how's it going guys welcome back to the pilot patriot channel today we're going to be talking
about all the different kinds of survival and emergency food there is out there and what
might be the best for you now when you're talking about emergency or survival food there's really no
one size fits all there's not one type that works for every situation
and we're going to be talking about all the different types of food there are available in
situations where some might be better than others so if that sounds like something you're interested
in make sure you hit that subscribe button down below hit that notification bell and give us
a thumbs up we really appreciate that now your survival food is not something that you're going
to be eating every day most likely is something that you're going to store away for emergencies
so that you'll have it so there are certain things you want to look at before you decide
which type of survival food you want to go with for your specific situation
some of the most important things we're going to look at are shelf life obviously we want something
that's going to last a good long while taste is another one that can be really important now in
an emergency situation it may not matter that much what it tastes like but it's obviously better if
you're storing away something that you actually like and some that you'll actually eat especially
have a family and kids another thing that kind of goes along with taste is going to be varieties
so it is great to have a bunch of rice and beans stocked up but you're not going to want to eat
rice and beans every single day so it's nice to have a wide variety of different meals and
different options so you can kind of mix it up the next is going to be nutrition and calorie count so
when we're talking about emergency we're talking about a situation where you can't just go to your
local grocery store and pick up more food that's the purpose of storing some of this stuff away
so the nutritional value and the calorie counts in these foods are very important because you
need a certain amount of calories to survive so it's not good enough just to have a bunch of
food stocked up if you have to eat 12 different meals just to get one day's worth of calories
and we also need to think about preparation what do you need to prepare this food does
it have to be cooked do you need water do you need a heat source if so how much water is it
going to take to prepare that food and have you made preparations for that as well and of course
cost is another big factor when you're choosing which one of these you want to stock up a bunch of
so let's go through all the different types we have here and we'll kind of hit on those
categories as we talk about each one and make sure you stick around for the end of the video because
i am going to tell you which one of these i think is the best for long-term emergency survival food
now let's first talk about some of the most obvious and some of the easiest to get
obviously canned food is a very popular way to store up food because it's really easy to get you
can get it at any grocery store you can usually pick up cans like this for under a dollar so it's
also very cheap now along these same lines i am going to also include any canning that you do on
your own out of your garden the problem with this type of canned food is it's going to have a much
shorter shelf life than some of the other options we're going to talk about
most of the time these cans are going to have a use by date of somewhere around one to three
years now it is true that most of these are going to last much much longer than the use by date that
you see on the cans in reality a lot of these you can expect more like five years out of but in the
broad scheme of things and compared to some of these other options that is a pretty short period
of time so if you are going to store up something like this it's best to rotate it out regularly the
next is going to be storing up your own staple items in buckets so another really popular way
of putting food away for emergencies especially in the preparedness community is buying items
like rice and beans and flour and stuff like that in bulk and storing away in mylar bags with oxygen
absorbers and putting those in five gallon buckets now this is a great way to do that you can stock
up a whole lot of calories and months worth of food really easy that way and it's also a very
low cost way to do it now rice and these other items that i'm talking about storing that way
are going to last you daggone near forever they're going to have a 30 plus year shelf life as long as
they're stored properly so make sure you keep them in a cool dark place where bugs and rodents and
stuff can't get access to them and i definitely recommend doing that but you're also going to
want to supplement that with some of the other things we're going to talk about so you can get
in some more meats and some more variety and things like that into your preparedness plan
another thing you'll see a lot when you start looking into emergency and survival food is
you'll see things like these emergency food ration bars now these do work but this is the very basic
minimum you would need for survival it's basically just a calorie brick
it's going to be hard it's not going to taste good now these do have a five year shelf life
but with a little more preparation you can do way better than something like this
now one of the most popular types of emergency food is going to be mres most people are going
to be familiar with this type of mre meal kit and what mre means is meals ready to eat they're
going to come pre-packaged in this very sturdy military-style packaging now mres are tested and
proven by the military these things are designed for harsh conditions and long-term storage and
they're designed to be eaten and used in remote survival situations so there's no doubt this is
going to be one of the most popular now you can still get military mres there are companies that
make civilian mres like meal kit supply and i have done a review on this specific mre i'll
put a link to that here at the top of the screen one of the biggest benefits of mres is they don't
really require water to cook now they are going to come with a heater bag and you put a little
bit of water in to heat the food up but that's not necessary you don't have to heat it up to eat it
they're also going to have a lot of variety so most cases the mres are going to come with
like 12 different menu items and inside of each of those is a lot of different things
you'll have your main entree you'll have a side item you'll have a dessert you'll have some type
of cracker and then usually like a peanut butter or spread they even have napkins and utensils and
coffee so this is really just a self-contained survival food kit right here now mres do tend
to be fairly expensive usually going to cost you around 150 bucks for a case of 12 of these
but these can be rationed out you don't have to eat an entire mre for one meal most mres are going
to advertise a shelf life of five to seven years now they could very likely last longer than that
even up to 10 years so these are a great option because they're such a self-contained kit if you
find yourself in an emergency situation where you're on the move and you may not have access
to water or a way to prepare the food things like that that's where an mre is really going to thrive
and that brings us to freeze-dried food now freeze-dried food is the cadillac of
emergency survival food because it's going to last the longest freeze drying also locks in
all the nutrients and the texture and the flavors which is different than dehydrated or canned food
which starts to lose its nutritional value and taste over time now if you've done much looking
into emergency food at all you've probably come across some of these brands here most of the time
you'll find them marketed in some kind of bucket kit which i think is great these buckets are
going to help preserve the food and keep moisture and bugs and rodents from getting into your food
also most of the time they're going to be packaged in these mylar bags with oxygen absorbers so most
of these are going to have a shelf life of up to 25 or 30 years which is amazing freeze-dried
food is really what i prefer because you don't have to worry about it going bad you don't have
to worry about rotating it out like you do with canned food and things like that you can pretty
much just sit it and forget it and leave it until you need it another great thing about these types
of kits is you're often going to get a lot of different variety so these companies like valley
food storage wise and legacy they're going to have a lot of different menu options for example they
might have 12 or 15 different entrees that you can choose from so you're not stuck eating the
same thing every single day now all these are going to require water to prepare i have tested
some of these before and i'll leave links here in the top of the screen these these things are also
pretty affordable if you think about it as price per serving it comes out pretty cheap now let's
look at some of the downsides of these bucket kits now you'll see these marketed as a bucket of 120
entrees or 240 entrees or something like that the problem is each one of those servings is going to
have a pretty low calorie count and pretty small serving sizes so what you'll find a lot of times
is especially for like a grown man you find yourself having to eat two servings
to make up one meal the other downside is most of the time you're not going to see any meat in
these kits i think these bucket kits are a decent option i don't think they're the best option but
we will get to that but another freeze-dried food i like a lot is augason farms now augason farms
they do the same thing that these companies do you can get august and farm buckets with a variety of
different meals and stuff but something augustine farm does that's different is you can also get
their stuff in number 10 cans now there's nothing all that special about a number 10 can it's going
to store just as long as those mylar bags in the buckets but you can get some individual items
to help supplement some of those other meals like this is a can of scrambled egg mix these are going
to be real freeze-dried eggs and this can has 92 servings of scrambled eggs in there so you can use
those freeze-dried powdered eggs to make scrambled eggs or you could use it for baking or things like
that you also see they have a pancake mix you can even get powdered milk that's going to be
pretty important if you have kids and if you want to do any kind of baking or anything like that
so i like augustine farms for that reason because you can get different types of bulk items that you
can use to supplement some of these other meal kits the next type we're going to talk about
is something like mountain house or this kit from nutrient survival now these are freeze dried food
just like the bucket kits we talked about but on average they're going to be much higher quality
so let's look at nutrient first this is kind of a boutique survival food here
you can see you can get it in this really nice hen case really nice looking packaging in these
mylar bags and these are going to be geared a lot more towards the nutritional value of the food
and the taste of the food and things like that the same thing with mountain house now mountain house
is well known for the taste of their food they have really good tasting food most people tend
to think that mountain house is going to have a much better taste than something like your average
bucket food like wise or something like that but the best thing about mountain house is that they
do have meat in their meal so look at this beef stroganoff actually has chunks of beef in it they
have things like chicken alfredo and chili mac and this beef stroganoff and spaghetti that actually
has meat in it and because of that you're going to get better taste you're going to get higher
calorie counts which is really important every calorie count so each one of these servings is
going to usually have a higher calorie count than something like you see in the bucket kits
mountain house also comes in several different packaging options you can get in the number 10
cans they also have bucket kits and in these mylar bags this is called the mountain house
adventure meals this is great to have a portable option to throw in your bag or something like that
if you are stocking up for your home maybe you choose to go with something like the
number 10 cans and mountain house is going to give you that 30 year shelf life on all
their food so it's going to last you a good long time as long as you store it properly
all right guys now for the big question which of these do i think is the best now all these are
mine i bought all these myself so i do see value in all of these different types of options and the
reality is you should really have a combination of several different options but i do have a favor
and i'll tell you that in just a minute now for a survival kit like a bag that i keep in my truck or
something like that i really like something like an mre because it's something that i can eat on
the go it's very durable well packaged and like i said before it doesn't require me to have anything
else i don't need water i don't need a way to cook it i can pop this open and just start eating
and that's what i like about something like that especially for if you're planning to be on the go
i also like to have a large stock of those staple items like rice beans noodles and things like that
so most of the time for that i do buy these in bulk i package them in mylar bags with oxygen
absorbers and drop them in a five gallon bucket and i can just set it and forget it and leave it
for the next 30 years if i wanted to and it would be just fine now that's a great way to stock up
a lot of food for a long period of time quickly and cheaply of course i also do keep extra canned
foods just in my pantry so that i'll have extra in there and i do kind of rotate those out i'll
probably keep more cans than the average person but i don't have a huge pantry full of just
cans i i don't think that's practical which brings me to my favorite my favorite is going
to be mountain house mountain house certainly is not the cheapest but there's a reason for that all
the benefits that the mountain house has including meat in its packages having the several different
packaging options i can use these for if i'm going on a camping trip or put these in a bag or
something like that i can use this very similarly to how i would use an mre but the number 10 cans
is something you could stock up at your house it's going to be a very durable metal can that's going
to keep the bugs and rodents from getting to it these are freeze-dried and sealed and they're
going to last 30 years or more so they're going to have some of the longest shelf life they're going
to have some of the best taste and have some of the highest calorie counts and they include
meat so that's why they're my favorite it's kind of the best of all of these so there you go guys
there's the answer i do kind of a combination of all these things but for the bulk of your food
storage i do think something like mountain house number 10 cans is going to be your best bet let
me know what you guys think in the comment section below i will put links to all of these things in
the description if you want to check them out for yourself i hope this video helped you out
if it did make sure you hit that subscribe button down below hit that notification bell and give us
a thumbs up thanks for watching guys please like share and subscribe and stay prepared
you