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Anyone buying freeze dried food or noticed others buying?

1391 Views 48 Replies 30 Participants Last post by  cavelamb
Considering the overall “ situation” how many have bought , considered buying or noticed others buying freeze dried food ? Sportsman Warehouse has a pretty good selection, Academy Sports has some and even wally world.
No need to go into detail.
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I have a stash. About $600 worth of various items. I hope I don't need it.
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6 months at least
Thrive products my wife use to sell it
I have a stash. About $600 worth of various items. I hope I don't need it.
Me, too. I got it from MY Patriot Supply. It says 3 months at 2000 calories a day. I don't think I get 2000 calories now. I could stretch another month out of it. Wouldn't break my heart if I never had to use it.
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I have some stored away. I tried one, it was no worse than a tv dinner. But mostly it just sits there in case needed.
Rice and pasta also store for a while, and pasta is easier to stack as it comes in boxes.
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You can do a lot better for cheaper just buying staples that have a long shelf life. Rotate them out over time. A lot of that stuff sold as "survival food". It is overpriced and overrated.

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Rotate them out over time
Honest question- how does one rotate hundreds of lbs worth of rice for a small family?
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Considering the overall “ situation” how many have bought , considered buying or noticed others buying freeze dried food ? Sportsman Warehouse has a pretty good selection, Academy Sports has some and even wally world.
No need to go into detail.
Remember to mark the home-location on yer map, everytime you spot one!
Honest question- how does one rotate hundreds of lbs worth of rice for a small family?
Honest answer is that it is not easy. But white rice properly stored has a long shelf life of at least a year or two. I do send some off to food banks if it gets too long past due for use. They are always glad to get it and have never gotten any bad feedback from them. Go with white rice as it has a longer shelf life. Brown rice has a higher oil content which will cause it to go rancid quicker. I have cooked and eaten three and four year old white rice with no issue.
another thing worth looking at is DATREX rations. If you ever go on a passenger ship for a cruise or whatever. That is what they will have in the life boats. Solas mandated that they have a stated shelf life which they list as five years. They are actually good far beyond that and are not affected by being frozen or exposed to excessive heat. Generally when we would change them out at five years on the ships they were fine. They are quite edible and a pretty good buy for what they are. A good option. Mountain house and a lot of these other survival food options are generally a rip off.

Datrex Inc - Official Site
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It's a bit pricey for us to have on a shelf. We do use them for long hikes. Our kids use them for long hikes too. They do sections of the AT so these are great for that. Most of what we have on hand are canned goods both store bought and canned goods we do ourselves. There are also some long term storage products we keep around for power outages and winter storms that might keep us in the house for extended periods of time. Augason Farms makes decent products. We use a lot of their stuff in number 10 cans. The shelf life for most items can be up to 25 years if unopened.

Jon.
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Honest question- how does one rotate hundreds of lbs worth of rice for a small family?
I think the rule of thumb is to have food on hand for each member of the family for one year. Date it, use it and rotate it if needed...

So you would only keep enough rice on hand to feed your family for one year. Keeping track of rotation wouldn't be a problem at that point plus you wouldn't end up with hundreds of pounds of rice taking up space and possibly going bad (Rice Weevils). The trick is to figure out how much that is. My wife was really good at estimating what we ate and how much we used week to week as a family. And she adjusted all the numbers year to year as the kids grew up and then moved away etc.

Jon.
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Honest answer is that it is not easy. But white rice properly stored has a long shelf life of at least a year or two. I do send some off to food banks if it gets too long past due for use. They are always glad to get it and have never gotten any bad feedback from them. Go with white rice as it has a longer shelf life. Brown rice has a higher oil content which will cause it to go rancid quicker. I have cooked and eaten three and four year old white rice with no issue.
another thing worth looking at is DATREX rations. If you ever go on a passenger ship for a cruise or whatever. That is what they will have in the life boats. Solas mandated that they have a stated shelf life which they list as five years. They are actually good far beyond that and are not affected by being frozen or exposed to excessive heat. Generally when we would change them out at five years on the ships they were fine. They are quite edible and a pretty good buy for what they are. A good option. Mountain house and a lot of these other survival food options are generally a rip off.

Datrex Inc - Official Site
We also keep UST Ration Bars on hand. It looks like they are similar to the Datrex rations. We keep them in our packs, trucks and a few at home. I've been stuck in the woods overnight and in disabled vehicles. You generally won't starve to death overnight but having simple foods to eat or snack on makes a huge difference in your comfort and mental attitude. Especially if you are cold. Do they taste great? Eh, they are good enough. But they are also extremely dry so water would be a nice item to have with them as well.

Edit: The UST bars are made by Mayday but the retail pricing is about twice as much. And the latest packaging is blue. ;)



Jon.
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Dried pasta also keeps about forever if stored properly. I just cooked some +/- ten year old pasta the other day that was fine. Pasta sauce in glass jars also keeps for a long time, many years. Tomato sauce is very acidic. That keeps the bugs out, the reason why you can keep a bottle of ketchup on the table without issue. Pasta is stored in ammo cans keeping exposure to oxygen to a minimum which helps. Canned beans will keep for many years also and are cheap. Canned sardines keep indefinitely as do those Danish canned hams that are about impossible to find anymore. There are New Zealand outfits that sell canned butter and canned cheese that will last about forever. Canned corned beef will last for many years if you get the New Zealand or Australian brands. If you get deep enough into this you will eventually get some spoilage, the price of being prepared.
My wife asked me once if I really want to be around if things get that bad, my reply was that maybe not but the one thing that I do not want to die from is starvation. I even keep food for the neighbors, they do not know it,

but I do. I think that being the only guy on this mountain with food to eat is not really an enviable situation in certain respects. But they will get what I decide to give them. I have a crapload of Ramen noodles which are cheap and have a forever shelf life. Not really what I want to be eating a lot of. But I have them for a reason.
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@USMM guy Those shelves look a bit sketchy. Not a big issue for canned or boxed goods, but it would be a real pain if the glass jars fell and broke.
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Have bought enough to get thru for a while.
Emergency food I have enough to last maybe two weeks, rice, pastas and bean maybe two months worth, canned goods about the same. My goal is to have what I need in emergency rations to get to an evac shelter if it's called for, the other foods are for staying in place awaiting rescue.
If it's a complete collapse of civilization then I'm dead anyway so I'm not worried about it.
@USMM guy Those shelves look a bit sketchy. Not a big issue for canned or boxed goods, but it would be a real pain if the glass jars fell and broke.
They are sagging a bit from the weight. A hundred pounds of canned Danish hams on the left and that raw honey on the right is pretty heavy also. But they have been like that for years. Raw honey now that is an item good to have loaded with good stuff, and the shelf life is literally forever. They found jars of it in Egyptian tombs that was still good after thousands of years. The boxes of Tea bags on top of it were purchased for a dollar a box from one of thse dollar stores. Good for when the coffee runs out. Tea I had been told will only last three to four years. But trying it at eight years old told me that it was fine at least that long. It has been a learning experience.
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Still have a few cases of MREs I bought for the predicted Y2K Armageddon. I'm good!
I haven't bought for a while. I am pretty well stocked up from buying bulk from the folks in Utah. But Rice, wheat kernals and beans, that stuff keeps like forever. They vacuum pack it with oxygen absorbers, double bag it and put it in airtight containers.

but if we do have a major recession, the people who are starving will be coming to take your stash. violently too. we will need to form groups of our own to survive. More safety in numbers.
Honest question- how does one rotate hundreds of lbs worth of rice for a small family?
You dont. Could be wrong but I dont think properly stored rice ever goes back.
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