GBHB Emergency Food

[Scout2Diesel]

I'm thinking along the same lines as TheChief... Things that I like to eat snack/on and rotate it out in 6 months automatically by enjoying some of it now and then. So I have stuff in the trunk like 1-2 gallons drinking water, dehydrated soup, pre cooked pasta and sauce bags. Under the seats peanuts, almonds, jerky candies and some iradiated dinners with the plastic peel off.


Tonight I'm working late so. I had TJ's Pad Thai Noodles & Sauce... out of the car.

[Fot]

I go with Rice witha few pieces of beef jerky and some beef bullion powder..

[Got Stuff?]

I keep the mainstay/sos bars. Keep pretty good in harsh conditions. Keep even better in cool dry place.

[BASSTUB]

I put a bunch of trail mix, cliff bars, and a bag of jerky in mine. Are the trail mix and cliff bars ok?? No one mentioned them...

[wjc]

I keep Mayday food rations as well as Mayday water packs in my truck, bags, etc.

[TheChief]

Here is a copy of a post from the BOB thread I wrote, regarding the food in my INCH bag. Keep in mind, this setup was for a different class of prep. However, you can still pull relevent info to this thread from it.



Below is what I have put together in my pack after a lot of thought and research. Let me know what you have come up with.

Considerations for my selection

1. How much for how long - I am packing for my Wife, my Daughter who is under 5, and myself. I am packing for four days of food at 2500 calories with lots of protein and other vital nutrients (2.5 people at 2500 calories a day for 4 days = 25,000 calories).

2. On the Go – This food should require no cooking as I may not want to have a fire or it may need to be eaten while on foot.

3. Shelf Stable - This food should keep in the BOB for at least a year so as to lessen the need to constantly rotate and suffer food poisoning should I forget once a month.

My plan is to not eat for the first 36 hours to allow the body to start to enter starvation mode. The reasoning for this is we eat too much and a lot of nutrients are lost down the toilet. If you continue eating in your normal pattern your body will continue to assume its normal gluttony of food and not pull every last calorie, gram of fat and protein, or other important component out as it will expect another load of food within a few hours. Don’t eat for a bit and your body changes gears pretty quickly.

I went for light weight, high protein, high calorie foods. I could not find anything on what the focus should be when planning to eat in such a scenario. I ended up building a matrix of foods I was previously planning to take that included MREs, dehydrated foods, PayDay candy bars, tuna in pouches, beef jerky, Datrex/Mainstay bricks, meal replacement bars, etc., and found that if you create an index where you compare weight to protein or weight to calories, you quickly find out MREs among other things weight a lot for their nutritional value. In fact, they were the worst of many of the foods I looked at. I was an Army Ranger (2/75th, B Co, Weapons) and lived for MREs so I was very shocked by this. I did a bit of research on this before making the call!

I have well on a month’s worth of dehydrated food pouches for my camping exploits. These would have been a great solution at one week’s worth of food, for one person, weighing in at only 7.5 pounds. However, they all needed to be rehydrated using boiling water. This requires a fire or a stove, plus preparation time, plus cleanup of utensils and cookware. Too much time, too much mess, too much fire or fuel.

So given everything above, I choose a mix of peanut butter, Datrex bricks, beef jerky, hard candy, gum and enriched drink powders(not included below), vitamins and minerals. The list below shows the highest concentration of calories and protein in the least amount of weight.

You can see the numbers below:




The indexes are fairly easy, divide the weight by the calories or protein to come up with the index value. The higher the index number the more dense that item is per pound.

Summary
This provides for four days of on the go, no prep food, at 2500 calories for my Wife and I, and 1250 calories for my Daughter. It is tasty and will last in a BOB for two years before needing to replace the peanut butter and beef jerky which will cost less than $20. The Datrex bricks are good for five years and run around $7 each plus shipping. The total weight is just shy of eleven pounds. Also, the jerky and candy can be put in a baggie and thrown in your cargo pocket to chew on while walking. You can save the peanut butter and Datrex bricks for the morning and evening meals.

Let me here your comments, suggestions, and what your plans for food are. Please no comments about taking mine…you’re not the only one armed and with knowledge or will to use them

Below are pictures of the food. Even though I don’t want to cook, I also included a 1.1 liter light weight pot (from the GSI Pinnacle Dualist set), lid, and utensils (light my fire spork and Snowpeak titanium spork and chopsticks combo). The pot would be for stews and broths. I plan to add a container of bouillon cubes to help flavor any wild plants, fish, critters, etc., I happen to throw in the pot. Did you notice the book in the picture, a must have and worth the weight!



I am looking for something to cook fish and woodland critters on but skillets are heavy, any suggestions? In the meantime its squirrel on a stick or fish on a rock but I would like something better.

[welchy]

The Mayday bars taste gross. Are the other brands better?

[Got Stuff?]

The Mayday bars taste gross. Are the other brands better?

They all seem pretty comparable to me. Sometimes I'll give out free samples whenever we're out setting up our booth and people are often quite iffy at first. After they taste them, not so bad. I don't mind them myself and if the kids will eat them....huge bonus lol.

[ExAcHog]

I keep several bags of Bear Creek Soup mix. (Their Chili is my fav). They each take 7 or 8 cups of water, no problem with my First Need filter, and they make a HUGE portion. Even after a days hike my wife and I together cant finish one bag. I also add a can of Costco Canned chicken or beef to it and then it is a large dinner for three.

[Lucky Scott]

I have a big bag of Jerky, a whole bunch of grainola bars, and some trail mix. Every 6 or 8 months I pull them out and replace with fresh, and then I eat the old stuff.
Always tastes just fine, even if I forget and let it go a year or so.