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Archive for the 'MRE' 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

Mar 28 2008

MRE taste test - will you survive?

Published by Kevin

MRE is not usually mentioned in the same sentence with words like gourmet or delicious. It is at best compared to food from a can.

It has many derogatory acronyms referred to by soldiers such as “meals refusing to exit” for it’s digestive properties, and mystery meat for taste, etc.

With this in mind before you choose MRE as a survival food, you should make sure you and your family find it tasty enough to survive on and digest.

You may think now that they will be satisfied with “any food” if need be after a disaster if there is “no other choice”.

But there is another choice - not to eat, and that can become a serious problem.

It will be a risk to morale and safety if the food you eat causes more distress on top of the situation you are in.

So it would be best if you can do a trial run eating whatever food you choose for preparedness for a few days. If you and and your family are not thrilled with how the food tastes at least you have an idea what to expect in the event you need to use it. If it is impossible for some of your family to eat, make a decision to look at some other type of food option such as freeze dried food.

While you may not find the taste of MRE as bad as mentioned above, and there are actually some people who really like it, one consolation is that it is easily heated. In 10 minutes you can have a hot meal by adding water to the MRE’s flameless ration heater pouch most MRE comes with.

If you are cold and wet, hot food tends to taste delicious no matter what you would have thought otherwise.

I found a recent blog post on MRE taste and digestive implications here;

Tales from around the world - The MRE

The post pretty much validates my opinion that MRE should only be considered for a 72 hour mobile kit or at most a one week emergency food source for preparedness.

Here is a interesting video on some Utah chefs who tasted MRE for a review.

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Published under MRE

Mar 06 2008

New MRE unveiled by Army

Published by Kevin

The US army has shown new MRE and new “first strike rations” today, the associated press and ArmyTimes reports.

The demonstration featured new menu items for “Meal, Ready-to-Eat” and “First Strike Rations”.

The new items won’t be available anytime soon, with buffalo wings slated for release in 2009, and southwest beef and blackbeans coming out in 2010.

The first strike ration for more mobile forces are less bulky and lighter. They are scheduled to be released this summer. The meals are packed with high-protein, high-carbohydrate foods upto 3000 calories to provide energy for fast moving forces.

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Published under MRE, MRE News

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