Canned Food Groups for Survival Storage
June 26, 2011, Submitted by: Ken Tweet
In addition to your consideration of our sponsors who offer excellent food supplies for long term storage, if you are stocking up your food pantry to withstand a period of ‘down time’ just in case you cannot get to the grocery store for awhile, or worse, for a disruption or collapse in the food supply distribution chain, consider adding some basic grocery-store canned foods from the following categories.
Keep in mind that when considering which canned foods to stock up on, you should be considering calories as well as a balance of food types. You should look for canned foods with a decent amount of calories while attempting to balance protein, vegetables, grains, and fruit. Note that some canned foods contain very few calories, which although great for a healthy diet, they may not bring you the best bang for your buck (survival preparedness is not necessarily ‘weight-watchers’…).
Canned Soups
Vegetables, veggies with meat, with grains, look for higher calorie soups.
Canned Meats
I know that Costco sells canned chicken and beef for example… there is quite a variety of canned meat sauces too, plus canned ham, etc…
Canned Tuna and/or Salmon
Even with the Mercury risk, once or twice a week consumption OK according to many reports.
Canned Stews
These usually have lots of calories and quite a variety of mixtures with vegetables.
Canned Beans
Brown rather than green will typically contain more calories.
Canned Pasta
With sauce – meat sauce – Ravioli, etc…
Canned Vegetables
Although somewhat low in calories, corn, carrots, etc… will offer a variety of flavor to add with your other foods.
Canned Fruits
For the sweet tooth, a good desert, and a healthy supplement to your diet.
Also, for optimum food rotation efficiency, it is always best to purchase what you normally eat, so that you will consume through your food storage over time, while replacing it with more of what you normally eat. This way, there would theoretically be no spoilage over time.
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Kind of a rule of thumb is to take how much of your favorite food is to consider 2 cans per person x how many days you want to prepare for. Family of 4 that wants to survive solely on canned food for 90 days, 2x4x90= 720 cans of food for 3 months. You can also ration a bit and maybe get by on 1 and 1/2 cans of food per day. 1.5x4x90= 540 cans of food for 90 days. If you supplement the canned food with other food then maybe one can per person per day. Buy food that you like to eat or you will not be likely to rotate the older food.
If considering solely on the canned food for ‘day count’, then consider the calories per can. It varies widely between things like beef stew (which has lots) to vegetables and some soups (which have few). You may be surprised how many cans you need per day to provide you with say, 1,500 calories (or more). Of course, supplementing with other foods will get you there too. Point is, when counting days… count the calories.
@ Ken. You are correct about calories, this is quite necessary. You are right that you could probably get by with 1500 calories. I was just trying to give people a ball park figure to work with, add the calorie count also. I like this how someone like myself has a formula and someone like yourself adds to this and I and others learn from it, this is what this site is all about, learning.
Agreed…
(Example: A 14.5 oz. can of green beans has about 100 calories, a 14.5 oz. can of Spaghettios has about 350 calories, and a 24 oz. can of Beef Stew has about 650 calories)
That’s a good algorithm…and I agree with the ration statement. I mean, you don’t have to eat a “full steak’s” worth of meat every day for 90 days. If you gave me 4 to 6 ounces of meat, some rice, some beans, and maybe a vegetable or some other side…that should go a long way to making for a comfortable diet. So, a family of 4 should be able to use 1 can a day if they eat the meat sparingly. And again, throw some extra beans on your plate for some cheap protein. And then on the following day, try to eat something simpler/lighter…no meat. Then on the third day…open another jar. Wash, rinse, repeat. That way you can stretch 720 cans even further.
I know “we” have a healthy appetite here in America and we love to have a full plate of food and eat what we want and throw away the rest, but in a bind – you gotta scale back a little. Yes, you’ll probably lose a few pounds in the process…but that’s probably not a bad thing for 60% of Americans.
Slightly off topic, but to do with the fish. Since canned has issues with Mercury and salmon will shortly have issues with glowing in the dark (sorry, can’t help myself some times). we started canning trout about a decade ago.
People who like to fish and are fishing in clean waters, can can rainbow trout and lake trout. The result tastes very much like having canned salmon. For a bit of a change you can add one drop of liquid smoke to each jar before you put them in the water bath to process. With this we know exactly what we are getting and of course we rotate it just like you would the store bought mystery fish.
I hope I’m not stepping on any sponsor’s “toes” by saying this, but you can certainly can chicken at home with a pressure cooker. It’s quite easy and the chicken tastes great! Some of the stuff you find in stores, or order online has quite a bit of sodium in it. I’m not an expert…but I believe the sodium is just one way of insuring that it’s edible. Nobody wants a lawsuit on their hands for making someone sick…and sodium is a sure-fire way to preserve meat. However, it detracts from the taste.
With a little research, and effort on your part – you will be able to can chicken at home, and store it safely for years to come. It costs less than the stuff online or in-stores and you can take advantage of sales at the grocery store to stock up!
Hope this helps!
Matt you are right about canning chicken. My wife and I can our laying hens when they are ready to be rotated out. Even old chickens turn out great when they are canned. Makes for a quick, tasty meal on those days when you have little time to cook and they are great to take when you are camping.
We also can venison and moose meat, meat sauce to use for spaghetti and lasagna, etc. There is a lot of different things you can do with a bit of research.
Still, there are many who do not feel comfortable canning food and it is nice to have these big companies turning out such a broad selection.
Great suggestion regarding canning your own meat. Many people are afraid to do this, but with a pressure-canner, there are no worries. Just the other day we opened up a jar of Turkey / in broth, from cooking down a Turkey carcass last Fall during Thanksgiving (which produced a dozen quart size jars of broth with meat using the pressure-canner) – boy was it delicious…
Often you can find fantastic deals on meats such as whole-Turkey, right after Thanksgiving or Christmas. There is a ‘boat-load’ of meat in a Turkey, and cost per pound is pretty cheap if taking advantage of this kind of Sale.
@ K.J., Good to see your input. @ Matt W., Seems you have knowledge to disseminate as well. As T.S.H.T.F. and survival mode is adopted all prior habits and needs have to be thrown out. My stance is survival… That said, first and logically foremost is the ration adaptation. Ninety days or a year of meat goes out the window. I say this because meat, as with coffee addiction, cigs., even meds that we are lead to believe are a must have, are unavailable. I’m only looking at the “Big” picture with these shorthand statements. Meat will not be viable in a survival mode. ( Yes, I have spoken of dead falls and Pima mouse traps as useful knowledge ) If Meats are to be found they will either be contaminated or so scarce that we would have the duty as wardens of the future not to kill any species for our presupposed personal needs. Do you think that prior to 10,000 years ago humanity had the year round-generationally ( given climate, location, availability: the tools, time , security, etc… invariably underlying the rudimentary facts open exposure pose) access to food? Stores could spoil, fire could negate, even rationing could or will eventually come to the last? ( Please read between the lines. All survival premise could be debated, given the various scenarios, which is not the intent here.) As with creatures that hibernate, Homo… can live extended periods without food or caloric consumption. Putting away foods, rationing for x-period of time will end!
What does this leave us with? What are the future options? Again, this is based on worst case situation! Not the out camping and lost, or the situation will get better and change mentality. This is our progenies potential as we hand it down form a world with no WWW, electric, hospitals, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, and mostly the belief that you have to eat every day. Water and septic are more important in the bunker-can’t travel mode.
Masks, gear, munitions from sling shot to bow and arrow, ( silence is golden in survival ) to last stand, state of the art projectiles are as important for the end all of this communication.
Methods that forethought and Vision have shown stay ahead of over population, food shortage, medicinal shortage, ( With it’s ignorant faith based acceptance use without question; the guinea pig system in use by the AMA, with “it’s” agenda’s. ( Here one might intuit the inherent poverty agenda big pharm. has in play. ) This a premonition of the infinite directions mind can take you given potential semantics this critical dialogue imbues. ) Again;short hand,read between the lines. With a basic view make it your own. (Necessity is the mother of invention and your location, awareness, preparation, may just lead you to improvise existence or exist improvisation-ally. )
I dislike dispersing anything but positivity, however I see very little beyond survival 101 and feel that intermediate and advanced survivalism have a great need to be disseminated. Not that a short statement can begin to touch such wisdom. Any point herein written could be hours of discourse or books that the P.T.B. don’t want you to even think about . Survive-All…
Hopefully, it is a seed ( Another physical survival need of which weight is a consideration ) planted mentally that will grow as is needed. Fill in the blanks, know you have won before a fight or flight or you have lost before beginning . Always here and now, awareness is spontaneity… Survive-All…
Going back to the caloric amounts, A 24 hounce can of beef stew may have 550 more calories than that 14.5 ounce can of green beans, but for the spread you could probably get 6 to 8 cans of those green beans to the one can of beef stew for the same money if you bought the bargain brand stuff, leaving you with a little more calories and lot more filler in the stock pot.
I don’t have a plot of land yet, all these years later we are still dead in the water on that end, however a friend of mine is moving into a sparsely populated area and trying to get as off-the-grid as possible (septic/well, woodburning stoves, etc) so I have decided to help him stock HIS place in the meantime and when my time comes I will try to find something close to him. Where am I going with this?
Rabbits and chickens. One thing that will be worth its weight in gold is a good rabbit operation if you have the land to do it on. My house I live in now has city ordinances against it (only applicable to legal citizens, apparently) but now that my buddy is going out in the boonies we are madly researching how to smartly go about keeping both. If you are raising rabbits you have what equates to a nuclear bombs worth of calories with higher turnaround than a college town McDonald’s. Rabbits breed fast! And a few chicken eggs every morning will make QUITE a difference in your calorie counts, not to mention the post earlier about canning old laying hens.
Long before electricity people have been living on their own. I think of cans of food and freeze dried meals (which I buy with alarming frequency) as simply buying time in a SHTF situation untill I get comfortable with my new limitations of no power or petrol. Eventually we’ll have to get (assuming the worst) that there will be a time when there are no more cans to rotate into our stock. The post above regarding expecting the worst prompted me to write this, because the worst really isn’t the worst as long as we can omit the idea of a nuclear problem. The worst case scenario would be us becoming truly self reliant, something many people here aspire to. Ripping the band aid off will be painful, but on the other end we’ll be stronger and happier people.
Very well said!
My reply is to all but responds in content comparatively to Bizzlesnach. Basically it comes down to, what are your survival goals? Obviously, to survive, but how and for how long. I have noted over the past 60 years (the luxury of old age) that things tend to be either much worse or not nearly as bad as people thought. Contrast Katrina with Y2K. Y2K was the origin of the the term TEOTWAKI and yet it wasn’t. Katrina, well we’ll go over to the Superdome and wait it out and go home in the morning, yeah! I am a long time prepper and survivalist, the two are not the same. I don’t have a crystal ball and don’t know anyone that does. I can read and comprehend and have a pretty good grasp of human nature, so I am no fool and I’m not a heartless bastard, somewhere in between. I do know this, something is coming and as much as I’m a critical thinker and a fact based skeptic, I’ve known this for some time and it is a faith thing. What ever happens, it will be either very bad or not much to write home about. Unfortunately you have to prepare for the worst, running gun battles to eating your dog, and hope for the best, a peaceful revolution or only losing the the grid for a few years because of a solar flare. I think that as long as it is not a “near extinction” event that we (society) will come back in years or decades at the most. If it is a high intensity issue (pick one, doesn’t matter, your choice) of sufficient duration, with significant population loss it will be many decades, maybe even a century or more of living in a quasi 1800/early 20th century world before society comes back to near 21st century levels of technology, as long as we are not crushed back to the stone age. I’m new here so I don’t know what your word limit is, so I’ll post this as part one and start on the next.
Continuing…. I said all of that to say this. If you want to survive and you know it is coming, you need to do something about it, now! If the worst scenario happens and you are not prepared, you will die. If the not so bad scenario happens and you are totally not prepared, you may still die. If you believe it is coming and you don’t prepare, why are you here? Let’s use the premise that the worst scenario is going to take place. If you knew that for sure you would sell everything you have, change jobs, move to a rural area, preferably with a group of “like-minded” individuals, and learn to be a working farmer. But regardless you need to get out of large metro areas and move to some small town and become part of the community. Better yet buy a few rural acres and raise rabbits, chickens, worms, pigeons and goats and have a garden. I’m amazed at the lifestyles that people support and they think it is too expensive to move somewhere, buy some land and make it support itself. If this is just a hobby you are going to be seriously disappointed, soon. There is still time to do this maybe a year or three, maybe more, but you would be on your way and have more opportunity for survival than if you didn’t. Now let’s just say you did all of this, made a cute little farm, growing your own vegetables and animals, working from home or going to work in a small town and life was good and healthy, you’re tan and lean from working outside, feel great and life is just good……..and nothing bad happens. Are you going to be pissed? I don’t think so. The back to the land life, the I don’t pay too many taxes cuz I don’t make too much money but I have all that I need, the I’m really happy healthy you…are you really gonna be mad that nothing happened? Or, would you be glad that you have the type of life that is healthy, got no pressure and you have all that you ever needed? There is no down side to surviving in style. I’ve been doing it for 16 years, exactly what I’ve described. Now did I do it all at once? No. But you’d be surprised how much a motivated person (people) can achieve in a year or two. Enjoy.
Some canned “meals” are very healthy (e.g. soups) while others (e.g. beef stews) are laden with fat and salt. If you’re storing for a family or small group, it would be better to store canned ingredient rather than “meals”.
It’s easy enough, healthier and probably cheaper to mix a can of tomatoes, a can of corn and a can of beans and then add a little chili powder instead of opening cans of prepared chili. This would be true of other possible meals you could make, or prepare as side dishes to rice, pasta or dried beans that you cook.
Also avoid pull top cans. They may be easy to open without a can opener, but the seal is far more vulnerable than a standard can. Traditional cans that require openers can usually stay edible for years beyond their “expiration date”, but pull top cans can’t be trusted beyond the date stamped on them. Glass jars in supermarkets are also poor for long term emergency storage.
Tip: Buy several/many of P-38/P-51 or Coleman folding can openers. They’re cheap and last a long time. I bought four a few years ago and have used one on an everyday basis since then. It still works and the other three are untouched. You can tape one to each case of cans or put them in several places, even on your keychain. There’s also a can opener on my leatherman, so I always have one at the ready.
Thanks for the tips – especially regarding ‘pull-top’ cans!
I simply do not understand all of the concerns that I see (not just here but on the internet in general) regarding canned foods and the dates on them. The date on cans is not an expiration date, it is a best by date and it is only on the can for legal purposes. It wasn’t until fairly recently that you could even find a date on a can of food. They simply weren’t needed because canned food lasts indefinitely if stored properly, even the easy open cans. Think about it SPAM comes in easy open cans and that is the first thing that most people think about when storing food. This is directly from the FAQ at Hormels website:
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Can we serve a product beyond the “Best By” date shown on the container?
For best quality, flavor and freshness, we recommend using our canned items by the dating on the container. After this time, the product should be safe to use as long as the can has not been compromised (no dents, split seams, etc.).
We recommend storing canned items in a cool, dry place to adequately preserve the flavor.
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Notice that they mention no date or time period what-so-ever that their products will not be safe. That is because there is no such date. A friend of mine live son a farm and they are still eating food that his grandparents canned when he was a child (He is in his forties so that food was canned a long time ago!)
I just wanted to clear up all of the misconception out there, if you are seriously storing food for the long term then canned food is the way to go. Stop worrying about those dates!
BTW: I found a very similar statement by another major food canning brand but at the moment I do not recall which one it was. Trust me canned food is safe in the long run. It’s what people had stockpiled in their fallout shelters back int he fifties!
I hope this helps someone…
Thanks Malloc, I agree. If stored properly, canned foods will last quite a long time. Sure the taste might change somewhat, and perhaps the nutritional value changes somewhat, but you’ll probably be just fine eating it.