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For thousands of years, people around the world have been growing and storing their own food to last them through the non-growing season in their geographical area. Only in the last fifty years has mankind, in developed countries, gotten away from this practice. With on-demand food at our grocery stores, the knowledge of how to grow and store your own food has almost completely disappeared from society. Even most of those “country folk” who grow gardens in the summer, only do so to have fresh vegetables in the summer and fall. Very few of them grow and store enough vegetables to completely live off of them throughout the winter months.
The biggest obstacle that 99% of survivors will face after the loss of the electric grid is the lack of food. Dying from starvation is a very slow and painful process for the unprepared and something you definitely don’t want to experience. Even a lot of people who consider themselves prepared are drastically under-estimating the food they will need. You are going to be burning a considerable amount of calories after the SHTF...more than you think. On top of that, most preppers have significantly less food (necessary daily calories) than they think they do.
I hear a lot of rural people tell me, “I’ll be alright; I know how to garden and can vegetables.” The first thing I always ask them is how many canning jars do they have left over when they get done canning the vegetables in their garden each fall. Almost every single person answers “none” or “very few.” That is a life-threatening problem if they are planning to live off canned food and stored vegetables! Most people grow a garden to eliminate their need to buy vegetables at the store and not to actually sustain their family’s full diet through an entire winter. Of all the people I have asked that question, not one has had ANYWHERE NEAR the amount of canning jars they would actually need to feed their family from their canned goods. Canning is great, but unless you can afford to have an enormous amount of canning jars, you are going to need to learn how to store your vegetables in a root cellar or “cold cellar” that you may need to dig by hand if you wait till after the SHTF.
If you think you have enough canning jars to survive a winter, than I implore you to do a little exercise. Count how many jars you currently have. Next, figure out your average harvest dates for your garden. I realize that different vegetables have different dates when you plant and harvest them, but for illustration purposes let’s say your harvest season is from early June through late October. That means you have around six months during which there are no mature vegetables in the garden (again, this varies dramatically depending on where you live). Assuming you have a family of four, you will probably need AT LEAST two to three quarts worth of food per day just to survive (not thrive). That means your family should have the equivalent of four to five HUNDRED quart jars in storage and three times as many lids. I realize that there a ton of variables here from the length of your growing season to whether you have a root cellar, how many people you are feeding, and whether or not you have other long-term food preparations. My main point is that you can’t just look at the stack of jars in your basement and think, “That should be enough.” You need to seriously tabulate and calculate on paper exactly what you think you’ll need based on your family’s needs than add in some extra supplies “just in case.” If you do this, you’ll probably notice that you need a lot more canning jars, lids, and supplies than you thought, and you’ll probably need to grow a much larger garden to fill all those jars. Two things you will also need to seriously consider during this process is purchasing a greenhouse to extend your growing season and digging a large root cellar to store vegetables and limit the amount of jars you will need to purchase.
I am not saying that it’s impossible to strictly live off your vegetable garden year-round, but having a year’s worth of long-term food storage is definitely advisable. There are many different ways you can store up a year’s worth of food with the most popular being the prepared freeze-dried food companies. There are a lot of companies that advertise “1 Year Food Plans,” but beware of them! I am not going to call them out by name, but I’m sure you have seen their advertisements on numerous preparedness websites. Even a lot of the big name, conservative talk show hosts advertise for them. In almost every case, these companies’ claims are verging on outright lies and their one year’s worth of food won’t last you six months in most cases. If you actually do the math on the calories provided in those plans, you’re going to find that most of them are providing you with far less than half the calories you are going to need each day! At the end of the year (if you make it that long), you will probably look like a holocaust survivor. If the SHTF, they are going to be directly responsible for a lot of people dying who thought they were prepared and I don’t make that claim lightly. If you get nothing more out of this chapter, remember this: most long-term food companies’ serving sizes have no basis in reality! Completely ignore them when purchasing your long-term food! The only correct way to purchase long-term food is by buying it based on calorie count.
I highly recommend that you have at least a 1-year supply of food for each member of your family. A six-month food supply will not get you through an entire winter, spring and summer until your garden crops have reached time for harvest. I can also almost guarantee your first year’s harvest won’t go nearly as well as you plan and you’ll likely have less food than you think on year two, so having some long-term food left over from year one post-SHTF would be a bonus to help get you through the second winter. Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all “1 year” food insurance plan, period! I have seen 1 year food plans from major companies, ones that you’d surely recognize, that come with as little as 700 calories per day. Another trick they attempt is packing their plans with high sugar calorie-count juice drinks and other side items like chocolate pudding to pad their numbers. The majority of your calories should be coming from actual food items and not sugar-packed side items. If you choose to buy a pre-packaged 1 year plan, pay attention to this tactic.
Also, be wary of following the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) charts to determine your caloric needs as they are designed for the “average” person who is in good physical health and performing minimal exertion throughout the day. These numbers can also fluctuate greatly depending on age, physical health, and your level of activity. Your best bet would be to use a Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) calculator like the one at www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/ to figure out how many calories are needed for each individual member of your family based on their age, sex, height, and weight. This will give you a baseline to start from and the MINIMUM daily calories needed for each member of your family. Please realize that these calories are based on the absolute bare minimum needed for your body if you literally sat still all day. After figuring out the baseline for each member of your family, you then need to multiply the baseline by the Harris Benedict Equation. He offers formulas for each type of lifestyle, but I recommend multiplying your baseline times a “moderate lifestyle” (1.55) or an “active lifestyle” (1.725). Obviously, you’re not going to be living a “sedentary” (1.2) or “lightly active” (1.375) lifestyle if you plan to survive. I also wouldn’t pick the “extra active” (1.9) lifestyle either because you will certainly have some days with lighter work as well as winter months with less outdoor activity involved.
Take for instance the average American adult male at 35 years old, weighing in at 195 pounds, and standing 5‘ 9” inches tall. His baseline BMR is 1,663 calories a day. Applying the Harris Benedict Equation for even just a “moderately active” lifestyle, he’d need to multiply his baseline (1,663) by 1.55. That means he will actually need 2,577 calories each day. It is very vital that you do this for each member of your family. Once you add up your family’s caloric needs for the year, you will have a better foundation for where to start. If you have already purchased long-term food, contact the company you purchased your food from and get the calorie count for the food they provided you and do the math based on your family’s daily caloric needs. If they don’t have that information at their fingertips or they refuse to give it to you, it is a safe bet that you have been misled and you have far less food than you think. When they do provide you with the calorie count in the food they sold you, I would be willing to wager you significantly less food than you thought you did.
Once you determine your family’s or survival retreat’s caloric needs, then you can start deciding what type of food to buy. Although there are benefits to having all freeze-dried meals that are ready to eat, I would not rely on that as your sole source of food for multiple reasons. Something you need to take into consideration is expense. What can you afford? For an average family of four (6,000 calories a day), you would likely be spending over $20,000 for a 1-year supply of strictly Mountain House meals (when figuring 6,000 calories a day and not just their serving sizes or advertised prepackaged 1 year kits). That same amount of calories could be purchased for around $4,000 in a year’s worth of raw staples for your whole family. The major drawback to this approach is that your meals become A LOT MORE labor intensive to cook, especially if you are feeding 20 people at a retreat! Most people don’t take into consideration that “someone” is going to have to prepare all these meals and clean up afterwards without the help of a dishwasher. Imagine having to cook a Thanksgiving Dinner three times a day, every single day, and then clean up afterward! Everything you do after the SHTF will be harder than before. You are going to have to weigh the pros and cons of each type of meal and what your budget looks like. My best advice would be to combine all the above and have a mixture of canned goods, prepared meals and staples, while also raising your own fresh meat and growing your own vegetables. You can adjust the ratio between them to fit within your budget.
The first area of food storage I would focus on, especially if you are on a budget, is buying extra food that you already eat. This technique could actually save you money...if you do it correctly. However, this technique should only be used if you already live rurally and plan to survive in place. Having a lot of food stored at your house in the city could go really badly if you aren’t able to bug out by vehicle for whatever reason and take it with you. If you do go this route, I can’t stress enough that having food at your house in town and not being able to take it with you is NOT a legitimate reason to NOT bug out by day two after the grid goes down! Again, staying in town because you’re psychologically comfortable there and you have plenty of food there will only get you killed in the long term as more and more desperate people try to take your food. I would be hard pressed to tell you to leave it behind though, so if you did find yourself in this situation, I would go to extraordinary lengths to find someone with a running vehicle or find a route out of town that isn’t deadlocked. In fact, if you are on an extreme budget and this is the only way for you to store long-term food, then I would try and locate someone within walking distance (don’t wait till the last minute, do this before the SHTF!) that has an old classic car or truck that you can barter for. Worst case scenario, offer to take them with you and share your food; it’s not ideal but it sure beats leaving your food behind or staying in town.
The “buy extra food you already eat” technique is actually quite simple. You are essentially storing up the same types of food you already eat on a regular basis. Most canned and boxed goods have a storage life of two to three years. In truth, especially where canned foods are concerned, their storage life is considerably longer when stored properly. The manufacturer has to print the shortest time the food will be good for. For most food (NOT ALL), it doesn’t become poisonous the day after it expires, it just starts to lose its nutritional value. As long as you aren’t “too” long past the expiration date and the can doesn’t stink or smell funny, it’s probably safe to eat (again, this is a general rule and one that should only be applied if you are desperate and starving).
The best way to make your food last longer is to store it in as dark and cool of an environment as possible. A good place to consider would be in a dark corner of your basement, as long as it’s not damp, which will spoil your boxed goods. If it is damp, you’ll need to invest in a dehumidifier. Some people store their food in their garage, but I would refrain from doing so if it isn’t temperature controlled and kept between 32 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit (freezing isn’t bad, but freezing and thawing multiple times each season is bad). The worst thing you can do for any long-term food is store it where it is going to get hot. If these options don’t work for you, consider storing the extra food in an unused closet or under a guest room bed.
The first thing you want to do is sit down with your family and discuss all the items you eat on a regular basis. Make a spreadsheet with the shelf life and calories from each can or box of food. Focus primarily on canned soups, canned vegetables, canned fruit, boxes of pasta, instant potatoes, spices, and anything that has a minimum of one year “eat by” date. If you go through your entire pantry, you’ll be surprised how many items you would be able to buy in bulk. Next, you need to estimate how many times a year you eat that food item. For instance, Little Bobby loves SpaghettiOs. Let’s say he eats between 1 and 2 cans of SpaghettiOs each week. That would mean that you go through about 75 cans per year. If SpaghettiOs have a two-year shelf life, then you should eventually have 150 cans of SpaghettiOs in storage at any given time.
To get started, pay attention to your local grocery store’s weekly flyer and whenever one of the items on your list goes on sale, buy as many as you can afford that week. Having access to a Sam’s Club or Costco membership would also help you buy these items in bulk and save some money. The absolute best place to buy in bulk is at a restaurant supply store. Most large cities have them and you would be really surprised at how much cheaper you can buy bulk food compared to your local grocery store or even the Costco type stores. The only drawback is that your SpaghettiOs will probably come in a large #10 can.
Once you stock up and have a one- to two-year supply of your everyday food items stored up, then you are just buying your normal amount of groceries each week and rotating through your stored goods. The best way to keep track of this would be to have a shelving system that you can access from the front and rear. You always pull cans from the front and replenish your shelves from the rear, that way you are always using the oldest cans first. Having a laminated spreadsheet of your food supply hanging from one of the shelves will help you stay organized. I would recommend buying a grocery-store type price labeler like you used to see grocers use in the 80’s, and put a sticker with the date on top of each item you place on your shelves. Those labelers are super cheap online (less than $10 on Amazon) and will really help you to keep track of the expiration dates as you go through your food.
Storing up food this way does make your weekly trip to the grocery store a little more labor intensive (because you need to check your supply shelves and find out what you need to replenish), but it is well worth the time and effort. Since you are only buying your food in bulk or when it’s on sale, you will also save money in the long run even though it may cost you a little extra in the near term. By using this technique, you should easily be able stockpile a full 2-3 months (possibly 5 or 6 months depending on how much canned and boxed food your family eats) of food for a SHTF scenario. This will minimize the amount of long-term food staples and freeze-dried meals you will need to purchase. On a side note, unless you intend to eat your food past the expiration dates, don’t let the food go bad on the shelves and throw it out. A week before expiration, donate those canned goods to your locale soup kitchen and make sure they know the expiration dates are coming up. They’ll be sure to use them in time, and be appreciative to you for your donation.
This same technique can be used for those of you that garden and can your own vegetables. Figure out how many jars of vegetables you go through in a year. Instead of growing and canning just enough to get you by till the next harvest, grow and can two to three years of vegetables and rotate through them on a shelf just like you do with your canned goods. Be sure to label and date them. You will only have to do this for one season and then you can go back to growing a smaller garden each year to replenish the vegetables you used the previous year. The other great reason for doing this is that it forces you to buy extra canning jars and lids which is an area where most people who can are severely lacking. It also pushes you into growing a very large garden (instead of your normal sized garden) and forces you to “dry-run” the type of gardening you will be doing after the SHTF. If you combine this technique with buying your everyday food in bulk, you should easily be able to store five to six months of SHTF food for your family at very little to no additional cost.
This is as good as any time to discuss canning foods. This is a skill that you absolutely must learn and master to survive a long-term SHTF scenario. Just like gardening skills, it is not good enough to just buy the supplies and have them ready at your retreat; this is something you need to practice and get proficient in beforehand. Canning is, hands down, the easiest and most efficient way to store the food you grow or kill post-SHTF for a long time. However, it is literally a science that takes into account minute details like the elevation where you live. If you make a mistake and don’t pressure-cook your meat at the right pressure or for the right length of time, you could get botulism and literally die from eating it! You need to practice and actually can different types of food and meat, adding them to your weekly diet pre-SHTF. I would recommend having a large water bathing pot as well as a good quality pressure cooker and all the relevant cooking utensils to go along with both. You need to buy multiple books on the subject, especially the “Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving” which is the gold standard for canning books. If you are a hunter, you should also consider getting an extra deer or two and maintaining a three year supply of canned venison. Same goes with those of you who raise your own livestock.
So let’s say you ARE on a strict budget and need to buy raw staples and cook each meal individually, where do you start? At the end of this chapter, I included a spreadsheet with an example of the supplies you will need to purchase for a family of four. Remember that this is just a guide and a starting point for you as you will need to adjust the overall calories needed based on your particular family’s caloric needs. You may also decide to change the ratios or types of food to support your family’s diet. You can purchase a similar interactive spreadsheet from my website which allows you to adjust the individual quantity of each item to fit your family or retreat’s needs. The other reference item I would highly recommend purchasing (or downloading for free from their website) is the LDS Preparedness Manual. While I don’t agree with some of their philosophical ideas about how society will break down, their food storage and supply guide is very informative.
The cheapest company (yet still reputable) that I have found for purchasing staples is the Rainy Day brand of long-term food, offered at a discount at FoodAssets.com (I am not affiliated with them in any way). The Food Assets website provides a lot of good general information about storing food long-term and they carry many brands of long-term food, including Mountain House, Augason Farms and Rainy Day, at very reasonable prices. The biggest reason I recommend Rainy Day over Augason Farms and some of the other companies is strictly because they offer more of their food items in 6 gallon re-sealable buckets (most with a Mylar bag inserts). The price per serving is around 30% LESS when buying Rainy Day’s 6-gallon buckets over buying individual cans or cases of #10 cans. The only drawback to this method is if you are buying food strictly for yourself (lone wolf) and you don’t think you’ll eat the entire bucket of food before it goes bad. At that point, #10 cans would make more sense. The other great resource for buying staples (surprisingly) is the Church of Latter Day Saints. If you go to their website store.lds.org and go to their “self-reliance” section, you’ll find numerous items available by the case of #10 cans. While their selection is limited, the staples that they do carry are about as cheap as you’ll find anywhere else.
Technically, the cheapest way to buy bulk staples is to buy them in a 6 gallon bucket. A lot of preparedness forums and “experts” will encourage you to buy raw staples and prepare them for long-term storage on your own. I highly do NOT recommend this! For instance, a popular technique is to buy a 25-pound bag of rice (which only runs around $13) and put it in a large Mylar bag (which you have to buy) with oxygen absorber packets or dry ice (which you have to buy) and then seal the bag with a sealer (which you have to buy) and then place that item in a sealed bucket (which you also have to buy). Once you figure in your time and effort and buying all the necessary packaging supplies (which the big companies buy in enormous volume at cheaper prices), you are saving very little money, if any, by doing it yourself. There are lots of instructional books and YouTube videos on how to do this, but I personally advise against it for the newcomer. On the same subject are people buying very expensive food dehydrators and freeze driers for storing up long-term food supplies. The same principle applies. You are going to be spending as much as a thousand dollars just to get all the necessary equipment and supplies before you even get started. It would have been much cheaper to just buy the same food already processed by a reputable company.
Freeze-drying, dehydrating, and properly packaging food for long-term storage is a precise science and even a tiny bit of moisture left in a small percentage of your batch (i.e. it was in the bottom corner of the dehydrator and didn’t get as much air flow as the rest of the food) can spoil the entire bucket of food. Even though some of these techniques are fairly simple, you are not going to know if you’ve done it correctly until you open that bucket ten years from now and your family’s lives depend on that food. That would be a bad time to discover that you overlooked some minute detail during processing or packaging and your food (your lifeblood) is now spoiled. I am not saying you can’t do this stuff yourself, but you better know EXACTLY what you are doing and there is no room for any error. YES, you can save a few bucks by doing it yourself, but my advice is to leave it to the professionals and the companies with many years of experience and proven commercial-grade systems for preparing food for long-term storage. Companies like Wise, Mountain House, Augason Farms, and Rainy Day specialize in packaging staples for long-term storage and know what they are doing. This will also put your mind at ease, because you know that your food will be good whenever you need it. On a side note, if you are buying a food dehydrator for processing and storing food AFTER the SHTF, then I am good with that, as long as your 1-year emergency supply came from a reputable company.
So which staples should you buy? It depends a lot on your budget and what types of food you like to eat. Once again, beware of the “serving sizes” even when buying bulk staples. This is why I recommend going off calorie counts and NEVER on serving sizes. For instance, most companies show a serving of rice to be a quarter cup... really? My three-year-old could scarf down a quarter cup of rice and still be hungry. If you aren’t going to count the actual calories of each meal, a safe bet would be to literally double every serving size for the average adult.
If you’re on a budget, I would recommend you start by storing plenty of white rice because it is probably one of the cheapest types of bulk food you can buy. Nearly half the world eats rice as a main staple in their diet. While I will acknowledge that eating strictly white rice on a daily basis is not going to provide the nutrients you need in your diet, it can make a great base for a lot of your meals and stews. To go with your bulk rice, buy bulk freeze-dried or dehydrated vegetables and different types of seasonings from chicken and beef bouillon to teriyaki sauce, which will keep you from eating the same bland white rice regularly. You can also add fresh or canned meat to the meal. I’m not going to give you any specific recipes as everyone’s taste buds are different, just use your ingenuity and plan ahead. Another great base would be buying pasta noodles in bulk. If you are using the “every day” food technique, you should have lots of jars of spaghetti sauce saved up already. That won’t last you forever though, so I recommend buying bulk spaghetti seasonings (Rainy Day makes them) and making your own sauce each year from your garden’s tomato plants. You could also buy stroganoff gravy seasonings to switch up your “spaghetti” intake preventing you from getting tired of pasta noodles.
I would recommend having at least a six-month supply of various freeze-dried or dehydrated vegetables like sweet corn, carrots, peas, beans, broccoli, and the like to get you through until you can start growing and preserving your own vegetables from your garden. Beans are a good alternative source of protein if you are a vegetarian or you can’t afford to buy and preserve meat beforehand. There are a lot of various types of beans out there for you to pick from, but beware that they don’t last near as long as a lot of your other staples and they will get “harder” the older they get. This requires you to soak them longer to soften them up. I would also recommend a large supply of instant potatoes as a side item to your other meals. Once your garden potatoes are ready to dig up, you can replace the instant potatoes with fresh ones. Some people want to store up large amounts of various grains, and you can do so if you like, but be aware that almost any foods (like fresh bread) you are preparing with grain requires A LOT of preparation, extra stored staples like yeast (which don’t store well long-term), a quality grain grinder, and longer cooking times. This makes your “chef’s” job a nightmare, especially when they are responsible for feeding a large group of survivors.
A survival staple you must have is plenty of salt. I recommend having around ten pounds of salt per adult person and half that per child. Salt is not only used for seasoning food but it is vital to a lot of the different preservation and canning techniques for meat and vegetables. Personally I would recommend storing sea salt as it is much better for you, but it is also twice the cost of regular iodized table salt. You may also want to consider replacing a portion of your salt storage with “canning” salt. Adding sea salt when canning can cause mineral buildup on your canning jars and may turn the food a slight color. While this doesn’t really affect the quality or storage life, it can be a nuisance.
For breakfast meals on a budget, consider buying rolled oats or grits in bulk. You can buy some dehydrated brown sugar, raisins, and dried fruits like blueberries, bananas, and strawberries to switch up the flavor of your oatmeal since you will be eating it often. I also recommend buying hash browns in bulk as a great side item to go with scrambled eggs from your chickens. If you choose not to have chickens (which I highly suggest that you do), then you can store up powdered (real, crystalized) eggs. Just be aware that powdered eggs don’t have an extremely long shelf life (roughly 10 years).
Other staples you need to consider are sugar, flour, baking powder and soda, powdered milk, butter powder, honey, soup mixes, gravy mix, pepper and other seasonings, as well as various comfort foods like cocoa mix, coffee, and sweets for special occasions. The last thing I would mention is you’ll need a good supply of cooking oil. In most pre-SHTF diets I realize that you’d want to avoid cooking oils as often as possible, but in a SHTF scenario you’ll need those extra calories and it’s an easy way to add calories to what you’re already cooking. Regular vegetable oil only has a shelf life of a year, whereas olive oil and shortening will typically last two years. Those shelf lives are not nearly long enough and you’ll be forced to replace those items too often at considerable expense. I recommend Augason Farms who carry a shortening powder with a shelf life of 10 years. No other company I’ve found offer cooking oils or shortening powders that last nearly as long.
Some people are going to say, “Holy cow! White rice, pasta, shortening, and oatmeal doesn’t sound like a healthy diet!” I agree with you. If you had a choice in the matter, it would be heathier for you to continue shopping on a daily basis for your fresh foods at your local Whole Foods grocery store. Since that isn’t going to be an option after the SHTF, the closest you are going to get to that kind of natural and healthy diet is to grow your own vegetables and raise your own meat. If you don’t live rurally already and can’t afford a retreat to go to, then you don’t really have any choice in the matter and it may be six months or longer till your garden is ready for harvest. It is not an optimal diet and it is not the healthiest choice in food, but again, we are talking about survival here and any extra unhealthy calories you may be consuming will mostly be burned off and offset to some degree by the extra physical labor you will be doing on a daily basis. But even the extra physical labor is not going to counteract the deficiency in nutrients you are going to experience.
To combat this, the most vital part to surviving long term is going to have a solid 1- to 2- year supply of quality multi-vitamins for every member of your family. You are still going to need a lot of calories each day for energy, but multi-vitamins will help keep your immune system functioning properly on a poor diet and help prevent you from getting sick as easily. Not all multi-vitamins are created equal, however. Be sure to avoid “gel caps” when purchasing vitamins because they have a tendency to go rancid unlike dry pills. Be sure to do some research on the subject and find out what is best for your age group, gender, and health level. From my research, I recommend the “Alive!” brand of multi-vitamins which you can find at Costco for a reasonable price. I would also stock up on vitamin C tablets which boost your immune system and can really help fend off a cold if you catch it early by loading up on vitamin C. At worst, it will help make your symptoms less severe in most cases. Unlike food, which can make you sick if eaten way past its expiration date, most vitamins don’t necessarily “go bad,” they just start to lose their potency the older they get, meaning you may have to take a higher dose. Most multi-vitamins have a shelf life of only a few years and this item is a costly item you don’t want to replace every few years. My recommendation is to buy a large “chest style” deep freezer to keep in your basement or garage. You can now store your vitamins and other medications almost indefinitely till the SHTF. I wouldn’t worry about keeping the freezer running after the SHTF, as you will then have two years that your vitamins will still have their full potency. A freezer is also vital to store some cooking oil and many other staples you will need but don’t have a long shelf life.
If you can afford to purchase prepackaged freeze-dried meals, I would highly suggest you do. Again, I would not recommend trying to live solely off these meals long-term, but they make great tasting occasional meals to break up the monotony of your bland meals from staples and they can be made really quickly when you don’t have time to prepare and cook a full meal. In almost all cases, these meals are very high in sodium and nutrient deficient. The healthier freeze-dried alternatives that some companies offer usually don’t taste very good. Prepackaged and complete freeze-dried foods like Mountain House should not make up more than half of your diet, at most. Also, don’t buy a ton of food without actually trying samples of it first.
While I realize that it is overall survival we’re talking about, you don’t want to hate the food you are stuck with for the next year. That will make your life a lot more depressing than it has to be. Sitting down to the table in the evening for a hot meal should be an enjoyable time of day, not something you dread. In my opinion, I have found that a lot of the “cheaper” freeze-dried company’s meals don’t taste very good. I prefer Mountain House which, I believe, makes some of the best tasting meals around. However, those freeze-dried complete meals are very expensive compared to purchasing the raw staples.
They may not seem so expensive at face value, but this is another area where you need to literally double the amount of serving sizes they advertise for the average adult. Costco is currently offering a 1-year supply of Mountain House meals, claiming 1,986 calories per day for around $4,500. What you need to realize is that Costco adds 40 pounds of high calorie peanut butter and 34 pounds of crackers to the kit. Who eats 40 pounds of peanut butter a year? Better yet, how could you eat 40 pounds of peanut butter in a year? You have to watch out for gimmicks like this when buying a long-term food “kit.” If you subtract the calories from the peanut butter and crackers, you’re now down to 1,529 calories per day. As we’ve already discussed, that’s only 3/5 of what the average man would need in daily calories (2,577). Don’t get me wrong, I actually think that is a really good price for Mountain House food. In fact, it’s actually about 40% cheaper than buying it by the individual case of #10 cans. Just know what you are buying before you swipe your credit card. The other problem to buying these kits is that most people aren’t going to be able to save up enough to drop almost five grand in one transaction, let alone buy multiple kits for their entire family. It is usually easier to make your long-term food purchases a little each month.
When you do buy Mountain House type meals, be sure you buy them by the case of #10 cans. Buying them by the individual 2-serving bags will cost you significantly more than buying them by the case of #10 cans. Be sure to check Costco. They have a limited supply of menu choices for cases of Mountain House #10 cans, but the cases they do carry are somehow 40% cheaper than I have found anywhere else including Amazon and Walmart online.
With any of the above methods of storing long-term food, don’t forget to have the proper cookware to cook the items, especially if you are going to be feeding more than 8-10 people on a daily basis. You are going to need very large pots, skillets, and pans. In the case of rice, you may want to purchase a large steamer insert for your largest pot. If you can afford it, you may also want to consider getting a quality set of cast iron pots and pans, which will last indefinitely. While they will lose their anti-stick coating over time, you can re-season (re-apply a non-stick coating) your cast iron cookware as opposed to Teflon and other cheaper non-stick cookware where once you chip off the thin non-stick coating, it is gone for good. The only thing to remember is there are specific ways to care for cast iron, so be sure you have the necessary supplies and knowledge on how to “season” your cookware.
In a nutshell, if you have the funds and wish to have the lowest maintenance meals possible, then buy primarily pre-made freeze-dried meals and supplement that with some staples and fresh livestock for meat and eggs. This, however, is the most expensive way to go. The cheapest way to achieve a full year’s worth of food would be to combine all the methods. Start with a full two years of “foods you already eat” and foods you have canned like meat, stews, and veggies. Don’t forget that these methods work best if you live at your retreat already and they won’t cost much as you’ll eat them throughout the year in your normal diet. After the SHTF you could probably feed your entire family for up to six months with just those two methods. At that point, you’d only need to buy six months of long-term food storage which the average family unit should be able to do for under $2,000 if buying strictly staples. I bet a lot of you are spending more than that each year on just your car insurance. What are your family’s lives worth?
This is a condensed example of my Long-Term Food Storage Plan that I offer through GridDownConsulting.com. It is fully customizable and comes with a version for both a family and a larger survival retreat.
