Jun 20 2008
Latest from Nitro-pak on #10 cans of freeze dried food;
**PRICES GOING UP August 1, 2008: Mountain House has announced that prices will be going up on August 1, 2008. In order for our customers to “lock-in” todays lower food prices, we will honor the current lower prices on all orders received before this date. ORDER NOW!
Jun 19 2008
Barack Obama recently commented on the “global food crisis”. Here is an excerpt from transcript of a June 10th, 2008 Q&A session;
I think that we’ve got to stockpile food reserves at a global level more effectively than we have in the past. Those stockpiles have shrunk considerably. And finally, we’re going to have to deal with increasing energy costs, which are having an impact on overall food production and cost. So this is going to be long challenge, and is something that an Obama administration is going to monitor closely and take aggressive action.
(See full transcript from Lynn Sweet Chicago Sun Times -Obama June 10, 2008 availability. Transcript)
His reference to “more effectively” stockpiling food essentially means having food produced and stored regionally to avoid excessive freight costs moving food in emergency situations from one geography to another.
Having food stockpiles in the countries most likely to have a crisis could also have the added benefit of stabilizing production and pricing, but don’t tell that to any “free market economics” zealots still clinging to their “jaded by reality” philosophy.
The cost of freight being excessive is especially true when food is air lifted half way across the globe from the US to wherever it is needed, now even more so with high fuel costs.
One way to offset the cost of airfreight is to store freeze dried food as a reserve for domestic emergency purposes for it’s long shelf properties. When a crisis occurs elsewhere in the world requiring food to be made available immediately, it will be much more economical to ship the light “water removed” freeze dried food since it is has 98% of the water, and thus the weight removed.
For air freight, weight is a much more significant factor in cost than it is for land or sea freight which is not likely to be used if the situation is urgent.
Water to hydrate the freeze dried food can be brought in locally at lower freight costs than the cost of food with water in it being shipped from a regional facility.
The superior shelf life of freeze dried food will also limit the loss and waste that occurs from the time food is pulled from storage through it’s distribution, till the time it is actually consumed by those who need it.
Jun 17 2008
Often when people first think of what food would be good to store for disaster preparedness, they think of dehydrated food.
But is dehydrated food really a good choice for survival food?
Let’s consider 3 factors; preparation, taste, and shelf life.
Dehydrated food requires a lot preparation to be consumed. In order to use dehydrated food it needs to be hydrated so you need to soak it. You still need to prepare, mix and cook it. To cook you will need cooking equipment and fuel. You will have to clean up after the cooking.
Compare this to freeze dried food.
For a hot meal using freeze dried food you need heated water, just add it and wait a few minutes. If you have to, you can use unheated water but still no cooking is required. This is huge convenience, not to be undervalued for disaster preparedness. There likely will be times in a disaster when you do not have time and energy to cook using dehydrated foods.
You may like the taste of dehydrated foods you have consumed as a snack or specialty food. However if you are eating for weeks or months meals made from dehydrated food as a base, you may have difficulty consuming healthy amounts of food.
You should never underestimate the importance of being able to enjoy the food you are eating, there are examples in history of people starving even though there was edible food available.
It is of great benefit to lower stress wherever possible in a disaster situation, lower stress results in people dealing more effectively with problems in any situation. Having good tasting hot meals regularly tends to lower stress. Freeze dried food retains the original taste and freshness when re-hydrated to a high degree.
Finally there is the shelf-life to consider. The likelihood of a experiencing a disaster is greater over a longer period. The longer the shelf-life of your survival food, the less the often you will be replacing it. Even worse, would be discovering you have rancid food when you need it most. Dehydrated food shelf life is usually rated 8-10 years. Freeze dried food can keep it’s flavor, appearance and nutritional value for 25 years.
While you may save a little with dehydrated food in the up front cost, the long run costs will be much higher than if you choose freeze dried food. The added benefits of taste and less time to prepare to eat make freeze dried food a much better choice than dehydrated food.
Jun 15 2008
Shipping lead times on Mountain House #10 cans of freeze dried have come down to just 2 to 4 weeks from previous 3 -7 weeks.
orders with #10 canned foods or units are taking 2 to 4 weeks to ship.
Jun 11 2008
I noticed a further update on Nitro-pak’s website;
IMPORTANT SHIPPING NOTE: Do to current market conditions, huge customer demand, worldwide food shortages and tight supplier allocations (most of our competitors have been totally cut off by the factory), orders will ship in approximately 3 to 4 Weeks from receipt and will be shipped in the order we receive them. We are receiving limited stock weekly. Don’t delay ordering. The longer you wait, the longer the line is getting. Sorry. Just being up front & honest.
Your charge card WILL NOT be charged until 3-5 days prior to shipping.
Thanks you for your patience!
This does not contain any new information other than “competitors being cut off” whatever that means, and I am checking what the status at other online retailers.
Mountain House website is still saying they are not directly selling #10 cans of freeze dried food, the statement there says;
We regret to inform you Oregon Freeze Dry cannot satisfy all Mountain House #10 can orders and we have removed #10 cans from our website temporarily. The reason for this is sales of #10 cans have continued to increase. OFD is allocating as much production capacity as possible to this market segment…..We expect this situation to be necessary for several months although this isn’t a guarantee. We will update this information as soon as we know more. We apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate your patience. We sincerely hope you will continue to be Mountain House customers in the future.
I think the panic buying we have been seeing by survivalist driven consumers, caused by worry about the manifestation of “peak oil theory”, will ease off if the price of oil goes down $15 to $20 or so soon. However it will be some time before the availability of freeze dried food will improve and prices will go down. If the price of oil goes up much more, then the demand for freeze dried food will likely spike exponentially higher unfortunately.
May 27 2008
NOTE: Shipping lead times on Mountain House #10 cans of freeze dried have come down to just 2 to 4 weeks from previous 3 -7 weeks.
orders with #10 canned foods or units are taking 2 to 4 weeks to ship.
No one preparedness strategy will support all your food needs in a disaster.
While there are huge advantages freeze dried food gives as the survival food of choice, it is not the best in all situations. It is good planning to have a short term strategy and a long term strategy to be best prepared.
Below is a look at food preparedness strategies, starting with the long term.
Long term here refers to having a food supply that will last from 2 weeks to 3 months or more. Freeze dried food is best for these situations as it can be easily prepared but still have good taste close to the original food. It is important to not add stress to an already stressful situation with a poor tasting food supply.
Freeze dried food avoids this problem as your family can continue eating a healthy diet that has good taste as close to fresh as possible among all the other food options.
You may still want to prepare a herb or sprout garden kit to add a live food source to your reserve. Astronauts who have eaten freeze dried foods for extended periods have commented on how they relished live fresh food upon their return.
It will be important after a disaster to have as much time as possible available each day for other important activities. You can maximize your available time by not spending a lot of it preparing and cooking food.
Mountain House freeze dried food in #10 cans (which can store up to 25 years) have 8 to 10 servings each and will last up to 2 weeks once opened. #10 cans are an ideal strategy for the long term.
You will need a large enough space to store the light weight #10 cans of freeze dried food and also water containers. A freeze dried food supply for 3 months for a family of four can store in a space 3′ by 3′, by 4′ high. You will easily be able to transport this if need be in a van or pickup truck from a storage location to a place you will reside during a disaster. But if you want to be able to be mobile with this type of food supply you will need some type of RV.
Daily calorie intake for different freeze dried food packages varies. Planning 1500 calories a day would be the bare minimum for an adult, even for someone less active. 2100 to 2400 calories is recommended. If you want to plan for support of very active adults you may want to add extra meals to bring the daily total to 2900 calories per day. Small children 5 -9 years old will require about 700 - 800 calories per day.
A water supply of 3 months for a family of four would require is about 440 gallons or eight 55 gallon drums. This will provide a gallon of water each per day for 110 days. You can get food grade storage drums that will safely store water for 5 years. You may have plans for alternative supply of water in a long term situation and not require all eight of the drums.
55 gallon water container, 4 per package
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For initial disaster preparedness food supply, MRE (meals ready to eat) are a better choice. They do not require water to hydrate, they are truly ready. They can be heated in 10 minutes with “flameless ration heaters” a pouch that will heat up if you add a little water to it.
MRE’s are great if you want to spend as little time preparing and eating food as possible. This will especially be the case shortly after a disaster where you may need to travel or expend a lot of effort to recover get set up and be prepared for the long term.
One draw back of MREs is that many people are critical of the taste and some report difficulty digesting the food. You should try MRE with your family to make sure no one has a strong dislike for it. It will also be helpful for them to know what to expect in terms of food before a disaster.
The other drawback for MRE is that it is twice as expensive as freeze dried food per meal.
For these reasons I recommend planning MRE supply for a maximum of 3 weeks. After that you should be ready to use your long term freeze dried food supply regularly for you food needs. Since MRE lasts only 5-7 years you may want to safely plan to re-stock it ever 4 years when there is an election or when there is an Olympics to help you remember. You want to make sure at this time that the MRE agrees with everyone.
Keeping bottled water cases stocked up will help be prepared for the short term, however for longer than 2 weeks you really need to consider storage drums or some other alternative source to be prepared.
Finally it would be a good idea to keep a 72 hour kit with food bars or MRE in your car(s) so that you and your family will have supplies to support getting back together if you are separated when disaster strikes.
MRE (meals ready to eat) Food Reserves
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May 22 2008
**PRICES GOING UP JULY 1, 2008:Mountain House has announced that prices will be going up on JULY 1, 2008. In order for our customers to “lock-in” todays lower food prices, we will honor the current lower prices on all orders received before this date. ORDER NOW!”
The food shortages reported in the news have resulted in increased lead times and now the food price increases are starting to be seen on survival food’s such as Mountain House #10 cans of freeze dried food and pouches. There is no indication how much the prices will increase. As the note says orders placed now will honor the current prices. Since prices tend to go up fast but back down slowly I expect the higher prices on freeze dried food to last for some time unfortunately. Single mountain house #10 cans are orderable again on Nitro-pak’s site but based on this news I think most will be stocking up on bigger food reserve packages before the prices increase.
May 21 2008
For a lot of us including myself, the cost of buying a 6 week or 3 month freeze dried food reserve is beyond our budgets.
An alternative is to buy 1 or 2 variety case of 6 Mountain House #10 cans once in awhile.
These variety “modules” come in main course, breakfast, or 5 day 2 person “starter pak versions.
For example the “Main Course Variety-Pak #1” module at Nitro-pak features;
- Total of 68 One Cup Servings, at only $2.93 per serving.
- one can of each of the Following Entrees:
These modules are priced from $113 per case for vegetables, to $195 for the 138 serving breakfast pak at Nitro-pak.
Over 6 to 12 months you can build up a large emergency food reserve.
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Mountain House 4 person 3 month “dinner Entree-pak”
True food preparedness means;
The new Mountain House 4 person 3 month “dinner Entree-pak” meets all of these conditions and at low price per meal.
Priced at $985 this package offers an affordable peace of mind for preparedness for your family that easy to use.
So you don’t need to be a dedicated trained survival enthusiast to be prepared. You just need to make the right prepardedness choice.
Platinum Food Reserve
Food supports 4 People for 3 Months or one person for a year.
This bulk freeze dried food reserve is (at the time of this post) for $3150 , with free shipping and a 120-day ‘no-risk’ guarantee.
“…will provide over 2000 calories per day for one person for one complete year, or a family of 4 for 3 months! It comes with a total of 168 #10 cans (large restaurant size cans) that comes packed in 28 cases for easy storage.”
May 20 2008
As mentioned in a previous post, Mountain House #10 cans are still available at Nitro-Pak and other online retailers but the lead times have increased to 3-7 weeks.
Today I noticed that the Mountain House #10 can individual entrees and 6 can cases had disappeared from Nitro-Pak’s website.
The mountain house freeze dried food reserves, year’s supply, variety packs, and group food reserve units were still there and on sale but with aforementioned 3-7 week lead times.
I called Nitro-pak and spoke with Lisa in customer service. I confirmed that they were still shipping food reserve packages listed above but they have temporarily stopped selling the individual #10 can entrees and cases to devote all allocated supply to their food reserve packages and 6 can cases.
Lisa said they hoped to resume those sales by June 15th. So there is no need to panic.
You can still buy Mountain House food reserves packages now at the 3-7 week lead time.
May 19 2008
Below is an updated survival food comparison chart.
Freeze dried food, MRE, and canned food are compared in catagories to determine their merit as a survival food.
In my opinion (and scoring of course) freeze dried food is the clear winner. However it is important to note that MRE is very useful as an initial emergency food and a mobile emergency food. So you should have both MRE and freeze dried, but mostly Freeze dried food.
Only the small percentage of us who utilize bulk grains for our cooked food on a regular basis, have reliable heating alternatives for cooking, and ample food and water storage space could rate canned food/bulk grain higher.
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