Mountain House Emergency Food buckets on sale at Amazon.com

[momopi]

A couple years ago, there was a rush on freeze dried emergency food products, causing a rise in prices. Seems that the supply situation has improved and Mountain House (Oregon Freeze Dry Foods Company) is offering Christmas discounts.

The Mountain House bucket products are actually cheap plastic buckets with 12 pouches of freeze dried foods. Each bucket contains approx. 30 servings of food. The pouches require 2 cups of water to re hydrate, taste best with hot water but can use cold water in emergencies. The pouches have been tested at 31 years storage, but Oregon's temperature is lower than California, so if you're in Los Angeles, you should expect around 10 year shelf life for this product.

The buckets retail for $70-$80 at Sports Chalet, but you can buy them on Amazon for $56. They're running a $20 off for orders of $100 or more on the same item, and I was able to order them in 2's and receive the $20 off discount with free shipping. The cost per bucket is $46 after discounts. You may need to play with Amazon's ordering system to optimize best price.

The pouch type products have inferior shelf life to the #10 can products. However the pouches are smaller, lighter, cheaper, and easier to carry if you had to stuff some into a backpack and bail. They're also great for hiking and camping trips.

Understand that the freeze dry process does destroy some nutrition, and while the human body can survive for weeks without food, you'd die in days without water. So don't forget to store water for emergencies (1 gallon per person per day). I recommend at least 2 weeks of food and water at minimum for yourself and your family.

If you're looking to store several months, or a year's worth of food, you might want to talk your Mormon friends. The LDS Church has a lot of experience with this stuff:
http://www.lds.org/topics/food-storage

The LDS Church also sells long-term food storage products in #10 cans via their online store, but I'm uncertain about non-Church members purchasing the products, if the price is subsidized by their Church.

[onethousandknives]

So 30 servings of food for $50? What's the advantage of buying this over just getting cans of beans for 69c a piece? I can understand since it's freeze dried it might be better if you're on the move compared to heavy cans of beans, but other than that, I see no reason to buy them. Like maybe buy one to keep in the car or a backpack or whatever, but that's it.

The best longterm food for survival is really simple. Dried food. Rice, beans, wheat (buy animal feed grade wheat and a wheat grinder) then dried fruits. Dried lasts a long time and takes up less weight/space than non-dried food. Of course with dried food it assumes ample cooking space/time/facilities, but yeah.

Another big option is foraging, something most survivalists really don't know anything about. http://www.eattheweeds.com/cattails-a-survival-dinner/ Cattails for example. Excellent source of starch in the roots. However most people would just walk by and go "stupid pond plant" and go about their day (however in non-survival situations cattails could be bad as they absorb pollution from water.) http://indianapublicmedia.org/news/file ... _olive.jpg Autumn olives. See those along the highway everyday. So many plants are very edible and good, but people just don't know you can eat them.

Basically what I'm trying to say is freeze dried and "emergency" food is false security. It's good short term but long term it's much better to actually know what you're doing. So many people in the survivalism/prepping/whatever world seem to be very concerned with weapons and tactics and what have you and don't know jack shit about food or even know how to cook for themselves.