to take advantage of free produce, which we find a lot, or really good deal at the store. If you grow a garden it's invaluable.

I have an excaliber and it's a workhorse for the price. I used to live near where they are at so I had the pleasure of meeting them face to face. Very good people to work with.
 
#8 ·
Never go by "number of servings." Always go by calories. They're all pretty notorious at padding the numbers. And even when you're calculating calories, subtract all the sugar and sweet drink mixes that they like to add to boost the paper numbers. Only calories from food count. That's how you find out how many days that supply will really feed you. Some of the worst "year's supplies" are really only about a 6 month supply at best. Even less when you subtract the sugar.

Also, when looking at prepared foods, look at the ingredients. A lot of them aren't much more than flavored food starch with few real food ingredients. This is a quick path to malnutrition. Some of the companies are not packing true "survival food" but instead are just packaging the same crap foods that you see in the stores as convenience foods and box mixes.

I tend to store individual ingredients (dehydrated) because I can turn them into anything I want and they're 100% pure food. Not starch and adulterants.
 
#9 · (Edited)
+1 on learning to dehydrate foods yourself. I started doing it a couple of months ago and it's great. I know exactly what's in my food and exactly how much food it actually is.
For instance, I bought 8lbs of kiwi on sale, sliced, and dehydrated it. It filled 2 quart jars. If you know how much food you dehydrated, then you know how much re-hydrated food you'll have. Much easier to estimate how many servings you really have.
Buy fruits and veggies on sale and process them yourself. Save lots of $ that you can spend on other preps.
Check out dehydrate2store on youtube. You'll learn everything you need to know.
 
#13 ·
Hey, I was thinking of getting a 3-month supply of freeze-dried or dehydrated food, like this, when I can save some money:
A lot of those meals like what you linked to are low calorie, and loaded with sodium.

One issue with the page you linked to, there is no nutrition or sodium content posted. I have seen meals that are vegetarian, which means they are low calorie, and loaded with sodium.

For a rough example, some of the examples I have seen in the past are 300 - 400 calories per serving, and maybe 700 mg of sodium. To reach 1,500 calories a day you will have to eat 3+ meals, which equals well over 2,000 mg of sodium a day.

You should never eat more sodium then calories.

High sodium food should be a small portion of your preps, and not the majority.

Unless the website has the nutrition content posted, do not buy from them
 
#14 ·
Sorry, long post...

There are many posts on these forums from people with varying ideas on what to do and what not to do. I don't agree with a lot of them.
I do agree that you should look at package contents and ingredients, just like buying anything else.

Whenever I see the large bulk items for sale, I think to myself don't be in a hurry to put all of your eggs into one basket (ie. all of your food into one purchase). The reasons are below.

Personally, I recommend having way more basic ingredients than entrees (ie. pre-made meals), at least 10 to 1, the basics typically have longer shelf life and nutritional value.
When buying basics, buy the cans or pails of individual vegetables and fruits and grains and proteins (beans, meat subs, etc.), also sugar, salt, honey etc., don't stock up on massive amounts of entree meals. The packagers tend to not do a well-balanced entree meal set, plus you may be stuck with some meals you don't like. I only rely on the entrees for any short-term outages, such as the typical 72 hour emergency kit.
I also recommend storing a wider variety of food storage types when starting out and if limited by funds, with smaller purchases of each type, in other words don't put all your eggs in one big mylar ;) .
So I don't recommend buying the massive bulk packages for $1500+ unless you already have a massive stock of other food and storage types, instead you should pick and choose from a variety of food and storage types with each purchase. Every month I do some food, health and medical, and gear, with the money I have available to budget.

I don't fully agree with many of the comments that I see, and I do things different than many posts for (what I believe to be) simple logical reasons.
No one knows what's coming. That is the reason why we prep. People who lean on one type of food storage, or one method, may be in for some rough times depending on what disaster they run into.
I believe in mixing smaller containers (#10 and 1 gallon max size) of a wide variety of food types and storage times (MRE, bulk food in 1g mylar, cans, jars, freeze dried, dehydrated, etc.).

- I don't agree that 25yr FD/DH supplies are a waste to buy.
Situations may occur where you can lose one type of storage medium.
Just because it says it will last 25yrs doesn't mean you have to wait that long before you can use it. But if you only stock up on 5 year food, MREs etc. and lose a lot of them to a heat-wave or other disaster, then you are in trouble (every +10 in storage temp typically cuts the shelf life in half).

- I don't single mylar a 5 gallon bucket of beans, rice, wheat, etc.
You lose a seal, have a bag puncture, insect or mice issue, whatever, that is now one large bucket of throw away food. Result: the loss of a year of one staple.
I only package basics into 1 gallon mylars max and have them in a number of smaller buckets or large bucket mixes. Larger buckets contain a mix of various mylar basics, if you have to flee it would be better to grab a 5 gal with a mix of basics (sugar, salt, grains, veges, fruit, etc.) than a 5 gal of nothing but beans.
For many people, having a single mylar 5 gallon bucket of beans may also mean that once opened they go bad before consumed, with possibly no electricity to use your iron to reseal it in between uses.
I have no items at all in a single 5 gal mylar.

- I don't agree that doing it all yourself is better or cheaper versus buying pre-packaged FD/DH.
By the time you consider the cost of the can or bucket, the mylars, the absorbers, the food, the dehydrator, the bag crimper, your time and electricity to prepare and package all of it... then what happens if you made a mistake or packaging issue: bad seal, contaminates in the food preparing, etc.
I do about a 50:50 combination of self-packaging and professional packaged FD/DH (Mountain House, Thrive, etc). If months into a disaster I find some of my packages spoiled, chances are the others packaged by the pro's are still good.

- I don't like the idea of buying the big bulk sets.
I buy my pre-packaged foods: MRE, FD/DH, canned, etc. in small purchases and from a number of stores local and in other cities.
What happens if you bought a 5 year massive supply and later there is a recall on all that food created on that date from that factory. Or worse, what happens if you don't find out until in a disaster when you open them to find them all black and non-edible.
By spreading out your purchases to multiple stores and smaller purchases over a long period of time, the chances of you getting any food that you have to discard becomes less.

My goal is to have a minimum of 5+ years of a wide variety of everything possible in the basics and canned/jarred, and 3-6 months of MREs and entrees.
Every week when I go to the grocery store, I pick up a few additional packages of whatever I need for canned and basics, making sure that I have lots of stock for the types of food that I actually eat. If you like milk and eggs and spuds, always make sure your food stock has plenty of them in dried/flaked/etc., in both self-packaged and pro-packaged.
Every couple of months I put in another order for pro-packaged FD/DH basics and maybe some MREs, along with the packaging supplies I need (mylar, o2, etc.).
As I use up any jar preserved and pickled (from my mommy and our local farmers garden outlet) I replace them.

Congratulations, you made it to the bottom of this wall of text.
Hope my opinions helped someone... :)
 
#15 ·
- I don't agree that doing it all yourself is better or cheaper versus buying pre-packaged FD/DH.

i like your way of prepping, it is pretty much how im doing it now, except i consider doing it yourself ALOT cheaper then buying those prepacked meals,

we built a simple food dehydrater under 24$,you dont have to buy the sealer, (iron, straightener) and the buckets i find free all day long. the only thing i end up paying for is the mylar bags and o2 packets

but i do like the idea of "putting your eggs in different baskets" so your not just counting on one thing
 
#23 ·
Figured that I would post pics of my super Craigslist score in the FREE section a few months back...

I was surfing the freebies and at 4AM came across an ad for free dehydrated food to last one person 5 years or five people 1 year. Thinking that it must have been a scam but not wishing to pass it up should it be real I replied and the next day I got the reply of a lifetime.

The guy had moved 3 times in 2 1/2 years and was that next week moving into a smaller place and didn't have room for the 60 six gallon buckets and 24 boxes of six 1 gallon cans of this that and everything to keep you fat and happy that he spent over $7000 on only three years earlier.

I hitched up the trailer and after a 25 minute drive was happily loading it up to the top of the side walls and the truck's bed as well. LOL that trailer was loaded with over 3500+lbs of food alone and another 1000 in the truck bed.

Icing on that already sweet cake was 12 one gallon cans of seeds for planting my own garden, a 5 gallon tub of natural honey and a tulsi solar cooker.

For the $35 in gas to go pick it up that was and will probably be my best and favorite Craigslist score ever...








Going (2-3 mo) winter camping soon and planning on taking along three 6 gallon buckets with an assortment of food with me to try it all out. Plenty of snow (6' deep) on the ground for water so I should be all set.

Man you gotta love Craigslist sometimes...
 
#25 ·
From the pictures, those are mostly dehydrated foods. Not freeze dried. If they were freeze dried, 4,500 lbs would have costed the guy about $35,000 or so.

Good score though. I strongly prefer dehydrated ingredients over freeze dried entrees. And most of mine are Rainy Day Foods too. Walton Feed is a good company to deal with.

I would LOVE to run into a deal like that! :thumb:
 
#26 ·
Hey Mike

They are all dehydrated. Not sure where you read that they were freeze dried in my post???

Heck there are 10 or so that are nothing but different breads and mixes that only need yeast, 4 or 5 are milk and 3 are eggs. The guy even got the 6 gallons of the orange tang like drink mix which will be good to break the monotony of drinking water should the SHTF. 4 different types of beans, peas, potato slices, soups, pastas, sliced fruits and one full bucket of cream of wheat. All I need to do is stockpile some canned foods and it should round out the selection that I am sure never to get bored with eating. My personal favorite is the chicken fricassee.

Odd that all the meals that I have had so far have taken twice as long as the listed time to cook and in some cases twice the water to make not chewy. The vegetable soup I just leave on for an hour beyond the 15 or so minutes they list and it turns out just like I had opened a can, add some chicken or beef bullion (one 6 gallon bucket of each) and some rice and it tastes pretty good (not gourmet). Being only 300 feet above sea level it can't be the elevation in the cooking times.

Kinda feel bad for the guy because if it does ever hit the fan he will be kicking himself out of a window. He was just tired of moving it every time he moved and trying to find a place for it out of the way.

I am slowly but surely repacking into smaller mylar bags to make month long buckets with an assortment of different foods in them. Much easier to do that now than to open a bucket and have it spoil with the influx of moisture when I don't (or can't get) the bags or have the power to seal them.
 
#30 ·
I'll give you one better my friend... This is how I find 90% of my freebies in my area. In the last 3 months I have sources over $11,000 in gear for free or barter for items that I previously got for free which I then traded for stuff that I needed.

1) Google for "Search Tempest"
2) Type in your zip code
3) Set your travel distance maximum (how far you are willing to travel to pick it up)
4) Click "show more categories" then click "free stuff"
5) Untick the "Include ebay results"
6) In the search box type "food", "Dehydrated food" or canned food"
7) Click the search button

Alternatively, if you leave the search box empty then you can search through all the free ads in your set area in one web page..

In a short while and if there is any related terms in any Craigslist ads in your defined area the results will appear. This website is awesome for searching for any items that you are looking for and makes it so easy to use one website rather than searching through hundreds of Craigslist local website pages.

In most part, people will be cleaning their pantries and getting rid of canned foods so I don't know how lucky you will be on a big score. Mine was purely being in the right place at the right time and being luckier than a leprechaun. It allowed me to be able to focus on other survival related kit and gear taking quite a bit of burden off my shoulders. Now if my VA doctors will be up for writing a script for a 3 month supply of reserve meds for my various conditions to allow for a backup in case the SHTF. If not I may simply take a run for the border and stock up for a years supply that way.

In any case, do check out Search Tempest regularly and you are bound to find some cool scores.
 
#32 ·
A 5-gallon bucket of rice; a 5-gallon bucket of beans; a 5-gallon bucket of corn; a 5-gallon bucket of wheat ; should each cost you between $1 and $2 for each of them. Assuming you live anywhere in the USA.

The powdered milk, sugar and salt; I don't know. I only mess with buying grains and legumes.

#10 cans are usually good priced at restaurant suppliers.
 
#37 ·
I tried my hand at dehydrating veggies. I won't bother again. It tried them in soups and they never returned back well. They remained very chewy no matter how long I cooked them. Too much water and energy used.

Now anything that can be used as a snack like strawberries is a different story. Except
they don't last long.

Veggies I used canned.

BIH
 
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