The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Down Range Cafe => Topic started by: billt on August 26, 2020, 03:14:11 PM
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I was thinking about getting some of these, "just in case". With everything that's been going on, and all the nut cases stripping the shelves of toilet paper, it got me thinking. What if there really was a food shortage? I'm talking about something that would last even just a month or 2.
I heard that MRE's are designed to cause mild constipation, because they don't want the soldiers getting the $h!ts on the battlefield. Is that true? I also have to watch what I eat because of my blood sugar. So no chocolate brownies, cookies, and that type of high sugar meals.
Do you guys know what these things sell for.... Or SHOULD sell for? And are there any types to stay away from? I'm just looking for a 2 to 3 month supply of the heat and eat type. I've never had them. But I can eat pretty much anything and not complain. They claim a 25 year storage life. Hell, I'll be lucky if I last that long!
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Type 2 here as well. I’m no expert but I suspect they’re heavy in the carbohydrates and not good for glucose levels either.
Cabelas sells this stuff, never tried them. There are sites that sell buckets that last years but again, I suspect heavy carb loads. Dried fruits, dried beef, canned low salt veggies etc seems safer for the sugar issues.
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Are you a diabetic? If so please keep your blood sugar under control. My mom just went back about an hour ago to lose her left leg from hopefuly bellow the knee. For food, talk too your local lds memebers.( no really,) they have both a church run and private companies that do just this. Deseret industries has all kinds of long term storege foods. You dont have to be a member to buy. They will be able to help you out.
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It's good to know theres a source besides friggin Sportsmans guide.
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My sugar levels, along with my A1-C are fine now. But I do have to watch what I eat. I'm 6' 2" 198-202 pounds. So weight isn't a problem. I just can't eat crap. I've never been a "sweetaholic", so it's not a problem. And I don't drink anymore. But I was wondering about MRE's.
Many of these products don't provide enough information on content. And many of the one's that do are confusing, because they go by, "per serving". And there can be more than one serving per packet, box, or whatever. So you have divide things out. And usually if you have to do that, they're way over on sugar and carbs anyway.
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Military MRE's are high calorie(4000+) and high carb,This is to give energy to the soldiers during times of high stress and exertion. They are good to have for emergancies, but I wouldn't suggest a steady diet of them. A better choice would be the civilian "Prepper" foods like from the companies listed here.
https://downtoearthhomesteaders.com/the-8-best-survival-food-companies-for-long-term-food-storage-compared/
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I've been doing food preps for a couple of decades now (e.g. I have 5 6-gallon buckets with wheat berries in it for bread).
Things to remember:
1. Eat what you store and store what you eat. If you do not regularly eat MREs you will be sick as a dog when you try to subsist on them. Not to mention constipated (or so I hear).
2. Prep canned goods and have MULTIPLE can openers (the dollar store kind as cheap as they are, not the milsurp, those are a pain). And refer to #1
3. Start using a food dehydrator to dry food for later. I have a couple of jars of dried corn I put up some years back. Fruit dries nicely too. Refer to #1
4. Use a vacuum sealer whenever possible. The enemies of food are heat, light, air and water. I vacuum seal stuff (no air), put it in the freezer (no heat, light or water). We buy in bulk and on sale, then put it up. And yes I have a genset, but gas only lasts so long.
5. Commercial freeze-dried foods (Mountain House, et al.): I have some, have tried of few of them, they're not bad. They are expensive and getting harder to come by as you're not the only one thinking about this stuff.
Costco for example is now offering pallets of "emergency" food. I know nothing about the brand they are selling but have read other folks who have gone this route in the past.
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to add to what Pathfinder commented...the video changed my opinion on long term staples storage, from buckets and vacuum sealed pouches to vacuum sealing in quart Mason/Ball canning jars with the vacuum sealing attachment to my food saver... the cans fit in their original boxes under my bed...great northern and pinto beans, rice, instant rice, spaghetti, instant mashed potatoes
my short term hurricane supplies were increased just before the widespread panic of the Wuhan flu.... I store 6 and 8 can flats of : Campbells chunky style soups with chunk meat which can be augmented with a little instant rice ...corned beef hash...vienna sausages and baked beans...Dinty Moore stew.... Stagg chili...I have canned tuna, Spam, chicken on hand... I store about 20gal of water in Scepter cans and have a .1 micron Sawyer bucket filter system
the Wendy DeWitt (LDS) film is long but well worth taking a look at... if you have any specific questions please ask... Les
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOLuIApyNPc
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MRE's ? I know there isn't a good crap in a pallet of them.
Never understood why they bothered with the shit paper.
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MRE's are expensive for what you get. You can go to Sam's Club and feed a family of four for a year with off the shelf items for around $1,000 . PM me with your email and I'll send you my spiel and my spreadsheet for Sam's. A person needs 1,400 to 1,500 calories a day to survive and to be able to pick up one foot in front of another.....you can do it for 1,100 to 1,200 and vegetate. Rice, beans, flour are essentials. Rice and beans twice a day and some biscuits in the morning will keep you going....you'll be really sick of it but your starving neighbor will kill you to get it.
I store this in barrels and drop in some dry ice to push out the air which will also kill the bugs if you have any in your flour or whatever. Get a little fancy and add some powdered butter, pancake mix, soy sauce, cayenne pepper, etc. and you can spice things up. I buy #10 cans of freeze dried meats and some veggies/fruits to add to the mix which last 20-25 years. This is the most cost effective way I know of doing things.
If anyone else wants my short story basis for what I do and a copy of the spreadsheet PM me your email address.
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I buy 50 pound bag of steel cut oats from a amish store. That is one month of breakfast for my family. Family of 9. I think it is 15 dollars. We get peter pan peanut butter from sams club. Large container and brown sugar. Mix spoonful of peanut butter and brown sugar and the oatmeal taste like no bake cookies. Beans, rice from sams club. Get food grade buckets from delis in your area. They usually throw them away. Mine sells them to me for way less than the buying on line. Store foods in buckets.
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I buy 50 pound bag of steel cut oats from a amish store. That is one month of breakfast for my family. Family of 9. I think it is 15 dollars. We get peter pan peanut butter from sams club. Large container and brown sugar. Mix spoonful of peanut butter and brown sugar and the oatmeal taste like no bake cookies. Beans, rice from sams club. Get food grade buckets from delis in your area. They usually throw them away. Mine sells them to me for way less than the buying on line. Store foods in buckets.
Exactly.
Rice, beans, oatmeal, grits, sugar, brown sugar, flour, pasta, blueberry pancake mix, salt, sugar, etc. Add peanut butter, powdered butter, canned meats, dried fruits, large container condiments, spices, etc. and you'll do fine for cheap. And it will be taste better than the MRE's.....
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Exactly.
Rice, beans, oatmeal, grits, sugar, brown sugar, flour, pasta, blueberry pancake mix, salt, sugar, etc. Add peanut butter, powdered butter, canned meats, dried fruits, large container condiments, spices, etc. and you'll do fine for cheap. And it will be taste better than the MRE's.....
All good things but a diabetic nightmare! LOL
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All good things but a diabetic nightmare! LOL
I suppose so not having any experience with that.
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I suppose so not having any experience with that.
Carbohydrates are great for a working liver and pancreas...and very active folks.
Not so much for diabetics... I struggle but manage it pretty well. I could be normal if I lost thirty pounds.
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Timothy, I'm working on that now, I've lost about 15, but have about 25 to go.
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Timothy, I'm working on that now, I've lost about 15, but have about 25 to go.
Good for you!
Over two years I’m down from 296 to 274. Really need to get to 230 but it’s tough with my maladies...
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I have put on about 15# since the 1st of the year. I know a big part of that is i am not doing physical labor like i was before. No need for me to eat 3500-4000 calories a day. I cut back to about 2500, but i really need to be closer to 2k. Protion control is hard for me as i love to cook and i at least one meal a day am just cooking for myself. Its really hard to cook for one. For the past week i have been cooking for 2 teenagers plus me and the misses. I swear they have hollow legs.
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Carbohydrates are great for a working liver and pancreas...and very active folks.
Not so much for diabetics... I struggle but manage it pretty well. I could be normal if I lost thirty pounds.
I lost that much when we moved last Summer in the desert heat, (115 F to 120 F). I went from around 228-232 all the way down to 198. So far I've been able to keep it off. This morning I'm at 202.... A bit over one year later. The best thing has been my feet and legs feel a LOT better not having to carry that extra weight around. 232 - 198 = 34 pounds. That's the equivalent of walking around 24/7 with one of those big landscaper backpack power blowers strapped on you all the time.
I've been up to 207, and down to 200. But I seem to stay in that range. As I've gotten older my appetite has gone down, which really helps. Now, one small helping leaves me full. Before I was always eating seconds and thirds. I'm no good at meaningless exercise. Treadmills, stair climbers, and jogging. (I got rid of my treadmill when we moved last year). And gym's don't excite me. Besides, the one gym here in town went out of business from the whole COVID thing.
So I'm hoping this is the weight range that suits my current metabolism. That's the biggest problem. If your metabolism doesn't break food down well enough, it's not going to matter. Because you'll just end up like Oprah. That woman has lost and gained literally hundreds of pounds, with all of her seemingly endless dieting. Her metabolism doesn't allow her to keep it off. Even with a normal diet, she'll gain all of it right back. People like that have to walk around starving all the time, or else the weight goes back on twice as fast as it came off. They are literally on a never ending diet, or else they're overweight.
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Not great for diabetics but beans, rice and corn together will give you a complete protein that none of them has by itself. If you don't eat meat you have to make sure to get "the whole protein package" from a variety of foods. A lot of vegetarians don't get it right and are really unhealthy. Nothing a cheeseburger couldn't help, but "cheese used to have a face", or whatever their reasoning is.
I have a 72 hour freeze-dried food package that's guaranteed to be good for 25 years. After that it will still be edible but will have less and less vitamin content as time goes by. MREs are only good for 10 years IIRC, maybe 20 if stored in ideal conditions but that never happens. That's from the original packing date anyway, and not when you buy them which may be years later if they're real MREs that were sold as surplus. IIRC I bought some that were about 2 years old. And military MREs are sometimes unpacked, examined, and repacked so they'll have more than one date on the case. And they may not all originally be from the same case. The "civilian MREs" I recently read about were really bad. Besides the too small portions, a case with 12 meals has UP TO so many varieties in it, 4 I think. Some people were getting one of one meal, 2 of another and 9 of another, or something like that. I think one guy said his variety was only 2 kinds of meals. Other people if they were lucky got 3 kinds of chili plus sloppy joes or beef barbecue. Real MREs have 12 different meals in a case. If there's one meal in there you really hate, you'll only have one of them, not a half-dozen or so.
Some people refer to MREs as Meal Refusing to Exit and such. I never lived on them long enough to know if they cause constipation or not. I ate C-Rations, MCIs actually but everyone called them C-Rations, and MREs in the army. I don't know how high the calorie content is but one MRE should be enough to live on for a whole day unless you're burning more calories than usual. Sometimes we ate MREs for lunch for 6 weeks at a time, plus ate breakfast and dinner. We weren't working extremely hard in the field but no one got fat eating them. If you ate them for 2 or 3 meals a day they could very well plug you up, I don't know, but one out of 3 meals a day was okay as long as you drank some water now and then. If I drank half a cup of water a day like my mom instead of half a case of bottled water, I don't think I'd $h!t for a week whether I was eating MREs or not. I was in the army before MREs had ration heaters in them so if you were walking around with your MREs for lunch in the winter, you wouldn't want to put them in the cargo pockets of your BDU pants where there fit really well. You were better off putting them inside your coat or your shirt for your body heat to keep them warm. You can eat them cold but body temperature is better than cold, and hot is better yet. After I got out of the army I bought a couple of cases of them for quick, easy meals when camping, but most of the time a can of chili, beef stew, or soup was just fine. All I had to do was heat it on a folding stove with a heat tab. And it's a lot easier to cook it in a pot or canteen cup than it is to cook it in the can.
MCIs, not C-Rations. --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meal,_Combat,_Individual_ration