Top Survival Food Products

Building a Food Supply

If you are building a survival food supply, then you’ve come to the right place – SurvivalFood.com.

You will find more brands and types of foods made specifically for emergency and survival purposes at SurvivalFood.com than anywhere else.  We carry complete lines from industry standards, like Mountain House, Gourmet Reserves, and MayDay. You will also find the newest popular brands such as Wise Foods, Emergency Reserve, and OvaEasy. In addition to survival and emergency food supplies, we also carry water and tools to make water safe for drinking, as well as products to help you make your own food, including seeds and food processing and cooking equipment.

There are four types or “levels” of food storage: Food used for immediate needs, or a “short term” supply, emergency rations and calorie bars, meals ready to eat, and long-term survival food storage supplies.

Short Term Food Supply

You likely already have a pantry full of food needed for immediate use. You kitchen likely has bread, juice, chips, and maybe a frozen pizza, milk, vegetables, and some chicken. These are the foods we eat every day, readily available at any grocery store. All that is required to obtain these foods is a little bit of travel and a few bucks. As long as you can make that trip and have some cash in the bank, that food is there ready for your taking. And for the grocery stores and restaurants, they are in the same situation, keeping no more than a week’s worth of food on hand. And in some cases, only a day’s worth. This is how we keep our food fresh, and it is a wonderful system we’ve developed.

What if suddenly the value of a dollar drops (inflation) to the products that it buys? What if oil supplies are suddenly reduced to a level that causes government to initiate rationing again?  What if your car runs off the road in the middle of nowhere, getting stuck in snow or a desert ditch? What if a tornado or hurricane sweeps through your town?  It is these “what if’s” and many others that SurvivalFood.com helps you prepare, by providing you a large selection of emergency foods to compare.

Emergency Rations and Calorie Bars

Emergency rations and high-calorie bars are great for those short-term events. Emergency bars and rations do not require cooking, are very lightweight, are packed with energy and store in a backpack, car, a sailboat or desk for years – waiting there ready for you to consume.

Meals Ready to Eat

MREs or “meals ready to eat” are known from their military origins as a self-contained ration of food designed specifically for the United States military. An MRE typically contains enough food to keep a person going for a full day, with a variety of foods that do not require cooking. Some MREs come with flameless ration heaters that use a chemical reaction, not fire, to heat the meals in a pinch. Additionally, water requirements are minimal when consuming MREs versus other types of survival food.

Long-Term Food Storage

The fourth type of survival food are those foods that have been preserved for long-term storage. Most often, food designated for a long shelf life are dehydrated and hermetically sealed to prevent bacteria build-up or oxidization. Often called dehydrated or freeze-dried food, these foods can last from 7 to 30 or even more years. Air-tight packaging and oxygen flushing is standard with pretty much all of the manufacturers, though the packaging is either in a #10 can (1 gallon), #2.5 can (quart) or a Mylar bag within a sturdier bucket. The oldest and most established brands provide both Mylar and canned packaging arrangements, but the Mylar is usually used for outdoor sports, whereas the tin cans are used for long-term storage. These older brands have proven their shelf life already, with reports of canned food over 30 years being cracked open and tasted, with positive results. Newer manufacturers claim up to 30 years of shelf life using the Mylar bags packed in a plastic buckets, but only time will tell. Still, one of the most important factors determining shelf life is the ingredients of the food itself. For example, dry beans, rice and wheat will last beyond a lifetime so long as it remains cool, dry and free of pests. Honey thousands of years old is still edible. Milk, cheese, and other dairy products fall to the other end of the scale, where a 10 year shelf life is pushing beyond the limits.

It's About Reducing Risk

Ultimately, when you purchase one of these types of food, you are reducing your risk. If the shelf life is 20 years, think of the total cost divided by 20 to estimate an annual cost. So a $4000 investment in a year’s worth of food that lasts 20 years is roughly equivalent to spending $200 a year to protect yourself or a loved one.

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