Category Archives: Long Term Food Storage

Preparing Pets for Emergencies

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If you have a pet who holds a special place in your heart, you probably take pretty good care of that pet—feed him, groom him, take him for walks, maybe even buy him fancy clothes or gourmet treats from a pet bakery. Today I’m here to remind you of one aspect of pet care that otherwise good pet owners too often forget: preparing your pet for emergency situations.

In the world of emergency preparedness, we are constantly making lists of supplies we need to gather in order to be prepared for every eventuality of a disaster. If you are a pet owner, as you make your list of supplies to store away, don’t forget to equip your pet along the way as well. Usually, in an emergency situation, pets will need most of the same things humans do: food, water, shelter, and plenty of reassurance. And just like people, animals will benefit from having a few comfort items stored away too. Here, for your convenience, is a list we’ve put together of pet survival supplies that will make your life and your pet’s life a lot easier in the event of a disaster.

What to Include in Your Pet’s Emergency Preparedness Kit

1. Water. As you store water for your family for survival situations, don’t forget to calculate the amount of water your pet will need and add it into the mix. Be sure to store enough to allow your pet to stay well hydrated, and if you care about cleanliness in emergencies, store enough for pet hygiene too!

2. Food. Stock up on as much pet food as you can afford to store. Start with enough to feed your pet for a month, then three months, then six, and so on. Through Legacy Premium, PrepareWise now offers the first pet food that’s made for long-term storage. It boasts a 10-year shelf life and comes in the dog variety and the cat variety. If you are looking for serious pet food storage, this is an excellent option for you.

3. Portable food containers. Many emergency situations involve evacuation of your home. If this happens to be your case, you will want to have a way to carry your pet’s food and water on the go.

4. Manual can opener if your pet eats canned food.

4. Medications if necessary.

5. First aid supplies. Pet first aid supplies and people first aid supplies are mostly the same, but you might also consider having some extra large bandages, gauze, and medical tape along with everything else.

6. Hygiene Supplies. Remember things like a pet brush, shampoo, blanket or towel, kitty litter if applicable, and whatever else your pet needs to be well-cared for and clean.

7. Pet carrier or leash. It’s vital to have a way to keep pets contained during emergency situations as even the most docile and sweet animals can become anxious and combative in tense situations. Having a leash or carrier handy will help you keep your pet close and calm until situations settle.

8. Proper identification and records. If you and your pet get separated during an emergency or if your pet needs to have medical attention, it will be vital that his records and IDs are handy. Make sure you have a copy of your pet’s medical records and a collar with an ID tag, a license tag, and a vaccination tag.

9. Picture of you and your pet together. If you and your pet get separated during an emergency, a picture of your pet will allow others to help you locate him. If that picture also includes you in it, it will be a good proof of your ownership of your pet.

10. Emergency contact list. Make a list now of all the numbers you might need for your pet in an emergency situation. Possible numbers include the local animal shelter, an emergency medical center for pets, the local kennel, and your pet’s veterinarian.

11. Items purely for comfort. It’s important to have some treats stored for your pet along with his typical pet food. Treats make tense, abnormal situations seem more normal and controlled and help pets to relax. In addition to treats, make sure to have any of your pet’s favorite toys or sleeping pillows on hand. Comfort items will go a long way in easing the stress of an emergency situation for your pet.

In addition to putting together a survival kit for your pet, there are a few other considerations you may want to make before a disaster happens. One of these is to make a plan for what you will do with your pet if you have to evacuate your home. If your plan is to go to an out-of-town family member’s house, make sure that person is willing to house your pet too. If not, you will need to make arrangements beforehand either with a local animal shelter or kennel. Some shelters and kennels do not house animals in emergencies, so call now to find out which ones will and make a plan to take your pet there.

If you absolutely have no other options and have to leave your pet behind (not recommended), leave him in the house with plenty of food and water available to him. Also leave a note on the outside of the house that tells rescuers there is a pet inside, what kind, his name, and a contact number you can be reached at. Leaving pets at home gives them much lower chances for survival, so avoid this option if at all possible.

In emergency situations, pets will probably be feeling many of the same emotions you are. They will be tired and fretful and anxious and will need all the love and patience you can give them. Expect them to be more needy and less obedient than they usually are. If you keep them close to you and attend to their needs, they will make it through the emergency situation as well as you. Being prepared with a good pet survival kit and making emergency plans in advance can go a long way in making the situation bearable for everyone.

The Magic Amount: How Much Food You Should Store

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Have you ever kept a list of all the food you eat in a day? I once did this as a little experiment to see if what I thought I ate was similar to what I actually ate. When I looked at my list at the end of the day, I was surprised to see that I had eaten much more than I remembered. It reminded me a little of those diagrams of food that show how much the average person eats in a year with astronomical numbers like 30 pounds of cheese. The overwhelming amount of food a person consumes is precisely why it can be daunting to think of supplying a whole family with enough emergency food to last them for an extended period of time.

One of the most common questions people have when preparing for emergencies is how much food they need to have stored. If you are one of the many wondering how much food to stock away, here are some helpful tips.

Store something!

First and foremost, remember this: Storing something is always better than storing nothing. Often people are so intimidated by the enormity of the task of getting food storage for their family that they put it off and end up doing nothing at all. If you only gather enough food initially to feed your family for three days, that’s three days you wouldn’t have been able to feed them for previously. It’s okay to start small and add more food storage when you can. The important thing is that you start now, doing whatever you can afford and then adding more as you have more time and money.

Once you have three days’ worth, start to store up a month’s worth for each person, then three months, then six months, and so on. One year’s worth of emergency food for every person in your family should be your ultimate goal (or even more if you have the means). It might sound unreachable right now, but storing a year’s worth of food is entirely possible if you tackle it by small steps.

Figure out How Many Servings You Need

As you seek out emergency food, you will find that most food storage suppliers will quantify their food by the number of servings it provides. For example, you might see an offer along the lines of, “You pay x for y amount of servings.” One good place to start when deciding how much food to store is to use our long-term food storage calculator, which you can access here. This chart is pretty straightforward and will help you figure out how many servings you need to collect to feed your family for a specific amount of time.

To use our chart, first decide how many months you would like to get supplied for, then go down the chart to find the number of people in your family. For example, if you would like to start out by getting supplied for one month and you have four people in your family, find both of those numbers on the chart and then locate their intersection. For four people for one month, you’re looking at 360 servings. (This is assuming each person will eat three servings a day.) You can then go out and collect 360 servings’ worth of emergency food.

Caveat about Serving Size

There is one important principle to remember when you use this method to figure out how much food to store. It is this: All food storage companies have different definitions for the term “serving.” For one company, a measly 150 or 200 calories might constitute a serving. For another, a serving might have a more reasonable 400 or 500 calories. Be aware that three servings a day of only 200 calories each is only going to give you 600 calories for a day, not enough to sustain a child-sized body, let alone an average adult one. Most adults need somewhere between 1500-3000 calories to maintain their current state, so buying these “handy” food storage kits could leave you starving.

To avoid finding yourself with too little food, before you buy pre-packaged servings, find out how many calories are in each serving. Look for emergency food that has between 300 and 500 calories per serving. Otherwise your food storage kit that was advertised as being all-in-one and super convenient will not truly feed you for the time it claims. Legacy Premium serving sizes are always large (Most are around 325-400 calories), and they also offer plenty of nutritious, calorie-dense sides to help you fill in extra calories if you choose.

Store More Food Than You Think You Need

Ask anyone who has been in a situation in which they had to rely on their food storage and they’ll tell you the same thing. There is no such thing as too much emergency food. In emergency situations more than any other time, we need sufficient nourishment to keep us alert, positive, strong, and healthy. In addition, emergency situations often involve a lot of waiting around and worrying—waiting for news on the state of the disaster, worrying about loved ones not with us, or waiting around for power to come back on. In any kind of stressful or tedious atmosphere, most people tend to eat more than they normally would. Food is important in keeping the situation calm and positive. You will never regret that you had more food stored than you actually needed (if this is even possible).

As you can see, the title of this post is a bit misleading; there is no magic amount when it comes to storing emergency food. Start right now with storing whatever you can, and work up to storing at least a year’s worth. Use our food storage calculator to figure out how many servings you need to feed your family for your desired length of time, but also keep an eye on serving size and calories as you do this to make sure you are getting a sufficient amount. Most importantly, remember that you can never store too much emergency food.

 

Photo credit: Diliff / Foter / CC BY-SA

Buying Emergency Food That Lasts: An Overview of Food Storage Shelf Life (Part II)

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We talked last week about the importance of having food stored that is not going to go bad after only a few years of shelf time. Specifically, we tried to stress the importance of having emergency food that would last 25 years or more, not only for your safety and peace of mind but also for the convenience of storing foods that you won’t have to frequently rotate and replace.

This week, we’d like to talk about how you can be sure that emergency food is going to last as long as it is advertised to last. In order to do this, you need to be equipped with some basic knowledge about what affects the shelf life of any food. There are four main players in this game: food type, preservation method, packaging, and storage conditions.

Type of Food

My sixth-grade science experiment was to put milk in a pie tin and let it sit on the counter for weeks and then see what happened. I don’t think I have to tell you the results of that experiment. Suffice it to say that it’s a simple fact of nature—some foods have the ability to last a long time, and some do not. It’s important to keep this in mind as you build up your store of emergency food and be aware of the ingredients that are inside.

Researchers at Brigham Young University have been busy conducting testing on food storage that has been stored for long periods of time and examining which types of foods are still edible and have nutritional value. Their findings up to this point are that salt, baking soda, and granulated sugar have no known shelf life when stored in their original containers. Wheat and rice, when stored in cans, foil pouches, or buckets, can last 30 or more years. Powdered milk, oats, instant potatoes, beans, dried apples, and macaroni, when stored in a can or foil pouch with oxygen absorber, can last 15-30 years and still be edible and sustaining.

Other foods do not last as long, even when stored under ideal conditions. Wet-pack canned foods, for example, are only good for a few years, especially if they contain acidic foods like tomatoes, which can cause the cans to corrode and go bad much more quickly. Yeast and cooking oil only last 1 ½ years, and powdered eggs only 1 year.

The most important thing to remember is not to take food storage companies’ shelf life claims at face value. Doing your own bit of research and finding out what is in the emergency food and how long it will last will be worth it when the time comes to eat your food.

Type of Food Storage and Packaging

Not all methods of food storage are equal in their ability to keep a food good for a long time. As mentioned in the last section, wet-packed canned foods typically do not last as long as other types of food storage (usually five years at most, and this is an optimistic estimate). Meals-Ready-to-Eat (MREs) have grown in popularity recently as a food storage method, but typically they have a shelf life of only around three years. In contrast, canned dry foods like bulk grains tend to be a long-lasting food storage type, and freeze-dried and dehydrated foods similarly have the potential for a very lengthy shelf life.

Of course, we are a little biased toward the freeze-drying and dehydrating process when it comes to preserving long-term food, but only because we have done our research and know what works. The process of freeze drying is particularly suited for long-term food because by manipulating the surrounding pressure of a food as is done in freeze-drying, an incredible amount of water can be removed from the food, leaving it in a condition that will not allow microorganisms to grow. Dehydration similarly removes moisture from the food by putting it through an intensive low-temperature drying chamber to remove water. Both of these methods enable food to last for a very long time.

Packaging is another important factor in the shelf life of emergency foods. Just like moisture, oxygen causes microorganisms to grow. If emergency food is not packaged correctly, oxygen will get in and spoil the food. It’s crucial that residual oxygen levels be below 2%. Nitrogen flushing and the use of oxygen absorbers are key to achieve this goal. If your food storage is not packaged in these ideal conditions, your food is going to spoil long before those 25 years are up.

Storage Conditions

Perhaps one of the greatest influences on the shelf life of your food storage is its storage conditions. When considering where to store your food storage, keep in mind the four environmental necessities for a long shelf life: low temperature, low moisture, low oxygen, and low light. Exposure to too much of any of these can spoil foods or result in off-flavors and loss of nutrients.

Low moisture, oxygen, and light levels should be taken care of if your emergency food is packaged correctly. Temperature is the factor that is completely within your control. For maximum shelf life, food needs to be stored in a consistently cool place (at least below room temperature.) Temperatures over room temperature can cause proteins to deteriorate and can spoil the food more quickly. High temperatures can reduce the shelf life of different foods by as much as a decade. For this reason, it’s not a great idea to store food storage in the garage or attic. Basements or pantries are a much better option because of their consistent temperatures. As Oscar Pike, lead researcher of BYU’s Long-Term Food Storage Research team put it, “If you ever have to eat your food storage, you’ll wish you had stored the food in the house and the furniture in the garage.”

There you have it—the rules for food longevity. Knowing what you know now, you can go out and judge emergency food suppliers’ shelf life claims for yourself. We hope we’ve convinced you that there’s no reason to settle for anything less than emergency food that will last 25 years. And we think you’ll find that Legacy Premium’s shelf-life guarantee is much more than just a marketing scheme. We know our stuff—and now so do you.

Buying Emergency Food that Lasts: An Overview of Food Storage Shelf Life (Part I)

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Imagine a possible future scene with me for a moment. An emergency situation has shown up at your doorstep. Your family is hungry, and you have reached the end of the food in your cupboards. You are now faced with opening that food storage that you have had stashed away in the basement for years, forgotten and dusty. Do you really want to be nervously sniffing that can of food and crossing your fingers that it’s not going to make you all horribly sick? Unless you get your kicks out of risky and possibly quite disgusting experiences, I don’t think you do. This, my friends, is why the shelf life of your food storage matters. When that emergency situation comes, you don’t want to be questioning the shelf life of the food you and your family are now meant to survive on. You want to be able to rest assured that you have made a good purchase. Having emergency food stored that is designed to last a very long time—25 years or more—offers a peace of mind that cannot be overstated.

I think we all know someone who is unflinchingly fearless when it comes to eating food that’s gone over its expiration date. When I was in high school, I had a friend who loved—I might even say obsessed over—canned mandarin oranges. One day, I was at her house and she pulled out a can of oranges and offered me some. As she did, I noticed that the expiration date on the can was about six months in the past. I pointed this out to her, and she shrugged her shoulders and proceeded to open and devour the entire can. I thought she was crazy and told her as much, but she assured me the oranges tasted good, so she finished her can and we forgot about it…for about an hour. At that point, she started to look really pale, and she told me in a weak voice that she didn’t feel so good. She proceeded to throw up all over the place, and I later found out that’s what she did for the rest of the night and the next few days. Luckily, the spoiled food didn’t cause her more harm than temporary discomfort, but from that time on, she could never stomach mandarin oranges again.

I tell this little story because I think of that friend every time I go to open something that has been in my cupboards for a longer time than I think it should have been. I know plenty of die-hard people who test the limits of expiration dates and are just fine (my husband is particularly gutsy in this area), but this memory of my mandarin-orange-loving friend has kept me extremely suspicious of any food that has been around for a long time. For me to be able to eat my food storage, I have to know that it is still going to be good when the time comes to use it. This is my biggest motivator in having emergency food like Legacy Premium food that is made to last up to 25 years.

Not only does having food storage with a 25-year-shelf life protect you from unpleasant and dangerous conditions, it also makes your life in the interim between now and a disaster situation a whole lot easier. If you buy food storage items that are only going to last a few years, you are going to have to be very organized and worry about rotating things out frequently and replacing them with new items. If you are like me, you probably don’t have much room on your to-do list, and this is not a very appealing prospect. Also, having to rotate and replace emergency food can become an expensive habit. In contrast, if you invest in food that will last a quarter of a century, you will only have to worry about replacement a few times in your life.

I hope I’ve convinced you that the shelf life of food storage is a crucial consideration to make when you are buying emergency food, and there is simply no reason to settle for food that has a shelf life of less than 25 years. Be aware, though, that as you go out in search of long-term food storage, you are going to find that the food storage industry is filled with companies who make big claims they cannot back up. Many food storage companies claim their food has a shelf life of 25 years or more, but often their claims are simply fancy words to put on their label and make them look good. Some emergency food companies have simply not done their research when it comes to ingredients that keep, and they include ingredients in their emergency food that spoil after a short amount of time. Uneducated food buyers then end up with a worthless product after just a few years.

Through extensive research and years of experience, Legacy Premium has designed its emergency food to last 25 years. Because of our freeze-drying process, our meticulous oxygen-removal system, and our knowledge about the most effective ways to package and store emergency food, we are confident in our claim of a 25-year shelf life. But we don’t want you to just take our word for it. As consumers, it’s important that you know the factors that affect the shelf life of emergency food so that you can make informed decisions when you are building up your food store. In next week’s post, we’ll talk about these factors in detail, so stay tuned, and be prepared to learn a little more about what makes emergency food last and why Legacy Premium foods are the ultimate in long-term food storage.

Happy Customers, Prepared for Life

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It’s always exciting to receive customer feedback, especially when it’s customer feedback that confirms everything we’ve been saying about PrepareWise’s superiority to other emergency food for so long. Admittedly, we are a little biased. But you, as people simply trying to find the best quality and value in emergency food, are pretty fair-minded. So when you tell us our product is good, it has to be true.

Here is some feedback we received recently from Mark, an experienced prepper and happy buyer of PrepareWise emergency foods:

 

We received our PrepareWise food order on Monday morning. The shipping was free and the delivery time faster than several other vendors we have used in the past. We decided to try it right away for lunch because our morning was full of work.

As we began to prepare lunch, we looked at the buckets and realized several very innovative features: the bucket tops are designed to mate with the bottom of other buckets, creating a more stable stack, and the lids do not come off all the way, creating a better seal and no chance for damaging or misplacing the lid. All the foods are immaculately packaged in thick mylar, contain oxygen absorbers, and are vacuum-sealed.

The ingredients are clearly listed on each package, and to our amazement we can pronounce the names of all the ingredients. We have yet to find a label with an artificial or unhealthy ingredient.

Preparation was easy: Bring water to a boil, pour in food, and cook for 15-18 minutes, stirring occasionally.

We tried the fettuccini alfredo. I can tell you that I have had several other competing brands’ fettuccini alfredo and was sorely disappointed. Frankly, yours was delicious. We are now trying to unload some of the other companies’ food so we can buy more PrepareWise. My children, mother-in-law, and wife all commented on the deep flavor and great seasoning. We tried it plain without the addition of any seasoning or meat and it was great. My eight-year-old son suggested that we add chicken so we opened a can of white chicken meat, and it was filling and delicious. It was one of the quietest lunches we have ever had. The kids were too busy eating to talk. We liked it so much we had dinner last night and breakfast this morning from our PrepareWise foods inventory. We want to eat the food now so when we have no choice later it is familiar and expected.

Thanks for developing a relationship with Legacy Foods. We have already told several friends about the food and will be purchasing more next month. Not only is the food delicious, but PrepareWise is the best value for the dollar I have found the past five years of prepping.

Thanks,

Mark and the LoneStar Posse

Thank you, Mark, for the thumbs-up. We work hard to offer the highest quality ingredients and create the best-tasting emergency food available. We also think it’s vital that food storage be easy to prepare and convenient to store. It validates everything we do here when we hear from customers that we are fulfilling our mission and helping you in your efforts to provide well for your family.

We can talk forever about PrepareWise food storage and tout its superiority, but it’s never going to mean the same thing to you as when you hear it from a fellow customer.  Trust Mark—Once you try it, you’re going to have a hard time saving it for later.

You Know It’s Bad When You’re Down to the Fritos

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I recently took a trip to my family cabin with a group of nine people. During our stay, we enjoyed your standard camping fare: pancakes, eggs and bacon, burgers, potato salad, and all manner of junk food…. including chips.

Between the three families, two giant variety packs of Frito Lays snack size chips made the trip up, for a total of 10 bags Lay’s Classic, 8 bags Doritos Nacho Cheese, 8 bags Doritos Cool Ranch, 8 bags Cheetos Crunchy, and 10 bags Fritos Original.  After four days, guess what made the trip back?

Eight bags of Fritos.

Every last bag of the more desirable flavors had fallen victim to our incessant vacation-mentality snacking.

On long road trips I like to gaze out the window and contemplate the big issues, so as we made the trip home with our castaway Fritos, I dreamed of a better world. A world where chip variety packs included eight bags of Cool Ranch Doritos instead of four, and the word “Frito” was only ever used as preface to the phrase “nail polish”. It was a beautiful thing.

Prepare Wise is pleased to announce that such beauty exists not only in dreams, but in food storage as well!

We’re excited to offer our customers the chance to fully customize their food storage orders. Any bucket of 180 servings or more can now be filled to order according to your family’s dietary needs and preferences. If you’ve tried our food you know how delicious each meal is; but then again, someone out there reading this is a Frito lover through and through!

With 17 entrees, 3 breakfasts, and 4 sides to choose from, we’re confident each family will be able to fill their buckets with a wide variety of meals in quantities tailored to fit what their family enjoys most; because the last thing you need in a crisis situation is the burden of bribing, prodding, or force feeding those picky little eaters.

While finicky palates can be a real headache, even more concerning is the growing number of people with special dietary needs. Customizable buckets open the door to convenient, affordable food storage even when some Legacy Premium meals may not be suitable. Being the mother of a child with a laundry list of severe food allergies, I’m particularly grateful for the freedom to customize my order.

Amazingly, my son, who is allergic to all dairy, beef, eggs, and peanuts, can safely eat 40% of the pre-made meals available from Prepare Wise. That might not sound like much, but next time you walk down the aisles of your grocery store, check the ingredients in the pre-made meals on the shelves. Nearly every package will contain one of those ingredients. I’m thrilled to have found quality, convenient food storage with so many flavor options that are safe for my son to eat. And now I can buy exactly what I need without throwing money away on the “Fritos” at the bottom of the bucket!

Prepare Wise is proud to be the only food storage company offering this kind of feature to our customers. We see it as yet another way to give you the most usable, enjoyable food storage for your money!

Legacy Premium Announces an Exciting Change

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Our partner, Legacy Premium has just announced improvements to the way their freeze-dried emergency meals are packaged. As you know, Legacy Premium food is already protected from light, oxygen, and moisture through a sophisticated manufacturing and packaging process using freeze drying, dehydration and nitrogen flushed mylar pouches. Because oxygen removal is so vitally important to ensuring the extended shelf life of freeze-dried and dehydrated food, Legacy Premium has decided to add oxygen absorbers to each pouch of food, further reducing residual oxygen levels and adding another layer of security for consumers.

Legacy Premium is proud to be the first to incorporate oxygen absorbers in the packaging of pre-made emergency meal pouches, and with this development have achieved the lowest oxygen content on the market! Test results from the University of Minnesota confirm the effectiveness of this packaging change, reporting average oxygen content at a very low .47%. This is important because over time, excess residual oxygen can decrease the nutritional value of food and increase the potential for spoilage.

Legacy Premium founder Phillip Cox believes the change will set a new standard for the industry. He said, “We want to give our customers the best value and nutrition possible, and so for this reason, we have invested our efforts into creating this new packaging method for every single pouch of food. We are proud to be at the forefront of this new packaging standard.”

As always, Legacy Premium will continue to provide you with the best taste, best value, and highest quality nutrition in the freeze-dried food industry.  And now you can brag to your friends about its low residual oxygen content too!

Prepare Wise with our partner, Legacy Premium, is committed to quality. We understand that when a customer buys our food they are entrusting us with the health and perhaps survival of their family. We take this responsibility seriously. Legacy Premium was developed by experts with over 20 years of experience in the freeze-dried food industry. This experience paired with innovative and proven processing procedures, combine to give you gourmet food storage that not only beats the competition in taste, nutrition, and value, but stands the test of time. Prepare Wise is proud to offer our customers the best of the best in emergency food storage from Legacy Premium!

Read the press release here.

The Perfect “Receptacle” for Storing This List of Emergency Foods

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If you’re planning to stock your food storage shelves with foods recommended by one very popular, very crunchy, natural news site, may we suggest a 96-gallon black plastic bin on wheels as a time-saving storage option?

The items we found published in this list of foods to “stockpile now” will be making the ominous trip to the curb for Friday morning trash pick-up so soon and so frequently that we really think your best bet is to pick up an extra city-approved garbage can to store it in. That way when your stockpile is spoiled in six months, you can simply kick it to the curb….well, wheel it, technically, and start all over! We think this should really streamline an otherwise tedious process for you.

Curious what we found on this ill-advised list? Here’s an excerpt:

• Crofter’s Organic – North American Super Fruit Spread
• Eden Organic – Kamut Spirals
• Eden Organic – Kamut and Quinoa Twisted Pair
• Eden Organic – Spelt Flakes- Toasted & Rolled
• Food for Life – Sprouted Grain Penne
• Organic Sprouted Whole Spelt
• Kavli – Five Grain Crispbread
• Nutiva – Shelled Hemp Seed
• Spicely Organic – All-Purpose Seasoning
• Spicely Organic – Vegetable Seasoning
• Spicely Organic – Ground Cloves – A great source of antioxidants
• Sunwarrior – Raw Vegan Protein
• Sprout Baby Food – Creamy Chicken & Mixed Garden Vegetables
• Brown rice (large bags)
• Steel-cut oatmeal

Not a bad shopping list for the week’s groceries but when it comes to long-term emergency food storage, there’s more to consider than whether the package displays the words, “raw”, “organic”, “vegan”, or the names of one or more ancient grains….sprouted, preferably. Now we love organic foods as much as the next person, but let’s be practical! Afterall, this food is meant to be used for survival under dire circumstances.

Let’s take a look at this list using a much more relevant food storage criteria- shelf life…..

Brown rice- 6 months

Vegan protein powder- 12 months

fruit spread- less than 18 months

crispbread- 18 months

Sprout baby food- 18 months

Eden products listed- 2 years

Steel-cut oatmeal- 15-25 years…. Now that’s a food you can stockpile!

The author suggests eating fresh foods in your day to day life while stockpiling these foods only for use in an emergency where access to fresh food is compromised.  With shelf life ranging as low as 6 months, this means you can plan on throwing out a lot of spoiled food and spending a lot of cash to replace it. Speaking of lots of cash, won’t it feel good to know that you spared no expense in supplying the landfills with only the best organic foods available?

For people who eat these foods on a regular basis and want to rotate them out (I know I enjoy an organic baby food pouch as part of my daily diet) this list is fine, though irrelevant. Rotaters should buy the foods they normally eat in quantities equal to the amount they will consume over the product’s shelf life. They really shouldn’t need a list to tell them what they normally eat, right?

So we get it, eating clean organic foods is important. But this list just isn’t practical for use in long-term food storage. Instead of stockpiling something that you’ll have to throw out in 6-24 months, consider making freeze-dried and dehydrated foods with 25 year shelf life the basis of your emergency food supply. There’s really no contest. It’s long lasting, easy to use, reduces waste, and doesn’t involve any of that rotation song and dance. Best of all, you only have to buy it once!

And if you’re out to find the highest quality ingredients to keep your emergency food as clean as possible, look to Legacy Premium to offer the best of both worlds- quality nutrition that you can truly stockpile.

Finding the Best Produce if You Don’t Have a Garden

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If you have taken the initiative to create long term food storage for your household, or even if you have just started researching the idea, clearly you care about the well-being of your family. You are probably interested in promoting a healthy lifestyle for your family, and that includes eating the freshest produce available. If you are unable to grow your own vegetables, you should buy produce that comes from trusted local growers.

Why Buy Local Produce

Buying locally supports growing for taste, diversity and healthfulness rather than for durability, transportation and uniformity. Purchasing food grown by local farmers helps to promote the local economy while supporting your friends and neighbors. It also reduces use of fossil fuels, minimizing your carbon footprint. Local farmers help preserve jobs and strengthen the local food supply. Freshly picked produce guarantees nutritional value at its peak.

Where to Buy Local Produce

The organic, fresh food trend is gaining momentum, and those foods are more abundant than ever. Fresh, locally grown produce can be found at the farmer’s market in your county, or in local organic natural food stores. These markets often have a selection of fresh flowers and baked goods as well as fruits and vegetables.

Many areas now have online companies that allow you to order local produce from their website each week and then either pick it up at a neighborhood business or have it delivered for a small fee. Some even offer meats, dairy, fresh eggs and baked goods. Healthy food and treats for pets may also be part of the selection from the online company in your community. The produce selection will vary, as the weather will dictate what can be grown in your area during different times of the year.

How to Find Local Produce

Check your county or with the extension office of your state’s agricultural university to find local growers and markets. Another good resource is www.LocalHarvest.org. LocalHarvest was founded in 1998 by Guillermo Payet, a software engineer and activist dedicated to generating positive social change through the Internet. This site is loaded with good information on eating healthy, and they promote a strong and resilient family farm system of agriculture. All you have to do is type in your zip code to find locations and times for farmer’s markets in your area.

This healthy lifestyle should carry over to your long term food storage. You should have freeze dried food with a long shelf life in storage as well as canned and dehydrated fruits and vegetables. Use only fresh, organic produce for your canning and dehydrating. These processes will not improve the flavor if you start with sub par product.

Gift certificates from your favorite places to buy local produce make great gifts for friends or loved ones. This will help get more people involved with buying local and help sustain the local markets. It will also help encourage a healthy lifestyle for them.

-Gary Jenkins-

Gary Jenkins is a father and husband living in Oregon who is a wildlife rehabilitation and outdoor adventure enthusiast.

Food Storage Containers and When to Use Them

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There are several different types of food storage containers, each with it’s own set of uses, pros and cons.  Knowing that Thanksgiving is just around the corner and there will be lots of leftovers, we wanted to take a look at some of the different containers available and get an idea of what works best for both short and long term food storage.

Long Term

Since long term food storage is an area that we are very confident in, we decided to start here.

  1. Plastic Buckets – These are great for storing large quantities of food, as they come in sizes that range from one to ten gallons, and even on up to 55-gallon water buckets.  These are great at keeping mice from your food, stack easily on top of each other, and relatively inexpensive.  They may also serve as a floatation device in event of flooding (we aren’t sure about the efficacy, but someone told us it worked!).
  2. #10 Cans – Small, not too heavy, sit nicely on a shelf.  Food is kept safe from insects and rodents, the cans are also sturdy and airtight.  If you have had a car for over 10 years, you know that metal rusts, so keep these away from water.  Also, new reports have surfaced this week saying that metal lining in food containers may contain BPA, which is linked to heart disease, diabetes, and heart disease.  We aren’t sure if this applies to #10 cans, but be careful and do some research.
  3. Mylar Bags – These are less expensive than buckets or #10 cans and great for storing emergency food.  The bags are airtight and keep insects out.  They aren’t quite as sturdy as a bucket or #10 can, and mice could chew through them if they are left out in the open.  If stored in a plastic bucket, you then have a double layer of protection to ensure that your food lasts and rodents can’t get in it.

Short Term

 

  1. Plastic Containers – Plastic containers come in many shapes and sizes, are different levels of thickness.  There are many companies that produce them and swear that theirs are the best.  Many plastic containers have re-sealable lids and can be washed easily.  Find stronger grade plastics for longer storage terms and keep them in rodent free areas.  We also encourage you to look for products that are BPA-Free.
  2. Glass Containers – Some people like to skip plastic altogether and just use glass products.  They are good at keeping out chemicals from your food, recyclable, very easy to clean, and almost always dishwasher safe.  They cost a bit more than plastic products and have a tendency to break when the fall of a countertop or shelf, but they are a great way to store food.

Regardless of how you prefer to store food, there are many options available to you.  Take the time to research and look into whatever products you are using so that you can ensure that your food storage, be it short or long term, will be protected and edible when you open it for consumption.

We hope that you and your family have a wonderful Thanksgiving full of laughter, love, and great food!