Emergency Essentials Year Supply of Food

[The Stig]

Emergency Essentials Year Supply of Food (http://beprepared.com/product.asp_Q_pn_E_FS%20Y710_A_name_E_Premium%2020 00%20%20Year%20Supply%20of%20Food)

http://beprepared.com/images/250/FS-Y710.jpg


This year supply of food storage provides the convenience of "Just Add Water" baking and meal preparation by including cooking mixes and freeze-dried meals, fruits and vegetables, milk, garden seeds, and more.

168 - #10 Can Total
104 Dehydrated and 64 Freeze Dried
Over 100 Different varieties


Supplies 2000 Calories per day for 371 days

Anybody ever purchased some like this?

I can think of a lot of negatives but wanted to see what everybody thought...maybe there's something missing. Just seems like tossing this on the shelf would create more problems that it's worth.

Thoughts?

[Fatty]

I eventually plan on ordering something along those lines. Once I have the money set aside of course.

[bacpacker]

I have not purchased a year, or any other time period freeze dried package. I have purchased selected items of this type to fill certain holes in my food stores. They are costly, but compact in what they hold once rehydrated. Nutritionally I think they are close to home canned, dehadyrated, or frozen.
I do think they have their place in a storage system, just not sure I would want to put my whole plan in that. Remember store what you eat, eat what you store.

[LUNCHBOX]

Agreed, store it--eat it. Although the milk, cheeses, soup bases, etc are some good ones to have. Maybe we need a "what's a common food item not stored" thread. I know I don't have every item I want/need.

[Fatty]

aside from canned goods and whatnot, I order a #10 can every month ( when they're in stock atleast). Its so convenient having a shelf system full of something that can last 25 years and not have to worry about it. Like we've agreed on previously, can't put all your eggs in one basket:).

[AlphaTea]

This is my opinion.
Others will vary.
No.
This has a lot of stuff in it you wont eat. The savings that you see in the bulk purchase is in items that you probably dont want.
Originally I was going to buy one of these just to be done with it, but I looked a little closer at the contents. There is some really good to have stuff in there but there is some stuff I know I would never consume like Peach Drink mix for instance :p . I have tried a sample of each and every type of "Emergency Food" that I have stored. Those that I liked (most of them), I bought more of. The ones that sucked well I forced myself to use up except for one scrambled egg thing that I found to be vile.
There are 7 billion people on this planet and 6 billion live on rice. You can actually survive on rice and beans at a 3/1 or so ratio. Rice is still relatively cheap at about $10 or $12 for 50 lbs at SAMs. Thats a shitload of food for not a lot of bucks. Beans can be found for around $1/lb and that is dried or canned. The canned Goya brand is usually less than buck a can which is about 1 lb and it is already cooked. The shelf life (best if used by) time of canned beans looks to be about 3-5 years. Dried beans will last much much longer.

Yea I have a fair amount of the freeze dried #10 cans and I still buy them. I have several times more rice and beans and the FD'ed is mostly a supplement to them or a break so as not to get any kind of food fatigue.
FD'ed stuff is great but you must have other stuff too. You must have variety.

[bacpacker]

Alpha I am building my food stocks similar to what you are. I have selected items of the freeze dried that we like, mostly complete meals made for hiking. We keep a couple each in our BOB's for easy fixin while on the move if needed. I also have picked up several #10 cans of condiments, such as butter powder, and other stuff along those lines. They are hard to keep fresh, so we got the FD kind to have.
Our main stocks though are various stuff we have put up from the garden, farmers markets, roadside stands, and pretty much anywhere we can pick up fresh produce. To supplement all this, we pick up rice, beans, noodles, spices, & drink mixes at Sams, Aldi's or where ever we find it. Finally I have purchased a few bags of wheat and corn from the Co-op. I just ask for their organic seed. It's not treated and has had no chemicals on it. I attempted to grow some wheat this year, (ruined by the hail storm in April) it grew well enough but no harvest this year. I will be trying it again. The wheat and corn was something like $12-15 for 50lbs. A lot of food for the money, although it's went up from $7-9 for the same amount 2 years ago.
IMO this route gives you a more balanced and nutritious food store for the money. And for us it's pretty much food we already eat.

[ak474u]

I mostly do the canned condiments as well.. Canned butter, cheese powder, powdered milk, soup mixes, (My favorite available locally is "darn good chili" comes in a bag and isn't at all bad, especially with real meat added in) I wish I could find the #10 cans of Idahoan mashed taters like we used to get when I was a kid. We just store dry goods in vacuum sealed bags and rotate them. I have salt, sugar, spices, etc. vac sealed and in regular rotation. I really think as far as stored food supplies go, you're really gonna have to be in a secure environment to actually prepare anything that comes in a #10 can, and it wouldn't be easy to carry around, so... I feel like we can store the makins for just about anything we would actually eat in store-bought packages (small cans, and vac sealed bags)