Table of Contents |
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Why Do We Need To Survive? | Best Survival Food [LIST & REVIEWS] |
Rearing Animals For Meat | 2nd Category: Make Your Own |
Checklist: What To Look For When Shopping For Survival Food? |
8 Best Survival Food 2023 [Review]
1st Category: Buy your own
The easiest prepper food storage option is purchasing pre-packed advertised best survival food kits from the market. Much like grocery shopping, there are a lot of sites that sells survival meals in various choices.
As stated earlier, the easiest way to build your prepper food storage supply is to get the best survival food kits from the suppliers.
1. Wise Food 5-Day Survival Backpack


- Manufacturer: Wise Company
- Contents good for 5 days (1 pax)
- Contains 32 servings of gourmet meals and 5 water pouches
- Carrying weight : 5.9 pounds
PROS:
- Contains a portable stove and fuel pellets for it, and a deck of cards,
- Some more carrying space for other things (like utensils)
CONS:
- No measuring cups or utensils,
- Requires heating the food
As the name implies, this is a wise choice as addition to a prepper’s food storage supply. It can be easily carried, relatively lightweight and comes in a ready to go backpack bag.
As a short term survival food option, the wise backpack can easily be carried, contains “gourmet” meals, and requires minimal heating for its preparation. A plus if there is limited resources
2. Just in Case… Classic Assortment Bucket


- Manufacturer: Mountain house
- Contents good for 3 and ½ days (1 pax)
- Contains 12 full meals in single serve packs
- Carrying weight : 5.9 pounds
PROS:
- No dishes,
- No need for boiling water,
- Freeze dried to retain flavor, 30 Year Taste Guarantee
30 year shelf life
CONS:
- Still requires warm water to heat food,
- Only have 250 calories per meal
That name has that no-nonsense sound when you hear it but can be a lightbulb moment based on the survival food reviews positive words for this survival meal bucket.
What caught my attention is his use of “over indulging everything.” This, coming from a military guy who knows how survival food should and can be consumed, has stated that he and his family can have be full using one pack for their survival meal. These types of anecdotes can really illustrate the actual and practical use for what should be in the best survival food kits.
3. S.O.S. Rations, 72-hour package

- Manufacturer: S.O.S Food Lab
- Contents good for 5 days
- Contains 3 packs with 9 food bars and 2 millennium bars
- Carrying weight : 1.7 pounds
PROS:
- 400 calories per millennium bar,
- Vacuum-sealed individual pouches
- Plus 4 pouches of purified water
- Ready to eat
- 5 year shelf life
CONS:
- Not really nutritional
- Plastic packaging is thin
Who does not like chewy snack bars as meals? At face value, these can be considered as energy bars for meals, however one amazon reviewer took note of this and said “Remember, these are not a snack, they are emergency rations and are not intended to “taste good” most have no taste at all. They are not food or meal substitutes.”
As a survival food, this is a non-thirst invoking variant and would not cause unnecessary water cravings. At first glance, it really looks like a snack. A quick bite to ease hunger pains but not enough to really be considered a meal. As a survival food, it answers weight and human favor aspects, but as mentioned in some of the personal reviews from amazon, the packaging may pose a risk since it could be torn when bit by ant or mouse.
4. MRE (Meals, Ready to Eat)

- Manufacturer: US Department of Defense
- Contractor with flameless ration heaters
- Subcontracted by :Meal Kit Supply
- Contents include 6 lunch / dinner meals
- Carrying weight : 5.7 pounds
PROS:
- Each 2 course contains a Flameless Ration Heater, 6″ spoon, and napkins
- 600 calories per pack
- The product also offers an electrolyte orange beverage,
- Shelf life of up to 5 years
CONS:
- MRE could be slightly pricier.
MREs are basically the generic name for best survival food kits. It is made by the US government so there is no doubt that it is a survival meal. My concern about sand like taste, a torture if these will be consumed for long periods of time, is amended by the statement from the survival food reviews.
I am a stringent believer of the survival skills of the military and high regard for their endorsed products, thus the con described above is ironically a little price to pay for a quality product. It should be noted that there are other subcontractors that manufactures these MREs but regardless of the manufacturer, I assume that the quality required for these MREs are just as tough as our military men.
5. High Performance 8-Day survival tabs and food supply meals

- Manufacturer: LB1
- Contents good for 8 days (1 pax)
- Contains 96 tablets and includes 12 chewable tablets (24 tablets x 4 pouches) carrying weight : 10 ounces per pouch
PROS:
- Gluten and GMO free
- Wide choice of flavors
- Shelf life of 25 years
CONS:
- Only 20 calories per tablet
- Requires water
Ok. I really have to get my head around such futuristic concept of survival food. These are tablets for meals. This is a concept of food for NASA astronaut levels – because they are tablets. How a meal could be that compact, yet answers to a survival meal is simply amazing.
The one thing I noticed from the survival food reviews for the survival tab is the compact nature of this product as well as the ease of carrying in your bug out bag.
Canned goods
This is a wildcard from all other manufactured survival meals. It is a common knowledge that canned food can be used for survival. Hands down, they are the go-to food of just about anybody for survival. They are easily accessible. Canned food are also familiar to the palette so it would also seem like a comfort food.
Canned goods as survival food in most of the survival food reviews I have read are not tackled in depth. The common nature of the canned goods has rendered it just a mentionable in most of the articles. However little the mention of canned goods are, they are a practical go-to survival food.
With these options for the best survival food kits, I will still go with the MRE for my survival food stockpile. I have read some great reviews for all the prepper food storage kits on the market but it cannot discount the years of trustworthiness and effectiveness attached to the government MREs name. I might also go for the Wise 5-day backpack for the bug out options it has, but I will still put some of the MREs in the backpack.
2nd Category: Make your own
According to several survival food reviews, the best survival food kits are customized to fit the prepper’s requirements. Unlike the commercially available pre-packaged survival meals, Making your own would require more planning than simply opting to buy readily available survival meals.
As clearly stated in this statement, the downside of a pre packed survival food is that it may not be suited to the needs of the buyer. Sure, research can be done but the chance of a similar situation as above happening to a prepper who opted to purchase readily available food kits are high.
Survival food of a person can mean reserved stocks of produce in excess of normal consumption.
An excess of the following can start your short to medium term stockpile:
Best Survival Food Review
1. Raisins, dried fruits and fruit strips.
This is a common trail mix components. High in protein, minerals and nutrients. This is not a hunger-relieving meal but good to have in some of the best survival food kits.
2. Rice and pasta
Making survival meals with rice or pasta dates back to our ancestors. These two provides hefty, energy giving, filling meals. The downside is it requires cooking and water. These two have good shelf lives as well.
3. Frozen meat and Meat Jerky
I believe the survival food reviews meant to have frozen meat in freezer. In areas where temperature drops are not a problem, frozen meat can stay frozen for sometime. Then smoking these meat can double or triple their shelf life. This option can also literally mean making your own survival food through food preservation. One of the best example for this is smoking meat to avoid spoilage and make the meat last longer.
As for the meat jerky, survival food reviews mentioned meat jerky as a great source of protein and can be stored for an extended period of time without worrying about spoilage; it;s a proven survival food.
4. Pasteurized/Powdered milk
Powdered milk has understandable longer shelf life than fresh milk. They are not as tasty as their liquid counterparts but are a good source of calcium and vitamin D. They can also be made into an alternative for formula milk for infants and children. Also, when drizzled over rice or pasta, powdered milk could imitate the taste of cheese.
5. Peanut butter
Peanut butter is packed with protein and energy boosting healthy fats. Normally kept at room temperature, oil can also be derived from peanut butter. It’s shelf life is not to shun at too. Just 2 tablespoons a day of peanut butter can help a person survive a period of limited food intake
6. Honey, salt and vinegar
This three each have multiple uses. Honey is a great morale booster, packed with vitamins and has “antibiotic properties and wound healing”, not to mention it is sweet tasting and have a very dependably long shelf life.
Salt and vinegar adds taste to any food and can also preserve meat and other produce. Food preservation using salt and vinegar has been used by our ancestors for smoked meat and pickle produce.
7. Canned food
Canned foods have been mentioned earlier. Mentioning it again is essential when talking about choosing food for the best survival food kits. Canned meat and fish is a normal food of convenience for most people, so it is normal to have them too in building the survival food stockpile.
8. Energy bars and Chocolate bars
To answer to the human favor factor, there are survival food reviews which mentions having energy and chocolate bars in their prepper food storage systems.
If you have kids, chocolates will keep them hyper but would also mean a sense of normalcy for the days to endure the crisis.
9. Coffee
It came as a surprise to me that coffee would be a prepper food storage suggestion, but as I read through survival food reviews, coffee seems to be a good prepper choice. Coffee can both be food and used as a bartering produce.
10. Alcohol
While this is not the top priority for survival food, there are mentions of certain types of alcohol in some survival food reviews. Alcohol can be a moral booster, a disinfectant and a trading commodity.
The familiarity of the food will not be a shock to the body the same way as a drastic survival food diet may have. However, long-term food supply would require not only knowledge in prolonging the reliability of the survival food stockpile by
3rd Category: Grow your own
If a crisis extends into an indefinite amount of time, it is necessary that you can also sustain or replenish your survival food supply. In this category, food is cultivated instead of preserved. By growing your own food you can build the best survival food kit for you and your family.
In one of the survival food reviews by National Geographic for the TV series Doomsday Preppers, it is smartly suggested that “preppers must plan carefully how to maintain their food supply and fill their nutritional needs in the event that chaos erupts”.
In this category, nature is involved. Hunting, gathering and gardening required natural earth elements and the skill of the prepper in cultivating his produce. Off-grid and outback living are on the rise nowadays. People are going back to the basics of life and learning to adapt again to his environment
Hunting and foraging.
Hunting requires some tools and skills, but if nature has given us source for provision, we could use this to survive, much like what our ancestors did.
Hunting may take a lot of energy to accomplish and be fruitful but this skill will enable having a source of survival food that is both fresh and nutritious. Some can be eaten raw while some should be cooked and can also be smoked for preservation. Bird eggs can substitute for farm eggs and can also be used to start raising poultry for meat.
Foraging, much like hunting, requires certain skills. You should know which types of plant are edible, and which can cause more harm than good. But as said earlier, plants are more accessible, if you know where and what to look for.
These survival methods can be used in areas where natural resources are available. The good thing about hunting and foraging, you not only look for survival food, but you can also look for and build your survival needs.
Gardening
A simple way to start growing your food is backyard gardening. Typically, gardening requires patches of land to grow produce but modern ways of growing food has provided us with more efficient methods of gardening. Gardening is a perfect off-grid survival food system.
Much like hunting and foraging, gardening is dependent in natural resources like soil and water. Climate can also be a factor when growing food. Other factors like seeds, time, pest and theft threats and overall growth of plants are also a gamble. The good thing about gardening is, once it is set up and has started producing food, it could sustain producing healthy survival food for a family.
Rearing Animals for meat
Farms have given us a great example of for one of the best survival food kits. The most common animals to easily raise for survival are rabbits and chickens as a source of meat and eggs. Rabbit meat is a good source of protein and clothing, they are easy to breed and does not require much care. Chickens provide fresh eggs and meat. They can easily be raised since they are small and can be kept in a coop.
“Eat to live, don’t live to eat.”
(–Benjamin Franklin)
Everything is modernize now, science has given us a lot of options to store and preserve food, but some of this also uses the same daily conveniences we are enjoying. If we were thrown back to the time of our ancestors, or even marooned in an uninhabited place, will we be able to find survival food much less concoct survival meals as our ancestors did? We may have the resources, but are sadly, less resourceful as they were.
Don’t know where to start? Want to have a higher chance of survival, follow mikesgearreviews.com for tips and ideas and get ahead of the game. Our options for the best survival food kits are more diverse than our ancestors. Our main goal is to survive, not only relying on food but the hard life as well. We can cover survival food, but we also need to champion other areas of survival.
Survival food: The basics
From the moment you are conceived, you need sustenance to go on. Food is our source of energy to do our deeds and continue living.
Imagine how happy can you be with a well stocked fridge and pantry, then imagine when all this is lost. How hangry would you be when you get home after a full day and there is no food? There are ways to remedy this, it would be wise to have survival food available.
Whether it be a small bar of chocolate for that immediate boost of energy to finish your day, a bag of trail mix for your hike, or the packets of survival food that would get you and your family through just about anything. Primarily, it would be wise to have food set aside for you and your family’s survival
Any article focusing on food will always have purpose. This one is based on reality of living and surviving.
Best Survival Food Review
Earlier, the term hangry is used. A coined term for being angry because you are hungry. According to oxford dictionary, hangry is defined as:
hangry
Adjective / informal
Bad-tempered or irritable as a result of hunger.
‘I get very hangry if I miss a meal’
Origin
1990s: blend of hungry and angry.
Pronunciation
hangry/ˈhaŋɡri/
Food keeps us alive. It is one of the requirements of our body. Imagine living without air… without being able to rest… without food. Hunger is a prime need of any living thing. Hunger makes the body weak.
Hunger makes you lose spirit.
If you have never felt hunger before, I would have to ask, how did that happen? Even the most gifted of us all have felt hunger, albeit in different levels. Not only does lack of food affect the body, it can also create a very noticeable impact in our state of being and emotions.
In the event of an unusual situation, the primal thought of survival kicks in immediately. One of the foremost consideration to look for is survival food. Why else would people look for and hoard food the instant they feel threatened.
Historically, people have been storing food well before groceries and refrigerators were available. We could safely say that they have started the prepper food storage concept.
There are well known ways to provide survival meals for the winter, for travel, for communal consumption, and many other reasons. There are accounts of travelers and merchants foraging just about anything for survival food and making them last without spoilage.
Eskimos have stored meat and fat caught during hunting season to last through winter. There are a number of ways food was taken care of by the generations before us that made civilization possible.
Best Survival Food Review
Why do we need to survive?
The question is, why not. It is an innate need of a person to survive. This is the same philosophy that is behind businesses and crime. Commodities store like groceries, wet and dry markets and specialty stores live off the importance of food. Crime, lives off the same need. So when all hell breaks loose, how do we get food to get through the chaos?
Survival food reviews have listed several long term survival food options. Some of which are readily available just about anywhere and are already part of our daily meals. While other reviews mention several choices of full survival meals specially packaged and prepared for long term prepper food storage systems. With the barrage of information available in the internet, let us start off with some basic things to consider when building a prepper food storage supply.
The checklist:
Best Survival Food Review
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Shelf life / Extending shelf life
Shelf life is the average length of time a produce can be kept in storage for consumption without the product going stale or unfit for consumption. This is an understandable priority from survival food reviews. If you are on the market for survival food, the length of time the produce can be stored and used is essential.
A fully stocked average sized pantry and fridge can last a couple of weeks for a family of four. This is equivalent to maybe a hurricane or snowstorm with minimal power outages and water shortage. This might just be a leisurely camp-in for the family. But if it turns to worse with catastrophic proportions? We now turn to our survival food supply to sustain our family.
This statement from one of the survival food reviews ring true. Since there is no particular way to predict when you will specifically need the long term prepper food storage supply, it is a logical option to reduce maintenance and cost of storage for your survival food and read survival food reviews.
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Nutritional value
As stated earlier, food fuels our body. In the context of survival food, we need to prepare our food to provide enough calories and answer our nutrient requirements. This is an important consideration especially for families with young kids and those with specific medical and nutritional needs.
There may be other struggles that you will face in an actual emergency, survival food is needed to to keep you relatively healthy in the long term. This will decrease the chances of trauma and other health issues to address as well.
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Weight of the supply
The most common prepper food storage locations are at a prepper’s dwelling. Easily accessible to him and his family. This is actually a logical thought followed by many. When an advise for typhoons and hurricanes are issued, most people stay cocooned in their own houses for the duration of the disturbance. However, there may be emergencies that will force a family to leave their homes and evacuate or look for a much safer place.
In this scenario, being able to carry ample survival food in your pack for you and your family is essential. Some preppers have already came up with some of the best survival food kits to carry with them in case they have to move to another location.
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Preparation
When you are on survival mode, you have limited resources at your disposal. This includes heating and cooling conveniences. One of the most mentioned factors to consider in building your survival food system is how the survival meals will be prepared.
In this scenario, food that can be prepared with minimal preparation requirements for heating or cooling factors can save valuable resources. Many of the best survival food kits available for sale in the market can answer to this factor. Some may be prepared in just one pot with minimal water. Some may even be packed in their own preservation and cooking container ready for a fast-food type survival meals.
This is actually a normal consideration. People tend to look for the fastest, easiest way of preparing meals. This is why having ready-to-eat options should are in some of the best survival food kits mentioned by commodities and survival food reviews website.
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Human favor
A surprisingly indulging factor mentioned by some survival food reviews points to how the food can imitate a normal life scenario. I had the notion that survival food would compose of entirely tasteless, sand-like, gooey oatmeal like rations. I was mildly surprised that there is actually a mention of a cookbook for preparing survival meals, but then again, preppers are futuristic yet practical thinkers.
“In my book, The Prepper’s Cookbook: 300 Recipes to Turn Your Emergency Food into Nutritious, Delicious, Life-Saving Meals, I use the following essential food staples as the basis for the recipes.”
In this statement made by Tess Pennington, she went beyond what other survival food reviews mentions of items to stockpile for a crisis and made suggestions on how to whip up “nutritious, delicious, life-saving” survival meals using a number of items that can be found in the pantry.
Another mention related to human favor is “food fatigue“.
Simply put, this is being tired of the same set of food. A regular prepper food storage usually contains bulk supply of one type of food that will be the survival meal of the whole family. The problem with this is that repetitive set of meals can be tiring to the consumer, even if it is in the form of survival food.
Kids’ food palate is easily tired, unless it’s the common favorite sweets. A little sense of normalcy can really give a boost to the morale of a person; adults and kids alike.
A very important point to note before we go on is that we will only tackle the food component of a survival food kit. A must have for all prepper food storage stockpile is water. Clean drinking water is, hands down, a necessity. Stocking up on water should be first and foremost. The best survival food kits should all contain water. Having a way to purify or clean non-potable water is also essential for anyone’s survival.
There are several ways to build your own survival food stash. Some of the suggestions I found helpful from survival food reviews. Below are some of the best survival food kits with positive mentions from survival food reviews. I have learned a lot of ways to build that all-important survival food stockpile. Some of the options with that can easily be purchased to start the best survival food kits.
As a base requirement, we will focus on the best survival food kits for short term emergencies.