Freeze Dried & MRE - Survival Food

This was the headline I just read at the top of an article on the NY Sun’s website.

News people love these kind of fear mongering headlines.

Reading the story however I  came across this paragraph;

“Internet postings attributed some of the shortage at the retail level to bakery owners who flocked to warehouse stores when the price of flour from commercial suppliers doubled.”

You can read the story here.

People who panic tend to make bad decisions.

Here is an interesting blog post (see link below) on food shortages and freeze dried food.

At this point I am not convinced that freeze dried food is an answer to food shortage risk.

Nor should you be worried about supply if you are thinking of buying for emergency preparedness for disasters.

The worst case food supply impact in North America is likely to be higher food costs only.

However if severe shortages elsewhere become common it will drive up the cost of freeze dried food along with all other foods. Order lead time for freeze dried food may increase temporarily due to some panic buying but I don’t think that will be sustained.

For those less fortunate who will be in most need of a food reserve and severely impacted by a shortage, freeze dried food could play an important role if there was some long term planning.

If the surplus food from good growing years was bought, freeze dried, and nitro packed to last up to 30 years it could be used as shortage reserve. Shipped from the surplus locations at lowest possible sea and land freight rates to regional storage facilities and then used locally whenever shortages arise would be ideal. The cost of freeze drying may be higher than the cost of storing grain at first glance. But you would have to look at the rate of obsolesce of surplus grain that may not get used, and losses due to mold and rodent infestations at storage facilities. Even if the idea of a freeze dried food reserve for food shortages makes fiscal sense, it will likely never happen for the usual political, bureaucratic, and business hegemony reasons. Larger upfront investments and lower cost long term results never fly with decision makers.

Here is the blog post;

Food problems are seriously on the rise

16 Apr 2008 by Dennis
I may have related that we went out and bought some freeze-dried food a week or so ago on the Internet? While I was shopping, I discovered that the prices have been rising strongly in recent months and that the three major freeze-dried …
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