Gang.
What food do you include in your Bobs, 72 Hr kits like freeze dried, mre ect.

Thanks
Lee

Hi
For my Bob I've opted for the basics:
Lifeboat rations and beef jerky. Both have a long shelf life and together I get calories/fat and protien. Good enough for a few days.... However if any one can think of anything more inspiring.....

I wish there was a good-tasting, modern version of pemmican. I haven't found a granola bar worth eating yet.

Sue

Who, and how many people are involved? The humanitarian, culturally sensitve emergency rations dropped in Afghanistan were unpalatable to the recipients. If your in a stressfull 72 hour situation gastric upset is the last additional worry. Spring a chicken enchilada MRE on grandmother and you may have problems. <img src="/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> For 72 hours you won't be worrying about spoilage, it's the 72 days before use we have to be concerned with. 72 Hours= 9 tradition meals in western tradition. I figure the first day as a 'buggie' I'll be lucky to snack on something cold. A hot meal is probably most important at night to keep our internal furnace fueled while sleeping and our caffeine addictions mean tea or coffee in the morning . Water may or may not be palatable even after treatment. So I pack Coffe,tea or Cocoa and powdered Gatorade, Honey packs ( thankyou Starbucks and Randy <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />) and condensed milk for fluids. The milk can be used in many scratch cooking recipes and MOST IMPORTANT We may encounter other folks with infants. Oatmeal is easily carried and prepared with dehydrated fruits to provide variety and nutrition. The infamous PSK bulion cube is flavoured salt, but in a community effort makes a good stock to work from. Canned foods are heavy and much is water, but, once opened you have another coffee cup or cooking utensil. Toss in a can of beef and watch the legendary 'stone soup' come together.

Currently I just have one RTE meal and some dried noodles in my BOB.

The RTE came from a camp shop and tastes pretty awful, and it's also heavy, but I figured it was worth having one that didn't need preparation. Noodles are light and easy to prepare, if you have a fire etc. You need to carry water in addition, but that's probably a good thing.

I keep plenty of food in the house. Frankly I'd be reluctant to leave it.

MRE parts, Bouillon packets with no MSG and low salt, hard candy (boiled sweets), chewing gum, dried onion and garlic, fast cook rice , Tobasco sauce from MRE , cocoa mix,water.
Dave

One fuel tab in my Esbit stove burns just exactly long enough to cook a package of ramen noodles, coincidence? I think not!
gino <img src="/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

I mostly have MRE's. Just because they pack nicely. I have freeze dried meals, but they are bukly because of the air space needed in the pouches for reconstitution. Were I to go backpacking though, I would use the freeze dried meals after opening them and compressing the air out of the packages. They are lighter than MRE's. As someone mentioned earlier, I also have triox tabs and stoves to heat up water for coffee. (gotta have it in the morning) Other than that I do have salt and pepper and the little tabasco sauces that come with some MRE's. Just my two cents, both taken by the government.

Charles

On the one hand, you're not likely going to starve to death in 72 hours... You might die of thirst though, so water is more important in this case than food. Use common sense; what is your environment? If you are in a desert, having a higher ratio of water to food might be better, as you probably won't come across many natural sources.

If you're in a location where you are working hard, and water is easily found nearby, you can have a higher ratio of food to water in order to keep up your energy. Same with extreme cold/snow.

Food is important for energy and morale. Most 1st world country inhabitants haven't gone longer than 12 hours without food, much less 3 days, so it would be a major shock to the system <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

I mainly use MREs, but I'd like to get some Air Force GP-1 rations for hiking, and some MRE's for my 72 hour kits. Unfortunately, the only place I can find the GP-1's are on ebay and I don't have an account there. I don't know anything about the commercial rations like mainstay, mayday, SOS bars, other than that they taste horrible. I guess a good side effect is that you won't snack on them, so they'll be around in case of an emergency!

I'm not an expert so take it for what it's worth

I thought Mainstay was dog food... is it made by the same people?

Sue