shelf stable foods for 3 day pack

Building a 3 day one person food/water kit.* Any suggestions for reasonably light, stores well foods?

comparison chart of commerical 3 day kits

How about going old school? Peanuts, walnuts, cashews, beef jerky, dried cranberries, apricots, brown rice, quinoa, bulghur. Plenty of calories, protein, fat and fiber, reasonable shelf life, and healthier than the highly processed faux foods. Most of this stuff is available through Costco or sams club, avoiding the marketing mark-ups at outdoor/surplus/zombie apocalypse emporia.

...and lots of chocolate, cuz if I eat an exclusive diet of squirrel food, I get a littel squirrely.

for my remain overnight 72 hour bag, and its storage in a SUV in the Florida heat... I went with Mountain House freeze dried entrees...oatmeal packets, cocoa packets, tubs of Crystal lite, packs of GatorAid for EGR, tea bags...sugar,salt/pepper packs... vacuum sealed some ramen noodles ... Sawyer mini filter, Sawyer squeeze bottle, nested stainless cup, Swiss ranger stove, Sterno

I am going to hit up Nursemike for any extra chow. What he is carrying are a lot of my favorite things, and I am a regular Costco patron for much the same reason. If you refresh your supplies regularly, you will be fine. If you don't, I would recommend well packaged energy bars like Clif, in tasty flavors augmented by my favorite- Tanka bars, which are essentially pemmican - buffalo and cranberries. They more closely resemble real food than the usual survival items and, in my experience, they keep well beyond their expiry date.

Don't forget the tea bags!

Is it intended that this kit will be backpacked? If so, light,high energy foods make sense. If it is for car evacuation or shelter in place, get lots of canned goods. The water they contain will be extremely useful. Canned stuff stores well, and is cheap.

What hikermor said ^^ -- I have canned goods, an assortment of Mountain House freeze dried stew and veggies, Tanka bars/bits and other energy bars, and MRE's. Canned goods are by far the most cost effective and they also last beyond their end date. Another thing about canned goods over freeze dried is that you don't have to use water rehydrating them. If backpacking you need to have a source of water, or keep what water you have for drinking and don't use it to rehydrate. You can go much longer without food than you can without water.

Both car kit and a pack -- so both canned goods and light weight ones.

Nothing can beat real pemmican.

I have a three day grab n go bag where the main food supply is Hormel Completes. These oval bowls are meant for microwave use but can be heated in a pan of water o r eaten cold like and MRE entrée. They come in a wide variety of flavors including new breakfast varietiesand are easy to stack in a pack. I supplemented them with ration bars and snacks and beverage. Best of all they need no water to prepare, simply heat, or not, peel the top off and dig in.

Thanks! Great tip. Off to Wallyworld...

Tried them...no chance I will eat them before absolutely necessary.

And I read on one of the commercial 3 day packs that "ramen" is the ingredient for lunch. Just ramen.

New rule -- any meal must have at least 600 calories.

If you use cans, make sure they are kept above freezing temperature. Freezing cans can compromise there seal and create a health hazard.

I have made up individual lightweight 24 hr ration packs which weighs around 1200 grams giving around 4300 Kcal, which is equivalent to 3-4 US military MREs for a little more than the same cost of a single MRE in the UK




An Example

Muesli Luxury Fruit with dried Skimmed Milk 158 526
Met Rx Colossal Peanut Caramel Crunch 100 397
Met Rx Colossal Peanut Caramel Crunch 100 397
Adventure Food Mince Beef Hotpot 150 600
Adventure Food Pasta ai Funghi 169 600
BeWell Expedition Rice Pudding with Apple 192 717
Knorr Crofters Thick Vegetable Soup 79 265
Finn Carre Dark Chocolate Bar 108 524
Horlicks Malt Chocolate 70 240

Weight in Grams 1126 Kcal 4266

AFLM, I always love when you UK'ers post your meals. Geez, for being similar, we sure eat different.

To the OP, I've had luck with the USCG lifeboat rations and the freeze dry food. I believe REI carries individual meal size, that are shrunk wrap. I've also had MRE's in my truck for 2-3 years and they're palatable. Not something I'd keep for long term if I was thinking on foot.

Didn't Winston Churchill observe that Brits and Yanks were two people separated by a common language (think bonnet and loo)? Maybe that applies to chow, as well.....

I think so.

Then again, one could argue the same thing based on geography as well ...

We do also eat American Style over here in Scotland as we did yesterday;



Dundee Scotch Pie on the left warming up a flat pebble (primitive survival style ) , Scottish Beef Burgers, red onions, unsmocked Scottish bacon frying in some Chipotle chili oil in the middle and a freshly caught sea trout somewhat camouflaged in some aluminium foil ready to go. The burgers also had some Kentucky Whiskey BBQ sauce applied in the bun. The beefburgers were a success and went down well with some cold Carlsberg lager.



Some 6 inch thick cut beech logs in a natural rock hollow made for some hot coals to cook on.

The location. A couple of hundred yards from Newport-on-Tay west Lighthouse.

Can I come over for dinner?

I keep cans of Campbell's Chunky soup in mine. Long shelf life and very tasty and filling.

I notice you are in Alabama. Assuming the soup cans are in cars and not stored at home (where temperatures are more stable), how does one do intermediate term food storage in the car? In summers and hot climates, temperatures can reach 120-130 F.

All the food in my truck (in the back under a fg snug top lid) is stored in an insulated cooler. While it can still get warm, it is much more moderate. I'm in SOCAL and the temps here can get fairly high in summer too.

> AFLM, I always love when you UK'ers post your meals. Geez, for being similar, we sure eat different.

More different than you realise. From it's Eastern Empire the brits inherited a taste for spicy food. And 'spicy' here is a lot different to the USA. Don't ask for spicy food or anyone to bring you some. You'll end up throwing it away as uneatable.

Shouldn't all spare food in a vehicle be eatable without having to cook it?
qjs

Certainly there should be some meals that do not require cooking/heating, but I include a alcohol stove and small cook kit so that i can heat up items, like the inevitable nice cup of tea,at a minimum. Just as important for morale as for physiology.

The Hormel Completes all contain 1100mg of sodium. At the very least this means you will need more drinking water, and those with high blood pressure issues will have even higher blood pressures (and they will already be higher due to the stress).

The meals also contain only 200-300 calories so you may need to eat quite a few of them--like 8 to 10 for a 2000 cal/day diet. If one consumed 10/day that would be a total of 11,000mg of sodium per day.

I tried one of the Hormel Chicken & Rice over this past weekend.

1. Definitely not enough to be filling by itself.
2. The taste is VERY salty.
3. More syrupy than I would have expected for chicken & rice.

Of the ones I found at Walmart, chicken & rice has similar salt to the other Hormel Completes except for the Beef Stew which has even more.

I'm adding dog food for the pups in the pack as well. and TP.

Haven't had any issues, I eat it and it's just fine. Worst-case scenario - the shelf life on the cans is like 3 years, you can always eat them and rotate through them after a year or so. Same for bottles of water, they get hot but it doesn't affect them enough to bother me at all.

One thing to remember about shelf life and the dates given the products is that after the given date, the food may begin to taste odd or funny - not at its peak or most appetizing. Usually it can be consumed without incident well after the shelf life date. I have eaten things ten years beyond their date without incident and will do so again if circumstances arise.

Just beware of containers that are bulged or leaking. That is a very different kettle of fish.....

I was recently in Wal-Mart and the little woman made me push the cart so I wouldn't wander off to sporting goods or pharmacy where I look for ration bars. While there I noticed a lot of foods tat would seem good for packs. Soft jars of peanut butter, retort packs of rice in multiple flavors, retort beans, and even retort packets of tuna salad. I filled up the baby seat with things to upgrade my bag, including snacks.

I was looking at the choices in Walmart. As expected, many shelf stable foods are VERY salty with the exception of the plain rice.

Is there a tabulation of prepared foods in which the amount of salt is NOT listed in terms of %RDA which I don't find a useful measure but rather mg NaCl / 2000 kcal ?

The amount of salt 30-50% RDA is tremendously high for a mere 200-300 kcal serving. While the taste of what I tried was OK, I found it overwhelmingly salty to taste.

If the container had 2000 kcal, the same 30-50% RDA sodium would be not a big deal.

Given that the bulk of calories can be carbohydrate based, pasta or rice, even 100% RDA sodium in 1000 kcal serving wouldn't be a big deal.

I don't think that relationship is usually listed explicitly, but you ought to be able to calculate it readily. I grabbed a yogurt which lists 80 mg of NaCl and 90 calories, which would be 1,777.7777777778 mg for 2000 calories (if you really like Harvest Peach yogurt). You would consume more than 22 containers to get that amount....

Please feel free to check my calculations. Math is not my strong suit .

Hardtack:

http://youtu.be/a_gYhGNbTW8

qjs

I must respectfully disagree joey. Traditional hardtack has virtually no nutritional value, it water, flour and salt, and it's hard. What if you have a jaw injury or a bad tooth/teeth? I would suggest something like enhanced crackers or the Belvita breakfast biscuits over hardtack. JMHO.

Good catch Yee. I hadn't considered the sodium factor. However consider this: In a stressful situation, ie bugout or flat out running for your life, you will need more sodium to replace what your body uses and what it loses through sweat and possibly tears. It would be up to the individual to consider and balance the sodium issue according to their own preferences and body chemistry. But it has raised some questions in my mind now. Thanks Yee.

The issue is hardly how difficult it is to calculate for a single item but rather what items are worthwhile investigating for purchase in a big box store without lifting each item and using a calculator.

I just checked the bag of pecans I bought from Costco the other day. It contains 0 mg of sodium, so I did the calculations in my head...I'll bet that as a general rule, the less processed a food item it, the less sodium (and less sugar) it will contain.

I have had, over time, more issues with sodium depletion due to exertion, excessive sweating and high temperatures, than sodium excess. For a three day period, with exercise and exertion on the agenda, like DW, I would not worry too much about excessive salt consumption. The Hormel stuff is indeed way too much, however.

I hadn't checked the Hormel levels either Hikermor. But lets face it, in a three day pack sodium in your food is not going to kill you, or even make you sick. Just don't add more even if it tastes bland. But thanks for pointing that out. We have a guy on the jog who eats one at lunch daily, and most times one for dinner.

These Hormel Compleats are using way to much Salt (Sodium Chloride), probably three times as much as required for taste. Hormel is probably using the excess sodium to extend the shelf life of these microwave meal products. Way too many ingredients as well.

Sometimes the extra weight of a can is worthwhile.

http://www.grantsfoods.com/category/products/gourmet-range/

Best I can find, the cheapest way to buy freeze dried foods in in 3-7 or 30 day packs ( from big box stores) Lots of meal repetition, unknown taste, but excellent pricing.

My crash bag is full of cliff bars. Reasonably light and easy to carry, inexpensive and found in most stores. Not bad tasting either. I used to have mainstay bars. Those are really high in calories but are a bit on the expensive side. They don't pack as well as they come in vaccum sealed stacks. They also taste like a mixture of sawdust, lemons and used cat litter.....I will stick with the cliff bars for now.

i took Cliff bars as part of canoe tripping lunch menu and found you get tired of them in a few days.i would take a mix of those type of meal bars.
there is a big one we call "choke bars".a full meal in a thick fruit and nut bar but really dry and needs something to wash it down,which is something to think about when your picking out meal bars.

The new wears off of Cliff Bars pretty fast for me. I really only like the white chocolate macadamia nut ones myself. I prefer the Atkin's Peanut butter bars...pretty decent nutritionally and for whatever weird reason I like the taste of them.

Oh yeah. I fully agree they get old fast. That's why they are in my crash bag as emergency food. When I am going out kayaking or hiking or something I always pack tastier goodies and keep the cliff bars as just in case food. As far as "pack it and forget it" food goes I have experimented with this and that and just found cliff bars to be kind of hard to beat.

The fact that they don't melt in the heat is a bonus I forgot to mention. A lot of meal bars I have tried don't hold up very well in the heat.

mmmmm used kitty litter.... Makes me me want to run right out and buy some. Lol. I like Pure Protien Bars, they seem the best of sad lot. I must admit that I truly enjoy the old Tigers Milk bars, mainly the honey and peanut butter ones, but they're tiny and getting ever harder to find in stores. I rarely order off the internet.

I like no cook choices for short term but admit to trying to always have water and a small stove and pot so one pot meals is doable. I like Instant Rice, Dried soup mix with some seasonings to go with tuna or salmon or sardines, Wasa Bread, Peanut Butter and Pure Protein Bars.
Try not to get too exotic and these things keep well.

I'm a fan of clif bars for daypacks as well. They don't turn gooey when it gets hot, and the taste is OK but I never crave them, so I don't dip into them unless I need to.

I really wish someone would pack freeze dried rations like the military LRP rations -- vacuum packed and designed to take up little room in your pack. Being light is only part of the equation, being compact for me is a big one too. Mountain House has Pro-Paks which are vacuum packed but they still manage to find a way to make them bulky as hell. Which is kinda weird since they come from the same place.

Additionally, if they could get the cost of freeze dried food entree on par with the cost of an MRE entree (~2.50-4.00) I'd probably invest more heavily in them.

Yeah, I love the LRP stuff! It's kind of hard to get so when I do find it I'll often get a couple dozen of 'em. Very compact and pretty tasty.

Been considering a purchase of a 30 food supply bucket - to take apart for car, packs, etc

Survival tabs - my ultimate solution for every kit. Whole family loves them (that's a children's dream to eat candy only ).
http://www.amazon.com/Food-Reserves-Survival-Tabs-180/dp/B00JB2VO3A

One of the very well hidden benefits - you can also cut on sanitation supplies after just first day, as it does not produce any waste at all.

Also you can use the container as a watertight flask (there is a zip-lock bag inside allowing to empty the container when in the survival mode).

But hurry, the price is going up, and it looks like these are going to be replaced with the new breed, which new shape I don't like at all - it's ugly and impractical: https://thesurvivaltabs.com/

I looked at the Survival tabs and it is a little confusing.

One serving (12 tabs) supplies 100% of most of your daily requirement of minerals and vitamins. Good.

One serving supplies 10% of your daily value of carbs. Hmm, so you need 10 servings per day to get 100% of your daily value. That would 120 tabs or 2/3 of a bottle. They claim you only need one serving per day.

I think I would still be very hungry.

Oh, and they are $39.95 a bottle.

I agree, even if you had plenty of those Survival tabs at hand I think you'd still feel hungry. The problem with concentrated food is that it's just not very filling. Our bodies are used to getting real food, which includes plenty of fiber. If you're not getting that more or less regularly your stomach won't be too happy about it.

It's a bit akin to basing your diet on bodybuilding supplements such as protein powder or weight gainers. In theory, it should work because those supplements contain all the vital ingredients necessary for survival. But it's a quick way to ruin your digestion. I would treat those tabs as supplements at best rather than actual meal replacement. Heck, even the bad old MRE's would be better, at least they give you something closer to real food.

So, just to put a little twist one it; For cost considerations, let us assume you are broke.

What would you be stocking this with from the dollar store?

I keep 2 boxes of pop-tarts in my car from the dollar store, usually I find the boxes are either 6 total (3 2-packs) or 8 total (4 2-packs). I usually keep one in my desk at work.
200 calories per pop-tart

Chef Boyardee Ravioli 440 calories per can, OBSCENE amount of sodium 1500.

Green Briar Peanut Butter 10 Oz. Jar 180 calories per 2 tablespoons sodium 140 mg

Instant oatmeal 178 calories, 140 mg.

Honey 200 calories, no sodium.

If you combine the last 3 together-- oatmeal + PB + Honey, you get a basic moose goo.. I would not mix in advance, probably right when I was going to eat.
that would be ~ 558 calories, 280 sodium.

A person can live off 12 survival tabs per day _only_ (plus water of course). A member of our forum has confirmed once that he was experimenting with them for at least a month for sure (or more, don't remember). I trust him, even though I have personally tried them only for 1 weekend (ate 22 tabs) on the trail and felt perfectly well, even though psychologically it was definitely perceived like almost nothing. But we are talking survival situation, not a 3 rounds dinner.

The price is still very reasonable, considering the abundance of benefits compared to any option discussed above. I've got 3 of mine for just $25 shipped a while ago, and another 3 for $32 shipped this January, when noticed they are going up and will be replaced soon. Consider 15 days of proven healthy nutrition provided - that's just $2.66 a day - way cheaper than any of the options discussed above.

For the effect on the stomach. I'm sure it will shrink after 3-4 months of living on tabs only, but nothing fatal will happen in 15 days if there are no any unhealthy preconditions (I do have gastritis when skipping the meal time, but that's easily managed by Tums). In fact, I'm more skeptical at the attempts to invent a really balanced survival food out of grocery store offerings The professionally made tabs already solved that issue the best possible way. For the filling - just drink more water no earlier than 30 minutes after the tabs.

They're not supposed to be your entire food supply; they're supposed to supplement what you can find or forage. Supposedly they are very bio-available and digest completely. In a really bad situation the idea is that a small ration beats nothing.

Indeed they are. Probably hard to believe, but again, you can live and be active eating just 12 tabs a day for at least 15 days.

There is a food replacement powder which seems to be populair these days called 'Soylent'. Far more populair among the 'hipster' crowd than the outdoor/survival crowd. A 'open source' food replacement powder you can make your self. Mostly used as a food replacement thing when people are to buzy to cook. Depending on how you source the materials it might be a cheaper option than the tabs.

I however prefer real food...

Survival Tabs
Nutrients: "Non-fat Dry Milk Solids, Sucrose, Vegetable Oils." The rest are vitamins and minerals. Calories 240, fat 12g, carbs 30g, fiber 0g, protein 4g

Protein bar (Bare Naked - Almond Cranberry)
Ingredients: "Whole grain oats, honey, almond butter, almonds, brown rice syrup, cranberries, soybeans, whole flaxseed, peanut butter, cane syrup, crisp rice (rice flour, sugar, malt extract, salt, mixed tocopherols for freshness), isolated soy protein, coconut, vegatble glycerin, sea salt, soy lecithin, spice extractives." Calories 250, fat 11g, carbs 31g, fiber 5g, protein 8g. Cost around $1 (Target) plus a multi-vitamin (Target $11.79 for 300 or 4 cents each).

I think I'll go for the grocery store protein bar and a vitamin pill. Tastier, twice the protein, more filling, and cheaper. I could have three a day for only slightly more (40 cents) than one dose of the Survival Tabs.

I think, you are missing the point that the tabs' major advantage is their fast 100% digestion. Most of the nutrients from a regular protein bar will be removed undigested with waste. The direct comparison does not work here at all. You can not actively live on just 3 protein bars only per day for 15 days. But I certainly understand the point that for many people just the fact of eating a lot of varying in taste and texture food up to the filling sensation is a very serious source of psychological comfort, joy, morale boost, and an overall entertainment from the process. For me that's not worth an effort and time - drop in some decent fuel pellets on the go and forget it, there are more exciting/important things to do than boring foraging, cooking, chewing, and dish washing.

(Upd) Tried to find that field test report for the Tabs on the forum, but sadly the search function cannot go farther than 3 years back in time. Though, I'm sure, I bought my first tabs more than 5 years ago, after reading that story.

Fast 100% digestion... I'm not sure whether that exists in the real world (apart from eating a spoon or refined sugar). In fact, I would be interested in any solid studies behind that sort of claim.

With my admittedly limited grasp of biology I would expect that the actual efficiency of digestion depends on a multitude of other factors as well, such as the individual's current state of health, age, rate of metabolism, hydration, climate/temperature etc. etc. All those factors are likely to be working against you in a real survival situation. Not too good to begin with.

But that's a bit beside the point. I'm highly skeptical that an average human could remain active and in good health on a daily diet of a dozen "Survival tabs" for anything like 15 days.

Also, concentrated food is really hard on your liver and kidneys. Even taking meal replacement/protein shakes a little too regularly can have a serious impact on your system. Been there, done that - not good as your doctor will tell you.

In my field experience any sort of highly concentrated food only really works in a very short-term scenario. Anything longer than a couple of days and you're likely to end up with severe digestion issues. Constipation for starters, which is inavoidable if you're getting zero fiber with your diet.

Then, because the concentrated stuff just isn't very filling, you're likely to compensate by overhydrating (if enough water is available in the first place). Which is again liable to seriously mess up your bowels. So in effect, you might easily end up with a bad case of diarrhea. Not something you could afford in a rough situation.

Personally, I'd much rather eat something closer to real food, even if it means rationing the available stock to the minimum. In a 15-day scenario that shouldn't be too much of a problem, most people have enough fat reserves to survive for at least 30 days with no food at all.

BTW, the stuff about Survival tabs being developed for astronauts... Maybe, but I thought astronauts eat primarily real food, albeit freeze-dried or dehydrated rations. So I would take the ads with a huge grain of salt.

What constipation? If you don't eat junk, just tabs you have no stool forming at all, and no constipation I agree, everything depends on the overall health of your digestive system. So, perhaps if in a doubt it would be better to discuss the Survival tabs use (or any other survival food as well) with your doctor first. Regarding the water intake, it's enough to follow the 30 minutes (or more) rule to avoid any trouble.