Best places to buy tasty storable food for best price (wheat, grain)
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I'm sort of getting started on this and deciding where to buy storable food can be a little overwhelming after browsing several sites online. I want something that I'll actually want to eat and for a good price. I plan to buy long shelf life food from the grocery store but thought it would be a good idea to order food online from somewhere like efoodsdirect. I'd also like to try to avoid buying a lot of "survival" food that isn't very healthy. I've seen that Costco sells food and the price seems reasonable but the salt content is questionable.
Whenever I buy my storage food, I compare prices on several different pages. It takes longer, but I put up beprepared.com, waltonfeed, etc, and see who has what for less.
I don't spend money on the 'mixed' packages or food; I don't buy cans of dehydrated beef stroganoff, for example, because I have my own beef-on-the-hoof and making noodles is simple - a little flour, an egg, salt, and cut and dry. Most 'whole menu' items are overprocessed; they have to be to last that long, and I prefer my own recipes - like you, many of the premixed dehydrated items have too much salt as well as other preservatives for me. I also don't buy the 'sale' groupings of canned dehydrated vegetables - why spend money on a whole can of dehydrated peppers if DH doesn't eat them? I butcher and pressure-can my own chicken and can my own chili, so I don't need to buy theirs.
See what you can make and produce for yourself, and if there are some things that you can't make or grow where you are - buy accordingly. Usually the best prices and most available whole food items are about a month after harvest; supplies dwindle thru the winter and spring.
Wilson, DH grew up eating MREs (his dad was a Marine supply sergeant) and he won't have 'em in the house! LOL
MREs are really expensive. They are extremely high calorie. A lot of people have problems eating them as they have no fiber.
I can buy them on-base, any servicemember can get them on-base. However I do not buy them.
We grow most of our food. We can some of it, we pickle some, freeze some, salt-corn some, and dehydrate some of it.
I suggest that you consider buying whole grain in bulk. Whole grains can be a very inexpensive health food. Grain can be stored for decades; if kept cool, dry and dark.
Bread is easy to make, and is generally good for you. I make sourdough bread about once/week.
If you get into making soups/stews, a grain added into a stew can extend your other foods a great deal, and can make your stew very filling.
I am able to buy whole oats for $3 - $5 for 50-pounds. Barley goes for $6 - $8. Corn $8 - $9.
I suggest that you consider buying whole grain in bulk. Whole grains can be a very inexpensive health food. Grain can be stored for decades; if kept cool, dry and dark.
Bread is easy to make, and is generally good for you. I make sourdough bread about once/week.
This is a great suggestion. Grains have been so popular throughout history because they store much easier and longer than most other foods, and with a lot less work. They have a built-in preservation mechanism.
Problem is (and yes, bread is pretty easy to make) in our society, lots of folks know their "high-tech" crap pretty well, but they have no basic skills. Baking bread is as foreign to them as calculus is to a four-year-old. As I stated in another thread, giving most folks these days a bucket of wheat would be about like giving them a bucket of gravel--it would be of about the same value to them. Now, if we could get the handy-dandy smartphone to bake a loaf of bread...
MREs are really expensive. They are extremely high calorie. A lot of people have problems eating them as they have no fiber.
I can buy them on-base, any servicemember can get them on-base. However I do not buy them.
We grow most of our food. We can some of it, we pickle some, freeze some, salt-corn some, and dehydrate some of it.
I suggest that you consider buying whole grain in bulk. Whole grains can be a very inexpensive health food. Grain can be stored for decades; if kept cool, dry and dark.
Bread is easy to make, and is generally good for you. I make sourdough bread about once/week.
If you get into making soups/stews, a grain added into a stew can extend your other foods a great deal, and can make your stew very filling.
I am able to buy whole oats for $3 - $5 for 50-pounds. Barley goes for $6 - $8. Corn $8 - $9.
Of course, most everything you say about MRE's is wrong. As stored emergency food, nothing is better, they have plenty of fiber and calories are an advantage, not disadvantage, unless one is eating for recreation as opposed to survival.
As for your suggestions, pickled anything is bad as having virtually no nutrition but sky high sodium content.
Dehydrated food is great for a snack, nothing else.
Grains are very difficult to convert to nutritous foods, both in energy and other ingredients. Making bread may be good for the soul, but not for the body. Almost useless in a survival plan. Only beans and rice are a good dry food supply and they take a whole lot of water and energy to make them even edible.
A month of nutritious food can be stored for a decade as two cases of MRE's.
They are far better than what was available in Desert Storm. As for cost, a $7 MRE will provide survival level nutrition for a sedentary person for two days. Since one needs about 700-1000 calories per day for survival, how many pounds of beans, rice and dehydrated fruit would one have to eat?
Last edited by Wilson513; 02-26-2012 at 11:23 AM..
This is a great suggestion. Grains have been so popular throughout history because they store much easier and longer than most other foods, and with a lot less work. They have a built-in preservation mechanism.
Problem is (and yes, bread is pretty easy to make) in our society, lots of folks know their "high-tech" crap pretty well, but they have no basic skills. Baking bread is as foreign to them as calculus is to a four-year-old. As I stated in another thread, giving most folks these days a bucket of wheat would be about like giving them a bucket of gravel--it would be of about the same value to them. Now, if we could get the handy-dandy smartphone to bake a loaf of bread...
Yes, you are right.
A lot of people today do not know how to cook.
For about 8 months I worked as a vendor-stocker in the grocery store.
During that period of time the store did a 'reset' [The interior layout of the store was moved around]. Included in the 'reset' the frozen foods section expanded to about 40% of the square footage of the store. One of the corporate suits who came up to over-see the reset said that the next reset was already being drawn up. It will expand the frozen section to over 60% of the store square footage. They said that in their surveys and watching sells that most households do not cook. Society as a whole is moving away from cooking. So they want to encourage the fast-food ready-to-eat paradigm.
I see threads about frugal eating and it is interesting to hear people complain about how much it costs for them to feed their families. Very few people today have large families, so they are only feeding 2 - 3 people. I suspect the real problem lies in them buying mass-manufactured food-like meals. Which is also a source of the obesity, diabetes, high BP and cholesterol problems we are seeing in our society.
Of course, most everything you say about MRE's is wrong. As stored emergency food, nothing is better, they have plenty of fiber and calories are an advantage, not disadvantage, unless one is eating for recreation as opposed to survival.
Constipated much?
Now wait, that could be taken as an insult. It is not meant as such. People eating MREs routinely have problems from the lack of fiber.
If you are wearing over 100 pounds of battle-rattle and covering a lot of ground, then sure you may need 3,500 calories. Most of us don't.
Grains are very difficult to convert to nutritous foods, ...
I believe some homework is in order. Grains ARE nutritious foods. They don't need to be converted into anything.
And hadn't you heard? Breads are good for you again (except in the eyes of the anti-gluten crowd). Pop-Nutrition has found a new food devil. The crusade against bread ended around five years ago.
For about 8 months I worked as a vendor-stocker in the grocery store.
During that period of time the store did a 'reset' [The interior layout of the store was moved around]. Included in the 'reset' the frozen foods section expanded to about 40% of the square footage of the store. One of the corporate suits who came up to over-see the reset said that the next reset was already being drawn up. It will expand the frozen section to over 60% of the store square footage. They said that in their surveys and watching sells that most households do not cook. Society as a whole is moving away from cooking. So they want to encourage the fast-food ready-to-eat paradigm.
I see threads about frugal eating and it is interesting to hear people complain about how much it costs for them to feed their families. Very few people today have large families, so they are only feeding 2 - 3 people. I suspect the real problem lies in them buying mass-manufactured food-like meals. Which is also a source of the obesity, diabetes, high BP and cholesterol problems we are seeing in our society.
Words of wisdom here.
That has definitely happened the last few years here at grocery stores as well. I see this trend at food storage manufacturers as well. There are tons of freeze-dried "meals" these days, in addition the MRE type stuff, at the storage foods websites. I think a small stash of this sort of thing is fine, but for me, almost all of my stored food is composed of staple ingredients: wheat, beans, rice, sugar, baking powder, salt, powdered milk, corn, etc. My eating requirements and tastes are not really that particular; a bowl of oatmeal or baked potato or slice of bread or serving of chard sounds just as appealing to me as a gourmet meal. I've been studying (and practicing with) edible wild plants as well. Then of course, there is hunting and fishing. The argument that you may have no way to cook these staple foods is really illogical. That's the way it's traditionally been done since the dawn of man. There were no MRE's or freeze-dried foods for most all of our history. As long as you have the means to build a fire, you have the means to cook (practice some open hearth cooking if you need to). If you don't have the means to build a fire, you won't live for long anyway in much of the US during the winter.
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