Survival Food - Freeze Dried & MRE

Mountain House has resumed selling #10 cans on their website.

Almost all varieties except a few like Turkey Tetrazzini and Chili Macaroni with Beef were being sold in long shelf life #10 cans.

Mountain House had stopped selling #10 cans on their own site back in May and limited supply to a few major distributors.

With the price of oil dropping below $100 today for the first time in 5 months from a peak of over $140 a barrel, much of the huge demand created by worried survivalists has subsided - for now.

Awareness of the need for pandemic flu preparedness came 2 years ago when the risk of a pandemic outbreak from the avian flu virus (H5N1) escalated.

Fortunately, a flu pandemic did not materialize and the risk has abated somewhat.

However there is always that risk present as there were 3 pandemic outbreaks that occurred in the last century. And present conditions, even with the technology and medical knowledge available today, make the occurrence of a pandemic flu no less likely nor the impact less severe than in the past.

From a preparedness point of view what can we expect and plan for?

Here is a statement from the PandemicFlu.gov website;

A pandemic may come and go in waves, each of which can last for six to eight weeks.

An especially severe influenza pandemic could lead to high levels of illness, death, social disruption, and economic loss. Everyday life would be disrupted because so many people in so many places become seriously ill at the same time. Impacts can range from school and business closings to the interruption of basic services such as public transportation and food delivery.

With possible reductions in the food supply and a general desire to limit your exposure to other people and thereby risk of infection it would be highly desirable to have a food reserve of up to even 3 months for you and your family.

While it may be tempting to think that you will have time to prepare if the threat escalates again in the future, the fact is many preparedness food options will quickly become difficult to obtain.

Recently with the awareness of food price increases and as well as the threat of food shortages, which for the US became somewhat exaggerated for a time in some circles, the result was survival food quickly went out of stock with long lead times of 6-8 weeks.

While the availability of freeze dried food in #10 cans has come down to 2-4 weeks lead time now, based on this recent experience you can imagine what will happen when a future pandemic flu threat escalates and starts to get more and more news coverage long before the actual pandemic occurs.

So why wait?

Freeze dried food reserves for 3 months can be had for as little as $2.90 per meal.

Today there was some buzz on a “Costco Emergency Food Kit” that has 275 servings on Reddit.com .

The title implied that “now” they just started selling this kit but it has been around for at least a year. It was $100 a year ago and Costco is selling it for $80 now.

The questions I have is

What is it?

How many days food does it represent?

It says it will store for 20 years and that water needs to be added. It sounds like it is freeze dried food but why don’t they say that? There is very little information on Costco’s website. Looking at the label I found the brand’s website here;

Food for Health

On this website it still does not indicate what it is. However it does tell you the nutritional information including salt content which is very high in one meal (Cacciatore), 25% of the RDA for each “serving” (one cup after water is added). One other piece of information is that cooking instructions which appear to indicate one cup of water per serving needs to be boiled and then content added when it is simmered for 20 minutes.

This does not sound like freeze dried food, but then what is it?

I found these comments on post of the blog “1913Intel” from July 11th 2007;

…tried the Ala King and Western Stew mixes. We really hated the Ala King mix, but we only hated the Western Stew mix. They’re too salty, and generally don’t taste that good. Although the Western Stew was a lot better than the Ala King. I wouldn’t want to live on this stuff for very long.

We didn’t try out the other mixes because we’re returning the remaining bucket to Costco.

There were other comments in forums indicating people thought it was better than ramen noodles, and cheap, a good deal if you are a student on a budget and love salt.

There is no calorie information to indicate how many servings you need per day on the Costco site, but there is information on the nutrition information labels shown Food for Health website. The  Cacciatore, Ala King, stew and pancake servings have 200 to 220 calories each. The soup, noodles, and chowder servings have 98 to 125 calories per serving. The whey milk has 80 calories per serving.

A healthy adult’s typical calorie intake is 2000 to 2500 calories per day. You can get away with less if you are less active but if you have too low calorie intake for an extended period of time and you may suffer health issues as a result.

So based on the calorie information above a typical day’s diet would be;

Pancakes X 2 - 420 calories

Milk 2 glasses - 160 calories

Cacciatore Lunch X 3 - 618 calories

Ala King Dinner X 4 - 880 calories

This works out to 11 servings a day for a total of 2078 calories per day.

The 275 serving emergency food kit will support an individual adult for about 25 days, which is a little more than 3 weeks.

So for $80 you can eat salty food for 3 weeks. You need to boil water to prepare each meal and wait 20 minutes for it to be ready.

What would happen if in a disaster, you are unable to boil water all the time, how would you prepare it?

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.

Just read on Nitro-Pak’s website that Mountain House freeze dried food prices will be going up July 1st. This is the statement on Nitro-Pak’s site;

**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.

Finally! A Government Agency that Gets it Right

The survival food message by Governor Tim Kaine and Virginia Department of Emergency Management is right on the mark. Congratulations for your wisdom on the issue.

The message is right and more importantly the medium is right - YouTube (see videos couple survival preparedness interview, Governor Tim Kaine). By utilizing YouTube for their preparedness message, they will reach audiences that traditional media doesn’t.

The videos are a 16 second clip of the Governor and a 30 second spot featuring a couple and 2 children being interviewed on emergency preparedness.

At one point the husband turns to the wife and says “that’s really not survival food…tomato paste”. Hopefully this message will sink in. The American Red Cross stated in a August 30, 2007 press release that it estimates that  “only 7% of Americans have taken the steps necessary to get prepared”.

The one thing more the Governor and department could do is not disable the YouTube embed feature (so that the video can’t be shared by embeding here and elsewhere). I guess expecting them to be Web 2.0 savvy, to know that hording content is passe and counterproductive is a still a stretch.

After events like 911, Hurricane Katrina, the H5N1 bird flu scare, you would think our governments would have finally taken action to be ready to assist us when a disaster or emergency situation occurs.

Read this Reuters article from from December 18th, 2007.

Do you think any improvement has occured since then? Will they ever be prepared?

U.S. still unprepared for disaster: report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States remains unprepared for disasters ranging from biological attacks to a flu pandemic, and funding for preparedness is falling, according to a report released on….

Worth Repeating 

Survival and the Next Big Disaster: Rely on Yourself, Not the Government

Emergency kits and first aid supplies can keep your family alive when food, water, gas, electricity, or medical services are disrupted by disaster

(PRWEB) November 29, 2005 — Think you can rely on the government for your family’s survival after a disaster? Consider the Indian Ocean Tsunami, Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Wilma, and the Kashmir earthquake in the last year alone. While governments strive to help, downed gas, water, electric, phone, and medical services, not to mention roads, may delay help for days or weeks. And government services may be overwhelmed. Meanwhile, you and your family must fend for yourselves. Will you be ready?

“The country is really just not prepared for a major catastrophic event,” said Dr. Irwin E. Redlener, the director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, in a recent BusinessWeek cover story. “Whatever it is — the Big One in San Francisco, a terrorist attack — it doesn’t matter. The unfortunate truth is our ability to imagine and plan for catastrophic disasters is woefully inadequate.”

It’s 2:00 a.m. and a flash flood forces you to evacuate your home — fast. There’s no time to gather food from the kitchen, fill bottles with water, grab a first-aid kit from the closet and snatch a flashlight and a portable radio from the bedroom. You need to have these items packed and ready in one place before disaster hits.

A Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) brochure puts the burden of preparedness on individuals. “It’s 2:00 a.m. and a flash flood forces you to evacuate your home — fast. There’s no time to gather food from the kitchen, fill bottles with water, grab a first-aid kit from the closet and snatch a flashlight and a portable radio from the bedroom. You need to have these items packed and ready in one place before disaster hits.”

While most disasters can’t be avoided, you can prepare for them. According to FEMA, there are six essentials you should stock in your home: food, water, first aid supplies, emergency supplies, tools, special items, clothing and bedding.” FEMA suggests at least a three-day supply of food and water, adding that food requiring no refrigeration, preparation, or cooking is best.

MRE, or “Meals Ready to Eat” — a staple of US military and rescue operations for decades — are a popular way to provide survival food supplies. “Because the MRE are pre-cooked, they’re ready to eat right from the pouch,” says Thomas Sciacca, a former marine, outdoorsman, and President of CampingSurvival.com. “Unlike freeze dried alternatives, the MRE are designed to retain moisture, gravy, and sauces with maximum nutrition, variety, and a five to ten year shelf life.”

Since evacuation or travel may be necessary, it’s also wise to include emergency kits or survival supplies in each car, as well as the office, school, or wherever significant time is spent, suggests Sciacca. The best kits are lightweight, avoid duplication, and suited to the users and environment used in.

While emergency kits and survival supplies can be assembled one item at a time, Sciacca understands that few people set aside the time to do an adequate job of it. “Important items get left out, items get scattered or get old and need to be replaced,” he explains.

Sciacca designed CampingSurvival.com as a one stop shop for survival supplies and emergency supplies — from pocket sized kits to The SuperArk, from family first aid supplies to organization-sized trauma kits, from rain ponchos to solar powered wind up radio. For free Disaster Analysis and promotional pricing, visit the CampingSurvival website at www.campingsurvival.com.

For More Information Contact:
Tom Sciacca
Phone: (800) 537-1339 ext. 222
Fax: 315-592-4796
28 W First St South
Fulton, NY 13069
sales@campingsurvival.com
www.campingsurvival.com

Forget oil, the new global crisis is food
Alia McMullen, Financial Post

A new crisis is emerging, a global food catastrophe that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen. The credit crunch and the reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will pale in comparison to what is about to transpire, Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group said at the Empire Club’s 14th annual investment outlook in Toronto on Thursday.

“It’s not a matter of if, but when,” he warned investors. “It’s going to hit this year hard.”……..