You Must Be Able to Survive 90 Days

September 3, 2016 George Patton

Most liberty-minded folks believe that the "bad times" are inevitable. Most of us want to be prepared for whatever those "bad times" really mean. A large number of us never prepare.

There are lots of reasons why folks don't prepare.

Some don't prepare because they aren't sure what to prepare for.
Some (probably most of us!) are on limited budgets.
Most of us suffer from prepping fatigue. (It's funny a well known site that promotes Prepper Shows suggests that we should call it survivalism because prepping has too many bad connotations!) There is just too much information out there and much of it has virtually no application to most of us. It is very easy to be overwhelmed and do little or nothing.

Many in the liberty movement don't make it easier for us. There are many web sites out there telling us what the one single thing is that will make us winners in the fight to restore liberty.

Some of what is out there is legit and good info. Sadly much of what is out there is written by people who merely want to make money off the backs of us in the liberty movement. On the one hand, that is kind of neat. We've become a market that folks recognize and want to target us for sales. On the other hand, there is a lot of useless junk out there that is incredibly overpriced.

No one knows what will precipitate the upcoming troubles. No one. Some ascribe to a huge government crackdown on the citizenry. Others fear an invasion by a foreign power such as China, Russia, ISIS, the UN, etc. The theories abound. Certainly the actions of our Government in the last 50 or so years have driven us to the breaking point.

At the end of the day though, the threat that you plan for needs to be broken down into the short term, intermediate term and long term.

For most of us, we usually start with the long term threat, namely a complete breakdown of the government as we know it with either an internal civil war or a war against foreign aggressors on our homeland. We try to plan backwards.

And for most folks, that's where they stop. It just looks too big to handle.

We're all on limited budgets, have limited time, and quite frankly limited skills. We can't all move off the grid to some magical safe spot. We can't all possibly learn everything that is needed.

I suggest that we need to start with the short term threat. If you can't survive the short term threat, it really doesn't matter that you were prepared for the intermediate or long term threats.

You need to survive for 90 days.

You need to have food, water and the means to protect it for 90 days.

Until you have these basic preps, you shouldn't spend a dime on any other preps. Having a ham radio that allows you to talk to the world doesn't help you if you don't have food or water. The best generator in the world is not edible. An arms room full of tons of guns and bullets doesn't help you if you run out of food and water.

So what does the 90 days look like?

I predict that an unnatural disaster will cause a nationwide breakdown of society. Lots of things could cause it, but I think the most likely cause will be the loss of food. EBT card breakdown would be the most catastrophic, but it could be massive rioting causing stores to stop resupply.

Note, this is just one of MANY possible reasons for societal breakdown. Your threat analysis may vary!

No food will cause massive unrest. Violence will be terrible. Quite frankly those who will cause the violence will probably descend to killing each other very quickly. Roving bands of violent thugs will wander throughout cities and they will destroy what they can in an attempt to get their own food and water.

And what of Federal, State and Local law enforcement? Sadly, most of them will be used to guard what the Federal, State and Local governments want protected. Much of it will be critical infrastructure. Lots of it will be guarding the elites in government.

THE FIRST 30 DAYS

The first 30 days will be violent, with much random killing. I estimate that anywhere as many as half of the population will be killed, many of them the thugs and the remainder innocent folks who got caught up in the violence.

Our mission in the first 30 days is to survive. It's time to hunker down. Note, I don't recommend bugging out. We can discuss bugging out on a different occasion, but I believe that in the first 30 days the random violence will get you killed if you are out and about.

I don't think anyone should leave their safe space during these 30 days. Blacked out windows, decoy trash in the front yard, vehicles up on blocks, etc., will help keep you from being a target and victim. Not looking like a target will increase your chances of not being a target. Lights visible from the road, a roaring generator, the aroma of food cooked on the grill are all things that will attract attention.

The minimums you must have are non-perishable food, water for drinking and sanitation, a mechanism for handling human waste, and of course the means to protect these things.

EVERYTHING else is bonus at this time.

Yes, it would be nice to have IR wireless cameras to watch your perimeter. It would be nice to have shortwave radios to listen to the news. It would be nice to have ham radios to check on friends. It would be nice to have solar chargers, storage batteries, inverters and the like to keep your phones and laptops operable. The list of nice things goes on and on.

But, if you aren't eating or drinking, it doesn't matter.

DAY 31 TO 60

The second 30 days will be different. The thugs that are left will be the stronger ones. They survived. They will be more violent and far more desperate. They have run out of all things that they need. They will be a little more organized, but probably in small groups/gangs. By this point most of them will be on foot. With no gas stations and roads/highways cluttered with wrecks, burned out vehicles and vehicles merely out of fuel, rapid transit won't be easy.

These smaller gangs will target what they believe to be opportunities to get food, fuel, water and arms/ammunition. They have the challenge of food and water just like we do. Imagine a 20 mile hike with nothing for them at the end.

With the smaller numbers of thugs, the Government will begin conducting operations to restore law and order. I imagine it will be with overwhelming force, city by city, with a combined State National Guard, State Police and Local Police. They won't be able to be everywhere at once, so the restoration will not be automatic. A good percentage of these forces will still be used to protect what the Government thinks is important (important to them, not to you).

During these second 30 days, it may be possible for you to venture outside. I would only do it in daylight and only in groups. At least two vehicles with four armed people in each vehicle. If your area is part of the restoration operations, I probably would stay off the streets. Shoot to kill really means shoot to kill.

As in the first 30 days, our Government will not have the resources to target the good guys. They will be struggling to survive and protect what is theirs.

DAY 61 TO 90

During the third 30 days I think we will see efforts to restore services. Electricity will start to work. Water will start to flow. Stores that still exist will start stocking food, fuel and other essentials. It won't be universal, and it won't be easy.

I recommend taking advantage of what is available and attempt to restock my supplies. I still wouldn't venture out by myself. Perhaps smaller groups but still in multiple vehicles. If you haven't shaved or cut your hair in a couple of months, I probably would. You want to look like a civilian who needs resupply, not an armed thug. Just because we survived the 90 days doesn't mean it's going to get better.

Our country's population will be smaller at the end of 90 days. Merely cleaning up the devastation and dead bodies will take many months. Heck, some places may never come back.

Our Government will make plans to insure that something like this doesn't happen again. Change will happen and as always many will attempt to take advantage of the crisis to make changes that we won't like. Our Government will have more time on their hands to screw with us, the good guys. But, we'll be alive to try and influence that change.

We'll all have some serious lessons learned from these 90 days. Things we wish we had done different or better. Our mission remains the same. Restock and work on the next 90 days. Smarter, wiser and alive. Armed with what we learned and with what others learned, we'll probably do it a little different. Resources will be shifted to the next phase of survival.

By the way, this 90 day plan is just that, a plan. Unrest isn't like a football game. You won't know when the game starts, there will be no halftime, and there are no four quarters. The length of each phase will likely vary. There may be overtime. You can watch for indicators of when it will start, but based on experience of social unrest localized unrest can grow very quickly.

Part Two of this series will discuss food. Part Three will discuss water and sanitation. Part Four will discuss how to use deception to hide the fact that you are alive, well and capable of surviving. Future parts after that will discuss how to accomplish the nice things on a budget.

Surviving for 90 Days Part 2-B � How Much Food Do You Need?

September 7, 2016 By George Patton

For this post, we're skipping ahead a little. We want folks to start thinking and start planning. Next week's post will go into greater detail on the different types of long term storage food.

This is where preparing gets challenging. Most of the folks that sell long term storage food get you excited by the number of servings that they include in their price. Anyone who has had company for Thanksgiving knows that serving size is meaningless. Cousin Eddie eats like a horse. Aunt Sal eats like a sparrow. Heck, when the wife and I get a rack of ribs, she eats less than half and I eat the rest.

We've got to plan based on how many calories are required, not serving size.

So, how do we know how to do this? Well, our medical community has actually studied this for us. They have come up with information that has determined how many calories a person needs in a day broken down by age and gender, and how active these people are!

[img]https://georgepatton325.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/first-one1.jpg?w=700[/img]

So, how do you use this information?

We've taken it one step further to figure out how many calories are needed for more than one person, such as a family!

If you take the chart shown above and add a few columns, you will have a sheet that computes your total family daily requirements!

[img]https://georgepatton325.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/second-one1.jpg?w=700[/img]

Here is an example of a chart like this filled out. Let's say for example that you are a family of four, with the husband being 32 years old, the wife 30, with two children, one 4 years old and one 9 years old.

Filling in the numbers of people, you see that you will need between 7000 and 8850 calories per day for your family.

[img]https://georgepatton325.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/third-one1.jpg?w=700[/img]

If we take a look at #10 cans of some typical items, we find out that different things produce different calorie counts.

[img]https://georgepatton325.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/fourth-one1.jpg?w=700[/img]

[img]https://georgepatton325.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/fifth-one1.jpg?w=700[/img]

It's interesting to see that different items provide very different calories per serving and even more importantly cost per calorie.

For those on a budget, you may want to explore recipes that make use of the higher calorie contents (like Red and Black Beans in this example) to be able to create adequate calorie counts with less money spent.

Once you have your basic essential food stuffs on hand, there are certainly other considerations, such as snacks, fruits, etc. These will be covered in a later chapter.

And these are just examples. You can create a spreadsheet like this, input the things you like to eat and/or already have in stock, and see where you need to adjust to create adequate calorie counts.

Now comes the fun part ' planning your menus! If we go to a sample calorie count sheet, you'll see that we took ten #10 cans of vegetables and meat and figured out the calorie count per serving. That chart also computed the number of calories produced by the total of the 10 cans.

These ten cans produce 29,152.75 calories.

[img]https://georgepatton325.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/sixth-one1.jpg?w=700[/img]

Computing our from your daily requirements, you see that these 10 cans of food will feed your family for 3.29 to 4.16 days. Adding it up for 90 days tells you that you will need 216 to 273 #10 cans of food.

Of course this is based on a number of factors that can change. It's based on you having nothing other than long term storage food. You might have other food options such as MREs, commercial and home canned food. For planning purposes, I've worse-cased it.

If you are on a budget, you can certainly adjust out higher calorie food for lower calorie food. Whatever food stuffs that are planning on, you can do the same computations.

It's not serving size, its caloric requirements.

The beauty of using a calculator for computing your requirements is that you can play around with different menu items to increase calorie content and reduce costs.

Let's see what the lowest costs could be.

We learned very early in our preparing process that the expensive part was meat. Freeze dried and other long term storage meat was very expensive. For example, in our scenario of a family of four, using �real� meat versus TVP meat increases your food storage bill by over $2000 over the 90 days! If there were no other options, it might make you want to become a vegan!

We tried TVP meat. Used in casseroles and stews, it actually isn�t bad tasting! The cost per calorie for TVP meat is far less than �real� meat.

We looked at different options. The first was to mix TVP and real meat on a 50-50 basis. It certainly works out, and cuts your food storage bill by $800 or so.

Another option was to home can meat! We practiced that and found it not only to be fairly easy to do and an incredible cost savings, but it is also very good to eat! Our challenge is to keep it in storage instead of using it and eating it regularly!

A later chapter will discuss home canning of meat.

We can�t state strongly enough that the key to planning for food storage is to first determine how many calories you and your family needs to survive.

Once you�ve figured that out, you need to explore different menus. If you have all the money in the world, you can pretty much replicate your day to day foods via long term food storage. If you are like most of us, you are on a budget, and some menu adjustments will have to be made to maximize caloric input versus cost per calorie.

These spreadsheets will make it easier to compute and adjust different items. In our examples, we only used dehydrated and freeze dried food. You can use these spreadsheets for any kind of food, be it canned goods from the grocery store or any other food. Input the serving and calorie count and you get the results you need.

The strongest recommendation that we can make is to try these menus now, before you have to live on them. There is nothing worse than having to eat things that you can�t stand. Most folks just won�t eat it, or won�t eat enough of it. Calorie intake is critical.

When we were in the Army, there was an old saying when you wrote plans and other instructions. People always referred to a concept that Napoleon used when issuing guidance to his subordinates. He would always have the instructions read to one of his corporals. He figured if they understood it, then everyone else would too. The notion became used in the Army as finding your �Napoleon�s Corporal� before you sent something off.

Well, we had this chapter read by our Napoleon�s Corporal, and we got some feedback that we figured we needed to address. He told us that he had read and understood the �storing by calorie� concept, but wasn�t sold completely on long term storage food. �After all, you are the one that said that commercial canned goods don�t really have an expiration date. Why couldn�t I just buy that?�

He raises a good point, so here is a little better examination of commercial canned food.

We went to Walmart�s web site and got some prices for some of the more common commercial foods that folks might eat. You can see that cost per calorie is very similar to long term storage foods!

[img]https://georgepatton325.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/seventh-one1.jpg?w=700[/img]

Heck, if you got it on sale it might even be cheaper than that. So far, long term storage food doesn�t have a price advantage.

Let�s look at some other things. Fat content and sodium content generally is incredibly higher in commercial canned foods than in long term storage. We were shocked to look at the labels and see that many of these items had fat as almost 50% of the calories that you got from eating it! The sodium (salt) per serving, not per can was often as much as 30% of your daily allowance.

Long term storage foods have fat and sodium counts that are controlled by you. You make the meals and you get to choose. Advantage goes to long term storage foods.

When we talked about how long commercial canned food lasts, we were talking about how long it is safe to eat. Canned food can last a long time, but it does lose its flavor and nutritional value over time. Freeze dried and dehydrated food doesn�t have this problem.

We have always been adamant about the fact that there is no one single type of food to put in your storage. We have a mix of all of the types (except frozen) because all of them have their advantages and disadvantages. Some commercial canned food can be useful, not only for how quick it is to prepare, but also its ease of transport if you are out and about.

To get a more food for a lot less cost get 50 pound sacks of dried pinto beans, 50 pound sacks of rice and the biggest containers of vegetable oil or lard you can find. I know Sam's club has all that. Lard and vegetable oil and provide more calories for less cost them anything else.

For storage put the dried beans and rice into mylar bags inside of 5 gallons buckets with oxygen absorbers and diatomaceous earth to kill any insects then seal the mylar bags with a clothes iron. The dried beans and rice will cook a lot faster if you run them through a hand cranked grinder and soak them in water for for a day before you cook them.

Be careful who you have in your survival group most non-Christians would resort to cannibalism before starving to death.

http://www.infowars.com/would-you-become-a-cannibal-in-a-collapse

This is getting good.

If you ask around, you should be able to find 50-lb or even 100-lb sacks of wheat berries or whole wheat. You will need a grinder to grind it up into a flour (or a mortar and pestle, if you have nothing else to do), and prices vary because the major expense is in transportation, but it will store indefinitely. (Once it's ground it will have to be used immediately, or refrigerated). Bulgur makes a great easy-to-prepare breakfast, and there's nothing wrong with sourdough. You should be able to find a decent grain grinder for under $100.

Canned food lasts a while, but they don't last forever. Buy stuff you are comfortable eating now, and rotate your stocks using the oldest stuff first. We use a laundry marking pen to mark each can with the month and year it was purchased. It's been my observation that cans with those pull-top lids tend to go bad the quickest.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Mormon cannery pretty much has you covered on the basics.

Another thing to consider is frozen vacuum packed meat. Most of your basic grocery store stuff is meant to be eaten within a week of purchase, Walmart frozen chicken in particular is frozen in such a any as to have longer freezer life for their chicken quarters with less freezer burn.

It's a bit of a chore and not much cost savings, but buying meat in bulk and vacuum packing as opposed to regular freezer wrapping seems to get it to go longer. Your only other thing would be cooking then freezing. Something I have not tried is the boiler bags and the idea that you can salt and season the meat, then vacuum pack it in smaller portions which can then be boiled until cooked. The boiling does not even require very clean water since the water does not touch the food and in either event, sterilizes the water. In theory, it can be like making your own MREs for field use. I just don't know what the shelf life quite works out to be and it requires the kitchen equipment and disposable packing material to pull it off.

The traditional Euopean preserved meats usually involve sausages of some sort which are heavily salted and smoked, when frozen that stuff goes into extremely long shelf life too. Again, vacuum packed sausages and lunch meats go a long time frozen, even longer when cooked then frozen but the trick on that is cooking slow enough that the fat is not lost, or at least not as much gets lost. You want the fat cooking into something starchy or if nothing else, flour which is then saved as gravy.

Freezer burn is a form of freeze drying which is bad for raw meat, ok for coked meat, so if you cook then freeze the meat, then it goes much much longer. If you cook then freeze hamburger in vacuum bags, that goes a really really long time. The big thing on the meat is the fat. In normal diet coking, you drain and discard the fat, in economy cooking when you need the calorie count up for rigorous physical activity, you always keep the fat and cook it into the food. That means adding salt, spices and usually something starchy directly to the meat dish.

In setting up the chow system for the Diaxaris retreat, I was big on the beans and potato powder which alone are kind of nasty, but adding those 5lb chubs of ground beef to the freezer along with some gallon jugs of olive oil in the pantry shelves, that meant we could always come up with a big stewpot on relatively short notice when more people arrive. The big thing on the stewpot is that ingredients are cooked separately and then added at certain critical times to save nutrient and taste. The full time people were mainly into the kinds of meals which don't work well to serve large volumes of people so there was an entire backup kitchen which would get set up for the larger meals. The other big addition I bought for that was the large packs of bacon. Eggs had be be obtained locally but egg powder was around as a backup and personally, I don't see it as aproblem to mix powdered egg with fresh egg.

Plain beans also benefit from molasses, which you will also find it a benefit to just get by the gallon. If you want good beans, it involves salt, molasses, animal fat and vegetable oils, with olive oil being my favorite. Corn and canola oil as your sad substitutes. Basically, I use those for higher temperature frying but if you are desperate, you can cook them into the food like olive oil.

Home made beer is also a big deal not so much as for drinking but for cooking. Most Americans accustomed to canned Budweiser and other rice based beers can barely choke down the old world dark beers, but for slow cooking, the stuff is golden. It adds depth and flavor to any dish that would otherwise be done involving water. Home made old world dark beer plus olive oil, some vinegar and molasses a workable broth for stew base. It is basically my slow cooker base that everything else gets added to. It's the strong flavor base you may also likely need when dealing with game animal scavenger meat.

So the staples are one thing, but they can often be pre-staged in survival retreat areas with little danger of theft except by animals. Notice that even the grave robbers of Egypt never messed with the hermetically sealed pots of grains once they figured out the Pharoes were not buried with treasure secretly hidden in the pots.

So on long distance bugout, you may find yourself needing to barter for food, and bartering that to people and establishments which are still serving food to those who can afford or trade for it is a legitimate option rather than giving up gold,,solver or ammo, since food prices are likely to be inflated.

If you are looking at a trade model for survival food barter and long distance travel where cargo space is limited, consider these options.

Olive oil
Vegetable oil - will be used by anyone setting up a fried food operation.

Salt - really important as a preservative (raw salt), but for food flavoring, might as well get the seasoned salt. People eating plain survival food without it, the suddenly see the stuff available for trade, and suddenly everyone figures out how valuable it is, but it will take them a while and chances are, they didn't stock up enough of it.

Sugar - another kind important one, but specialized sugar is a big deal too. Other forms to consider - maple sugar syrup, corn syrup, and molasses. Molasses was a major trade item from the early exploration period of the Maericas up to the late 1800s. Really specialized sugar, which is no joke and would have a big trade ratio - the flavored stuff they use for boutique coffee. It is often imported and not too costly in large bottles. A little goes a long way and people get that figured out in a hurry.

Coffee - Yeah, go ahead and think it's no big deal until people go a week without it. Bulk unroasted coffee beans can go a long time, roasted coffee and ready to drink or instant stuff. Yeah, if I am out, that gets you into my chow hall for sure. Everyone over the age of 25 will know what that means, and especially anybody over the age of 40.

Ibuprofen - old mans M&Ms... Not a nutrient, but if you are over age 50 it might as well be...infantrymen over the age of 25...

Alcohol - food grade high octane clear stuff is an important food and drink preservative for anything sugary. Eventually people figure out how to make it but in the short to mid term, it's the excellent trade item and luxury to take the edge off morale sapping living conditions. That's why homeless people in America never seem to lack the stuff but if you have your shit together, you probably don't think about it much. Believe me, if you suddenly become homeless it starts to count for something. If you are trying to convince people to stick around the retreat and be available for tasks, then better set up the watering hole with something more than water. Guaranteed, if you are trying to bring in or retain hard workers and warriors, it's a necessity. I know a lot of people prefer weed as their intoxicant, but on personal observation (and a lot of it) of potheads, they just don't really like to work or fight. They will incessantly argue and have their mental illness issues, and as such cause fighting, problem is that's not organized warfare, it's their bullshit drama. It's good for winding people down, like reducing a fight from violence to argument, but has less value than people assign to it and will likely be around in any SHTF situation.

Tobacco - Highly addictive shit and therefore carries fairly high cargo weight to trade value ratio. At $5-$6 per pack before SHTF, imagine its value after. Your problem is shelf life, but if you are a non addict and have it available for trade, smokers know what it's really worth and any scarcity increases value. There are ways to obtain tobacco cheaply, especially loose tobacco in bulk but generic mini-cigars are something I used to get for $2 per pack and give to homeless people to guard my car in the neighborhood I lived when I got out of prison. The stuff is practically ghetto money.

Cheese - not exactly just a military joke about cheese spread being "field money" but the government used to stockpile and pass out the velveeta-like generic processed cheese for emergencies as part of a farm and dairy subsidy program. It does not store well in high temperatures, but does not require major cooling either. Again, an old European trade and travel item for a lot of good reasons. People think they don't really need it, but if you want your camp or survival retreat chow hall to be popular and well defended, serve it in abundance. It is good enough cargo volume to value ratio at it can work, but unlike some of the other items, may be a little trickier to trade. Big cheese wheels of botique cheeses are surprisingly costly and can make or break the popularity of say, a seasonal trade market, but you could easily travel across the country vending off portions of the same load of botique cheese that you loaded up with on either coast.

I've thought about starting a topic on home canning, but there are so many books on the subject that I figured it would be a waste of time. The major expense is in buying the jars, but you make that up in a season or two.

The same with sprouting. There are tons of books on how to grow sprouts, and I'm surprised more people don't do it. A few radish sprouts will add some zest to any bean or chili dish. But use them in moderation, they're hot.

Alfalfa sprouts make a great salad. And I add bean sprouts to sandwiches and burgers. If you know a farmer who's letting a few acres of alfalfa go to seed, definitely talk to him.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Breacher when it comes to freezer burnt meat, the crockpot is your friend. Not long ago I found a large steak in the bottom of the freezer. It was over 6 years old...dried out...looked like fossilized shoe leather.

Tossed it in the pot over night and by next morning it was tender as fresh roast. Fell apart if you touched it and tasted just fine.

In all honesty, I have bad bad luck doing bean sprouts. I am a little curious how to make it work on a timely basis. Seems they were getting funky on me before they would sprout and I ended up just throwing them away but I had this idea of doing the sprouts in a blender to make a high nutrient slurry, except it didn't work.

Another thing which did not seem to work for me was grinding beans into a powder which could be thermos cooked Into a paste for use on hard tack, kind of a field use hummus thing. Didn't seem to work though.

On the bean sprouts, did you change the water regularly? That's about the only thing I can think of that could go wrong. I change the water at least twice a day, morning and evening, and three times a day for the first couple days.

I've heard of people dehydrating their sprouts and putting them through a grinder. I've never tried it, so I have no expertise.

Onward and upward,
airforce

No, I never changed the water. That must have been part of the issue.

It was. All sprouts need fresh water often. Tap water will do nicely, there's no need to use filtered water unless you just really want to. There's nothing to it, just cover the jar with cheesecloth or anything that will drain easily, fill the bean jar with water, and let them soak for about 12 hours. Then drain, and rinse and drain them two or three times a day after that.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Surviving for 90 Days Part 2 – Food Storage

George Patton
September 15, 2016

There are many different kinds of foods that you can stock up on.

There are five major categories of commercial food storage:

Freeze Dried
Dehydrated
Frozen (home freezer)
Canned Food (commercial and home)
Plastic Retort Packages (AND Military Meals)

Deciding which is the best food for you to store depends on a lot of factors. Cost is important of course, but so is shelf life, tastiness, ease of preparation and use, and ease of actually getting the stuff in your home.

Freeze Dried versus Dehydrated Food

How Do They Work And What Are The Differences

Moisture Content. The main objective with food preservation is to remove the moisture so that the food doesn’t decompose, grow mold, etc. Dehydration removes about 90-95 percent of the moisture content while freeze drying removes about 98-99 percent. Foods that you dehydrate at your home will typically have a 10 percent moisture content level while foods that are dehydrated professionally will have a lower moisture content – which increases the shelf life.

Shelf Life. The moisture removal has a direct impact on the shelf life. Most dehydrated products like dried fruits, vegetables, powders and texturized vegetable protein (TVP), also known as textured soy protein (TSP), have a 15-20 year shelf life. However, dehydrated items like honey, salt, sugar, hard wheat and oats have a 30-year shelf life – sometimes longer. Freeze-dried foods will have a longer average shelf life. Freeze-dried fruits, vegetables, just-add-water meals and real meats will have a 25-30-year shelf life.

Nutritional Content. According to research by the American Institute for Cancer Research freeze-dried foods retain the vast majority of the vitamins and minerals found in the original food. However, when compared to fresh fruits and vegetables, freeze-dried foods did lack in some vitamins – like Vitamin C – which break down very rapidly. Dehydration doesn’t change the fiber or iron content of food. However, dehydration can break down vitamins and minerals during the preservation process and retain less of their nutritional value when compared to freeze-dried food. Dehydration tends to result in the loss of Vitamins A and C, thiamine, riboflavin and niacin

Cost. Usually dehydrated foods are going to be cheaper than freeze-dried. If you’re on a tight budget, dehydrated foods are definitely the way to go. We have a mix of both.

The Main Similarities

Storage Requirements. There isn’t a difference in storing food that’s freeze-dried or dehydrated. The cans or buckets are all the same size.

Pros and Cons of Using a Freezer for Food Storage

Pros of Freezing:

It’s fairly simple to do! It’s very familiar to most of us.
You get the most input into what you are storing. It’s the best way to preserve the original freshness and taste. You get to buy what you want to freeze and can even save your own fruits and vegetables from your garden.
You can freeze virtually any kind of food… solid or liquid!

Cons of Freezing:

You are limited to where you put your storage food to the size of your freezer. It’s all in one place.
In almost every natural and unnatural disaster you are going to be without power. Studies suggest that if you don’t open your freezer, food will stay frozen for up to two days. A generator can solve this problem, but then you have to store fuel, and the noise of a generator can make you a target to those without food.
To achieve the maximum frozen food shelf life you will have to protect them from moisture loss and air exposure.

How Long Does Frozen Food Last:

Like with any storage method, how long you can store food for will depend on the specific type of food. Frozen foods can last only a few weeks in some cases, but more often then will be fine to eat after several months. After a year, most foods will start to taste “off”.

Storage Times Listed are for QUALITY ONLY; Frozen foods remain safe indefinitely!

Here is a basic chart of storage times for keeping food in the freezer.

Bacon and Sausage 1 to 2 months
Casseroles 2 to 3 months
Egg whites or egg substitutes 12 months
Frozen Dinners and Entrees 3 to 4 months
Gravy, meat or poultry 2 to 3 months
Ham, Hot Dogs and Lunch Meats 1 to 2 months
Meat, uncooked roasts 4 to 12 months
Meat, uncooked steaks or chops 4 to 12 months
Meat, uncooked ground 3 to 4 months
Meat, cooked 2 to 3 months
Poultry, uncooked whole 12 months
Poultry, uncooked parts 9 months
Poultry, uncooked giblets 3 to 4 months
Poultry, cooked 4 months
Soups and Stews 2 to 3 months
Wild game, uncooked 8 to 12 months

Pros and Cons of using commercial canned goods for food storage

Note: This report isn’t long enough to discuss home canning in depth. Watch for a future report which will discuss home canning in depth!

Pros of Commercial Canned Goods:

It’s very easy to do. You buy the cans at the grocery store and put them away for later use!
You are buying exactly what you like to eat! Taste is a huge factor in nutrition!
The food is already prepared, so your prep time is greatly reduced.
Cans are usually smaller allowing for more variety in what you are eating. You don’t have to consume an entire #10 can of something before you move on to something else.
Commercially canned food is usually done at the peak of freshness, so the quality is usually very good.

Cons Commercial Canned Goods:

The smaller the serving size, the more it usually costs. Basing an entire families food storage requirements on commercial canned food will cost more than dehydrated or freeze dried food.
The shelf life of canned food is much shorter than dehydrated or freeze dried foods.
We recommend this web site for the best information on shelf lives, use-by dates, etc. It’s an awesome site! http://www.stilltasty.com/
Storage Times are usually for QUALITY ONLY; Although canned food loses its nutritional value over time, it doesn’t necessarily go “bad” merely because it’s old.

The bottom line: Don’t be so quick to toss out or donate those canned food items sitting on your basement shelves just because they hit their printed expiration date. When all else fails, open them and use your senses to determine if they are still edible (they probably will be). (Swollen cans are the best indicator that something is wrong—bad food also smells bad)

When in doubt some high heat from your stove and an iron skillet can serve as another method by which to “cleanse” the food prior to eating it.

Plastic Retort Packages (AND Military Meals)

Note: This report will be an overview of the various military meals (MREs and such). Watch for a future report which will discuss military meals in depth!

What Are They?

We’ve seen them all over the place! Those who are veterans remember them as the pouch that holds the entrée in the MRE. Most of us have seen them in the grocery stores as the “flexible can” in quick, ready to eat pouches.

In science terms, it is a heat resistant bag made of laminated plastic films. It is then heat sealed and sterilized by pressure cooking in a retort (autoclave). As a result, the retort pouch contains heat treated food that is safe from micro-organisms.

Pros of Plastic Retort Packages:

Lighter than canned food.
Because it’s flexible, it can take more “abuse”.
Because it’s flat, it’s easier to store.
It’s easier for individuals to eat as most of them are in single serving packages.

Cons of Plastic Retort Packages:

Convenience usually comes with a cost! Individual serving sized food costs more.
Shelf life is very dependent on the temperature at which they are stored. Not a good food to store in the trunk of your car in the summer.

So, What is the Best Food to Buy?

We don’t think any ONE type of food is the best.

We do think that a combination of all of them can be useful.

Storage of Fruits and Vegetables

Freeze Dried or Dehydrated are clearly the choices. Price is the huge factor here, with dehydrated fruits and vegetables being very reasonable.

Storage of Meats

Canned meats are the tastiest, and we recommend home canning for meats (WATCH FOR A REPORT ON HOME CANNING OF MEATS SOON!)

Storage of Single Serving Foods

Retort packaging is the most convenient to store, carry and eat.

In part 2-A, we’re going to talk about how to achieve the cost savings of buying in bulk and still allowing you to achieve family happiness by having a variety of foods that they love to eat!