Survival Foods – 3 Options You Have to Prepare For Emergency
By Charles ONeill

In times of distress, natural disaster or even terrorist attacks, survival foods are one of the most important things to have on hand.

Having enough food to eat will help you and your family survive most emergency situations. Survival foods can also help you in case of a job loss or in the case of an illness or pandemic where you don’t want to leave your home.

Most people today are taking steps to make sure they have a supply of survival foods on hand. What are your options? Here are 3 different types of survival food to consider with advantages and disadvantages of each:

#1 Can or Preserve your Own Food

If you are the Martha Stewart type, have hours of free time, or have nothing better to do on the weekend, then canning or preserving your own food might be for you.

The advantage to this option is that you can choose what kinds of foods to have on hand and preferably choose something you’d actually enjoy eating. You might also save a bit of money doing it this way as well.

The disadvantage is of course time. If you’re like most people, you don’t have much free time after work and the thought of preserving food all weekend doesn’t excite you.

Plus you have to be aware of the shelf life of this food – probably around 1 – 2 years at best. So you’ll have to make sure you eat your preserved food and add in some more newer foods as time goes by.

#2 Dehydrated Foods

You can dehydrate your own foods with a food dehydrator. This option gives you a little more variety and again, you get to choose foods that you like to eat.

Many of the higher end food dehydrators have timers so you can “set and forget”, which make things a little easier. I consider dehydrated foods more of a short term food storage item, as you should (according to some sources) consume them within 1 year of making them.

Experts also recommend that any dehydrated meats be placed in a freezer to help them from spoiling.

You may also need to place your newly dehydrated foods in the freezer right after dehydration for a few days to help reduce the possibility of insect contamination.

Again the two issues you may have with dehydrating food is preparation time – which can be long, and shelf life – which can be quite short.

#3 Freeze Dried Foods

You can also buy prepackaged freeze dried food that is easy to stack and store.

Freeze dried meals that are easy to prepare are one of your best options for survival foods. Most meals only require you to add water – which in an emergency situation might be all you have.

Plus in a true emergency if you have young children, the simpler the meal is to make, the better. You can ask them to help (this will also keep them distracted from the problems outside).

And contrary to how the name sounds freeze dried foods can taste remarkably good. Some companies have made their freeze dried foods almost to gourmet levels.

For example you can get Chicken a la King, Italian wedding soup with meatballs, vegetable stew with beef, and even blueberry pancakes.

Plus unlike the two options above, some freeze dried survival foods have a shelf life of 25+ years (depending on storage temperature). So as a long term food storage option they fit the bill.

Basically all you do is store them in a cool dry spot, and inspect them on a regular basis.

So those are 3 options for having survival foods on hand in case of emergency. No matter how you choose to prepare yourself, it’s important that you do take some steps to have food on hand should you be stranded in your home and/or unable to find food.

Being properly prepared can mean the difference between barely surviving and thriving should the worst happen.

Want more options? See Survival Foods for more suggestions and tips on emergency preparedness.

Or visit Food Insurance for freeze dried foods with a 25 year shelf life.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Charles_ONeill

http://EzineArticles.com/?Survival-Foods—3-Options-You-Have-to-Prepare-For-Emergency&id=4229580

It is of life importance to be prepared.

I would like you to take time to watch these 3 videos .

 

As these videos state the main problems are ,
WATER
FOOD
SHELTER

PREPARE NOW , WHILE YOU CAN

Being prepared saves lives.

Please i am not an alarmist but to prepare is a way to avoid problems and save lives, in the event of a great crisis, the worst of all problems is drinking water.
Water is the most precious thing on this planet

love to all , nicolo

Survival Food Shortage

There has been a recent shift in the food storage industry that has created a noticeable rise in demand. If you take a minute and observe some of the shipping and estimated delivery times on long term food storage, you’ll notice a much longer than expected wait time for food. Below I’ve outlined the type of statements being made in regards to shipping emergency food storage and pay attention to some of these lead times.

• Expect 3 – 4 weeks before before product ships.

 

• Demand for freeze dried food has increased and delivery now is at 6-8 weeks so don’t wait, order now. Also, we see this demand only increasing. As soon as you get your order in the sooner you will get the product.
• Extremely high industry demand and not enough supply has pushed shipping our products out to 11-12 weeks.

These are just a few statements that I’ve re-worded but are intended to illustrate the growing demand for survival food. The actual shipping times are real shipping times. The soonest I could find in the marketplace was 3-4 weeks. The largest manufacturer in the space has told consumers visiting their website that they can’t ship their product to the consumer because they are working on keeping up with the demand from their distributors. So with this particular manufacturer they aren’t even shipping product directly to the consumer.

Recent events most likely are drivers behind the rush for emergency food storage but people are also starting to realize the importance of this precious commodity. All in all, things don’t seem to be getting better in regards to the survival food supply. I followed one company’s website that was shipping within a week. A couple weeks later this grew to two weeks, stating that shipping times were going to get better. Today they are shipping at 8 weeks. Some companies have gone from 2 months to 6 months and even more extreme to no longer shipping their product directly to the consumer.

Another factor outside of the recent events is that this type of long term food storage has gotten much better tasting. Some people are using this survival food as a regular part of their meal plan. It’s a quick and easy way to make breakfast or dinner. Additionally I noticed a handful of these companies are also providing monthly shipping options where you can take a chunk of food storage a month at a time. This is a plan that has been designed for the budget minded individual still looking at ways to build his or her food storage. Basically you can pick the type of food you’d like to build up on and every month a new order will be placed and shipped to your door.

So what does this mean to me? If you are planning on buying emergency food storage or are interested and are discouraged by the wait times, keep in mind that most of these companies are still shipping product. And even if the wait times are longer, product is still shipping. From what I could gather in the marketplace, the sentiment is that it won’t be changing anytime soon. Something that is consistent across the different food storage companies is that when you order, you get your place in line. This just means if they are saying 6 weeks and you decide to order then it will be 6 weeks even if shipping gets worse in weeks to come.

The shift in the industry serves as a good reminder of the delicate balance of supply and demand. There is no reason to wait if you are planning on purchasing survival food. All indicators show the supply shortage could last a while. Ultimately, purchasing your long term food storage is more important than trying to wait for shipping times to improve.

Be sure to check out http://www.survivalistfood.com for all your survival food and long term food storage needs.

Author: Chris Haven
Article Source: EzineArticles.com