I have been in basements of old 1930s-1940s Civil Defense bomb shelters. Federal government buildings are always built to an absurd standard to make them more resistant to nuclear attacks, the basements are often designated as such.

#10cans filled with hard sugar candy, instructions said to eat X many as a daily ration. Then boxes of salt crackers, on pallets, the pallets were in rows the length of the building, stacked four high.

 

Did you get a chance to try any of the hard candy in the cans? or other foods?

 

YMMV but during Cuban missile crisis our home fallout shelter was stocked with tinned beans, rice, Spam, peanut butter, V8 juice, Sailor Boy pilot bread, fruit jam, cube sugar, evaporated milk and teabags. Also essential were basic seasonings, salt, black pepper, cayenne and curry powder.

Could do lots worse than that.

 

of that lot I suspect the tea would have the shortest shelf life

OP, I think 'nutritious candy' is a promising concept for long-term storage and emergencies. we already have 'nutritious' chocolate drinks.

 

Ever tried dried apples in #10 cans from The Bishops Warehouse? Best candy anywhere. Our grandkids crumble them up onto bowls of ice cream. I'm lactose intolerant so I munch them as is, in a sandwich ziplock. Almost as good as candied pecans, brownies or plain almonds with white raisins. All four are a pick me up every time. Getting a local Bucees in August!

 

If you check out historic military and survival rations they always included hard candy as part of the ration.

 

I just had a "military " ration this
last week that had several peppermints as a part of it. Should have taken a few photos of it.
Not an MRE, and not like anything else
I've seen or sampled.
If I had to call it something, I'd say
it was a "civilian " MRE, or maybe
some kind of a something packaged
for "contractors "
Expiration was in another month, and
I needed to stash some new freeze
dried packs in the pouch and rotate
the older out

 

What did they use for stove in old days? Sterno?

I like apple sauce or even stewed prunes with vanilla ice cream. The only dried apples I've had were soft and not much flavor, I thought not a favorite dried fruit.

 

I don't know if they are still doing it but they used to put caffeinated chewing gum in the First Strike rations. I've seen the packages of gum sold separately from time to time.

 

Correct first strike rations will either have caffeinated chewing gum or caffeinated losanges / mints.( super chalky ) but like100 mg caffeine per piece one will give ya a boost 3-4 Will about boil ur blood

 

I need to drop by Dollar Tree and replenish the LT hard candy stock, yet again.

 

I do keep bags of hard candy in my storage for this. always in hard plastic totes.

it's a cheap prep where a little goes a long way and will last for years. and in many cases the flavor is something that would be hard to replicate from local natural sources. mentally, that's a little taste of civilization

 

I don't like to stock for long as the candy starts to stick to wrapper.

 

Definitely hard candy has a place in kits for hard times.. The sugar boost and the phycological boost are all part of it.
I do my own freeze dried sweet apples for snacks and they are great as long as you have some water.

 

I have candy stashed in mylar somewhere around here. I did it more for the kids, just a small piece of normalcy if things go sideways.

 

I once had a 5 gallon bucket stashed in the woods full of "stuff", when I went by to check on it the ground was littered with the hard candy wrappers. There were also bear tracks....a black bear had dug up the bucket, chewed it open and somehow ate the hard candy and spit out the wrappers???

 

Was the bear's name Yogi by chance? Were you anywhere near Jellystone National Park?

 

Actually the area we lived then was called "Bear Gulch". The bears coming out of yellowstone now are Grizzly.....

 

Hard Candy is cheap...sounds like a good idea. Time to look into it further. Personally I go heavy on a shorter term rotation of chocolate and peanut butter.

I've had bad luck (ignoring the superstition) with 20+ year old Charms candy packaged in MREs...they were all mushy like super thick snot.

 

Chocolate and peanut butter have longer lasting energy than just the sugar rush of hard candy. For diabetic emergencies I prefer juice for the sugar but follow up with a sandwich or similar.

 

My dietician in the family practice recommended packing small 28g, 100 calorie boxes of raisins with Walkers Oat cakes, low sodium V8 juice and peanut butter to have a quick boost with longer released balanced nutrition as meal replacement.

 

Winco foods has hard candy in bulk at very reasonable prices. You can mix and match flavors. I'm partial to the butterscotch and also the root beer barels. Each piece is indivually wrapped, and because hard candy has such a high sugar content the shelf life is not an issue. I put mine up in 1 pound mylar bag batches, and keep the red and white pinwheel peppermints packaged separately because they will flavor whatever they are packaged with. They are great added to a cup of hot tea for medicinal purposes too.

 

I used to snack on chocolate covered espresso beans to get up to speed before karate sparring.... No problem dozing off on the drive home either..

 

Good thread. I have bought cheap candy to add to food stores from the jungle ( Amazon) one candy mix with blowpops skittles, 5 lbs of jolly ranchers asst. 4 lbs of old school hard candy’s as well. PRO TIP. This time I put them in a food bucket because last time mice got to them before I did. Past mres came with charms hard candy. I think it’s a great addition as a treat / pick me up / boredom thing.

 

Forgot to mention I have this on my I’ve gotta buy but haven’t yet. list from nitro pak. Rocky Mountain foods survival hard candy 30 yr shelf life in #10 can. Currently on sale like $24 A good idea I believe

 

I've found hard candy to be NOT always so long term.

Just an observation, I haven't bothered with specifics BUT just candy stored in the pantry.
As @dmas stated above, SOME of it was sticking to the wrapper.
Didn't seem to matter if it's Top of the Line, or Dollar Store.
LIFESAVERS were in big bag from Walmart. Individually wrapped. and they were sticky after 4 yrs.
LIFESAVERS mints were not sticky, BUT they became "soft"
SOME Dollar tree hard candy, depends on the COLOR. Like, the red ones were sticky, but yellow ones were rock hard, green ones were really soft...

Again. No special treatment. Just on the shelf, in the house, in the original packaging.
Oh, we still ate them, just pointing out my observation. Tasted fine. Well, not so much the mint Lifesavers. They tasted a little off.
Basic Candy Cane flavor rounds seemed to last the longest. ACTUAL 6" candy canes were a sticky mess and we threw those out.

 

Altoids lose their curiously strong taste over time.

 

I purpose of me carryin hard candy is a lesson I learned about not passing out from my Grandmother. In post WW2 Germany my grandparents and their 5 children grew up starving in southern Germany. She always carried a tin of salmiak pastilles or some other type of fruit derived candy on her purse which gave her just enough of small sugar bump to make it until she got home.

Practices like this are still used by some South American peasants making what they call "Canelazo" which can be a mix of hardened brown sugar and either lemon or cinnamon.

My EDC pouch (not my bag) is only a 4x6x3 so the compactness of hard candy works well. I am always on the quest for better nutrition in my food preps which is why I posted about the Essential Candy.

This is very similar to me moving to Huel for dehydrated meals over Mountain House and the like.....it doesn't have as long of a shelf life but the nutrition is much better.

HK

 

For those of you who have not experienced Steve, here's a treat;

 

Just a note here, I used to love jolly ranchers hard candy.....I also have had teeth break and need caps and now the warranty is running out on the caps and they are breaking the rest of the tooth off. I have always been a fan of mineral supplements and grew up drinking gallons of real cows milk..

If anyone has a freeze dryer I would be interested in good recopies for surgery treats that
are maybe thinner or maybe a super sugar cookie that processes well in a harvest rite. I shy away from processing commercial candy which comes out fluffy and some say causes problems with the FD. If they weren't so bulky FD ice cream sandwiches are a treat..

 

I put trail mix in Mylar w/ o2 absorbers. It keeps for about 5 years

I'll pass on candy and refined sugar when possible, which isn't healthy.
For your body to process sugar, it needs vitamins, minerals, and insulin to make them available.