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Archive for the 'meals ready to eat' Category

Jun 29 2008

Top 10 Freeze Dried Food & MRE Sites

Published by Kevin

If you have done a bunch of searches looking for survival food online distributors/retailers you will know there are quite a few specialty sites in this area. There are also quite a few blogs like this one and forums focused on preparedness or survivalism.

One way to gauge how significant and trustworthy these sites are and their relative online presence, is checking to see how popular they are. I am doing this for online stores first since that is mostly what visitors to this site are looking for. Compete.com provides a website analytics tool that helps gauge how much monthly traffic a site gets. This is a good measure of popularity.

Below is a graph of the Top 5 or what I call “first tier” survival food distributors. The monthly site visitors are listed in thousands (K).

The “first tier” top 5 Survival Food sites as of May 2008;

  1. Emergency Essentials (beprepared.com)- Sells both commercial MRE & Freeze Dried, and dehydrated food mostly “À la carte”. Some mixed food reserves with a mix of long life freeze dried food and bulk foods.
  2. Nitro-pak - Sells both commercial MRE & Freeze Dried Food, variety of bulk 3 month and one year freeze dried food reserve units,  wide variety of preparedness products (Note: We have an affiliate partner relationship with Nitro-pak).
  3. Long Life Food Depot - Sells mainly commercial MRE
  4. The Ready Store - Sells both commercial MRE & Freeze Dried Food, variety of bulk 3 month and one year freeze dried food reserve units.
  5. The Epicenter -Sells both commercial MRE & Freeze Dried Food in pouches (recently stopped selling most #10 cans due to availability), camping gear.

The “second tier” top 5 Survival Food sites as of May 2008;

  1. MRE Depot - Sells non-military surplus MRE, canned staples, freeze dried staples.
  2. Survival Acres - Sells Freeze dried food and dehydrated food.
  3. MRE Foods - Sells commercial MRE. Lowest delivered price for an MRE case I have found online.
  4. Are You Prepared - Sells commercial MRE and freeze dried food.
  5. Meyers Custom Supply - Sells commercial MRE, also has an AlpineAire page but no products on it at the time of this post

There are other sites, some I listed below that had significant monthly traffic, but their product focus was not centered MRE and freeze dried food, but more on either other survival products or survival information in general.

Camping Survival - Wide variety of survival & camping gear, some MRE.

Captain Dave’s Survival Center - Wide variety of survival gear, some MRE

The Survival Center - preparedness books, food storage advice, canned food and also some MRE & freeze dried food.

AAOOB Storable Foods - specialize in grain mills, other bulk food storage equipment, but some MRE and freeze dried.

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Published under Emergency Food, Emergency Preparedness Advice, Freeze Dried Food, MRE, Survival Food, meals ready to eat, nitro-pak

May 27 2008

Survival Food - Short and Long Term Planning

Published by Kevin

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.

Freeze Dried Food CasesMRE Star Case of MRE

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 Survival Food Strategy

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.

Freeze Dried Food Reserves

55 gallon water container, 4 per package
Family Water Storage Package #2 (55 gal. size)<B> S&H Included

Short Term Survival Food Strategy

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

72 hour survival kit
*Survival Kit, Executive 72 hr.<br><i>w/ Solar Radio Upgrade

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Published under 72 Hour Kit, Emergency Food, Emergency Preparedness Advice, FRH flamless heaters for MRE, Freeze Dried Food, MRE, MRE star, Mountain House, Survival Food, Survival Food Preparedness in the News, Survival Kit, food shortage, meals ready to eat, water storage

May 19 2008

Freeze Dried Food, MRE, versus bulk food and canned Food

Published by Kevin

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.

Survival Food Scoring Comparison - Upload a doc

Read this doc on Scribd: Survival Food Scoring Comparison

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Published under Emergency Food, Emergency Preparedness Advice, Freeze Dried Food, MRE, Survival Food, meals ready to eat, water storage

Feb 28 2008

Survival Food Options - Scored Comparison

Published by Kevin

What is the better choice for survival food? How do MRE, Freeze Dried Food (FDF), or storing canned food and bulk grains from the super market compare?

Below I have scored the options for disaster survival food against these factors;

  • storage life
  • storage space
  • preparation time
  • taste
  • cost (per meal).

The scoring goal is to have an objective calculation. However the ratings are my subjective opinions, and are based on the facts and information I have been reporting in this blog. I have also added a second level score with a weight for each factor. Again, this is my opinion about the factor’s relative importance to a survival food strategy.

The weighted score total for the survival food options is out of 10.

It is also important to note that the scoring was based on a required food supply that will last 6 weeks to 3 months.

MRE would rate better in a 72 hour survival kit comparison with mobility and easy to heat as factors.

Here are the scores;

Survival Food Scoring Comparison

You can see that based on the way I have scored and weighted Freeze Dried Food is the superior choice especially for longer term preparedness of 6 weeks to 3 months. Since you may have different opinions you can evaluate the score and weight outlined here. I will add a poll shortly to get everyone’s opinion on the ratings for each of the factors and the factor weights. Then we can look at the results.

In the meantime I have also posted a link to the original excel file so you can change the weights and scoring your self as you wish and see the results. Here is the file link;

Excel File with Survival Food Scoring Calculations

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Published under Freeze Dried Food, MRE, Survival Food, meals ready to eat

Feb 12 2008

NEW Improved MRE’s for 2008 from Nitro Pak:

Published by Kevin

NEW Improved MRE’s for 2008:

The BEST just got better! The MRE business has been tough for some time with suppliers torn from one disaster to the next and with the war. Supplies have been short and selection has been terrible… until now. We have just contracted with a major MRE supplier to provide our customers with all FRESH component MRE’s and meals (not old scraped together surplus or 2 to 3 year old stock). Unlike some dealers who provide just 2 to 4 different entree choices, we provide SIX (6) DIFFERENT Premium meal entrees x 2! In Addition, everyone of our meals includes a MRE side dish! That’s an ADDED SAVINGS of up to $12 per case you would have to pay if you…….

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Published under Emergency Food, MRE, MRE star, meals ready to eat

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