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Hi yall, I am here living in the American Southwest and I have decided that I want to try stocking up on emergency food ordered or bought from some online source.I want to start out with 1 month to 1 year's worth for me and my mom and dad.I know there is a thread about food on the front page of this subforum but I did not want to hijack the thread.I was thinking of getting 50 pound bags of oats or white rice or flour.I just dont know where to buy from that willl charge a good price and not swindle me.We're deer hunters so we normally get a fresh batch of game every fall/winter which could last us a while
We dont have much room in the garage for the food. I know the LDS church sells a lot of emergency food and items to non-members.I am not LDS myself.I also know that the Amish sell survival food online.My friend from church said that the LDS food was high quality but expensive.I have a LDS neighbor friend and I am thinking of asking him about it.Where would yall advise me to get 1 month to 1 years worth of food?I want the food to have a shelf life of 10 to 25 years.Any suggestions?Thanks.My folks are thinking about getting this for me as a holiday present.I am dirt poor so I have to be careful with my prepping budget.
Last edited by NewMexicoCowboy; 10-10-2023 at 09:53 PM..
First thing, don't prep by storing huge piles of food that you don't normally eat.
Second, freeze dried meals are good for 25 years, but vary widely in cost and quality. Some are just a load of carbs without any protein or fats, and while some have carrots or green peppers, many are just a rice with chicken flavoring or similar that don't really supply complete nutritional needs for long term.
Third, MRE type meals are far more well balanced, but only last 3-5 years.
It is really your choice, but store stuff you normally eat. Switching diets to a completely new format on top of the stress of a SHTF scenario will not help the situation.
Storing whole grains is fine, if you know how to process and cook it them. You may need to invest in a grinder to make flour for instance.
Prepping is good, just use you head so you don't waste money on stuff that won't improve your situation.
'Prepping' usually denotes that you anticipate some future SHTF event. Consider for a minute, what kind of event do you foresee happening?
Will this be an event that lasts a week? a month? Ten years? or the rest of your life?
Some foods store well for 6 months [we can foods and some quality drops after long term storage].
MREs have issues. They are designed to be small, nearly indestructible, and to support youthful troops on the march with limited access to restrooms. Lots of calories and no fiber.
If you stockpile one week of food, what happens in week #2?
Likewise if you stockpile food for one month, is there a plan for what you will do during the second month?
I advise people to learn to garden. Every county in the USA has a Cooperative Extension Service that offers Master Gardener courses, along with Master Food Preservation courses.
Once you have mastered the process of producing your own food, then go back and reconsider my previous points.
As an individual with a perpetual supply of food, any SHTF event looks a lot differently.
I was thinking of getting 50 pound bags of oats or white rice or flour.
Those are inexpensive staples that last a long time but they are mostly all carbs. Of the 3 listed whole oats are probably the most nutritious and contains some protein, healthy fats, and vitamins. Flour is probably the worst of the 3 nutritionally, plus you have to think how you are going to use it. Humans can't eat raw flour, it has to be made into something like bread, dumplings, or pasta. Same goes for rice but it only has to be boiled and has a slightly better nutritional profile than flour. If there is a SHTF situation there is a good chance that survivors will be expending a lot more calories than usual and complete nutrition is important.
You mentioned that your financial situation is an issue. Prepping food is important but potable water is more important. Water is cheap and properly stored, lasts forever. You can purchase freeze dried and other long term storage food with EBT.
Whole grains store much better than grain that has already been ground to powder.
Remember the O2 absorbers are for things that go rancid from exposure to O2 like oils / fats.
Grains spoil from exposure to moisture so they need desiccant.
I was buying a lot of 'sweetfeed' which is a mixture of different grains with a tiny bit of bitter molasses drizzled in to up the smell and to ward off mold. But after many years I figured out a way to use the USDA database to help me locate farms that produce corn, barley and oats. After that I began buying grains directly from the farmer. I can buy a ton at a time, I bring it home pour scoops into a cement mixer, and drizzle my own bitter molasses, making sweetfeed for half the price that feed stores charge.
I store corn, barley and oats in steel 55 gallon drums with a cup of desiccant to keep it from molding.
You can do the same with corn, wheat, oats, barley. But directly from the farmers in 50 pound gunny sacks and you will be paying a lot less [and the farmers will actually be getting paid a lot more].
Remember the O2 absorbers are for things that go rancid from exposure to O2 like oils / fats.
This information can't be repeated enough. Oxygen absorbers and desiccants serve different purposes, and desiccants normally render oxygen absorbers inert, so they can't be used together. I wish there was a way to make this a "pinned" or a "sticky".
Apparently there are survivalist authors who praise O2 absorbers, and merchandizing con men who push O2 absorbers for everything.
As a result people new to the movement sometimes have only heard about how great and wonderful they are.
I store large quantities of grains, and it is not the O2 that threatens the grain [oil content is pretty low]. Exposure to moisture from the humid atmosphere will start to grow mold within a week if not treated.
I am on a survivalist forum where the Mods are on the O2 absorber or nothing bandwagon. When I mentioned desiccant I got banned for a month.
If you stockpile one week of food, what happens in week #2?
Likewise if you stockpile food for one month, is there a plan for what you will do during the second month?
Submariner has some great points here. How much is too much, and what is it for? If you want one year's worth of food, why not store two year's worth? Or three? Because some wars or global meltdowns might last a loooong time.
I changed my tune and kept it simple. Three months worth of provisions can likely get you through most acute hardships, whether personal or external, and is also easier to transport in the event of evacuation. I'm also 'dirt poor' and have no interest in setting up a warehouse or random caches of food like some preppers do.
I had some neighbors that were faced with a hardship and had to move quickly, not sure why exactly. They told us to come over and load up...tons and tons and tons of food packed away in Rubbermaid totes in a metal shed. Mice had gotten to some of it, and I found burst cans/jars that had frozen. Home canning jars with no labels or dates, whatever was in them looked disgusting. All these odd items, like 3 dozen cans of mushrooms and old boxes of Jello that nobody was ever gonna eat. They must have spent thousands of dollars on all of it, and it was abandoned, and most of it thrown out.
Whatever you end up getting, keep it manageable and know what you have so you can rotate older stock (by eating it and buying new products).
Submariner has some great points here. How much is too much, and what is it for? If you want one year's worth of food, why not store two year's worth? Or three? Because some wars or global meltdowns might last a loooong time.
I focus on one year.
In the early spring, I tap maples, boil down and bottle one year's worth of maple. Enough to last us from one spring to the next spring.
Then comes our fiddleheads. If we harvest and freeze 50 pounds of fiddleheads, that gives us one pound to eat, each week for 50 weeks. From this March to next March. One year.
We raise a lot of chickens. On the day that we process them and send them all to freezer camp, our motto is one year of chicken.
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