I'm putting together a 72hr kit for staying put and a BoB bag in case evacuation is needed.

As regards food to store in them, I'm considering the milkshakes designed to provide nutrition to people convalescing (not the diet ones). They seem to have all the major food groups covered, as well as minerals and vitamins for 1/3rd daily requirements.

I've tried them (when I was ill) and quite liked them (although the ones I've seen are sweet and that could get unsatisfying very quickly as I don't have a particularly sweet tooth), but was wondering if anyone had tried them out in other situations/ had them in their kits?

Have people any thoughts?

thanks.

Most of the milk drinks for meal replacement like Ensure/Glucerna taste OK, but I couldn't stomach it for more than a day. Each 1 ml given the standard dilution on the package is about 0.9 - 1 KCal i.e 200ml gives about 200Kcal, it makes it simple for calculation of calories in tube feeding patients.

Plus points= light weight, full nutrition
Minus points= Needs water to reconstitute, can be nasty tasting <img src="images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

May be good to mix a few of these with powerbars, mainstay rations,mres for variety. These shakes alone....yuck!

Great question and I have wanted to look into it so here are my thoughts.

First lets take Ensure nutritional supplement. It is basically designed for people that don’t have the wherewithal to consume nutritional foods alone.

A weight gainer such as GNC’s powder weight gainer mix. http://www.gnc.com/productDetails.asp?id=350477 is made for healthy people that are planning on doing a lot of heavy activity (surviving in our case).

Now there is a little give and take here but I think I am in favor of the Weight gainer. Lets take a look at some rough numbers then you can decide.

The numbers:

Ensure liquid form is approximately 250 calories per 8 oz can. For the sake of conversation let’s assume you carry four cans for each day you plan to be “out”. That is a total of 1000 calories and 32 ounces of liquid.

Weight gainer is in powder form. (I hope you can follow this) Weight gainer is approximately 600 calories per serving with 8 oz of water. So let’s just guess that the dry weight of weight gainer for the equivalent of 3, 8 oz servings is 8 ounces dry weight. We know for a fact that 8 ounces of water per serving times 3 servings will be 24 ounces. This gives us a weight of 32 ounces total for water and weight gainer powder.

Bottom line is 32 ounces of weight for Ensure gets you 1000 calories that are put together for the elderly. Or 32 ounces of weight gainer for a minimum of 1800 calories that are put together for active people.

If anyone can come up with a better product please let me know I am very interested.

Cameron
Chicago IL

Thanks to you both for the replies... I think I'll put a couple of them in my kits, but find some other food as a main source of sustenance. I don't recogise the brands you mention, the ones I've seen are Complan: complan

but the shops only have the sweet ones.

Sweetness == sugars == cheap calories. Getting dehydrated meals with the same caloric content (whether shakes or anything else) cost most if the calories come from protien, cost slightly less if the calories com from fats and cost least if the calories come from refined starches and sugars. Figure where the profit margin is for the mft and retailer?

just remember that 24oz of water weighs over three pounds. liquid volumn and weight are two differant animals. POOL

Not so! The volume measure "fluid oz" is the volume taken up by 1 oz of water by definition. There may be descrepancies between the weight and the volume with other fluids. I am sure that a fluid oz of motor oil might be lighter than an oz and a fluid oz of brine or syrup should be heavier but the definition of a fluid oz is the volume taken up by 1 oz (by weight) of water.

Pint is a pound the world around. Gotta love those brits for their measurement system! Start with a pint of guiness and work out from there!

I wonder if the horse is measured by the hand because after enough pints one must use the hand to "walk" yourself vertical before climbing into the saddle?

one pint=1.042 lbs. You're right ,not a significant difference in a gallon or two. I sometimes deal in thousands of gallons where the difference is very important. Sorry for the hairsplitting. POOL

From your first post:



From your second post



by the definitions:

one fluid oz == the volume taken up by one oz water at sea level and 25 degree c

so, under constant conditions, one pint == 16 fluid oz (volume) == 16 oz (weight)

By your first math

24 oz (volume) weighs over 3 X 16(pounds) oz or more than 48 oz That's a multiplier of 2 not 1.042 (not in the hairsplitting range by a long shot)

By your second math

16 oz (pint - volume) == 1.042 (16 oz weight) pounds so

24 oz (volume) == 1.042 (24 oz weight) == 25.008 or a little more than 1/2 your outcome from your original math.

from the wikipedia we can see that we are both right. I am using the imperial definition while you are useing the Us Customary definition. Still your first assertion about 24 oz being over three pounds was just plain bad math.

i should cut down my alcohol intake while doing math. POOL