Image courtesy of: davidmulder61
I have been restocking my food supplies lately and realized that I had to get rid of a some of them mainly because: (1) some food items have become nasty; (2) some food items were way past their expiration; and (3) I questioned myself on why the hell I stocked up on certain stupid food items!
What can I say? Among the food items I hoard are canned soup … although all the sodium preservatives can kill you if you eat that everyday. I still have these in stock.
I’ve got spam cause I love spam. I know I lot of people find it disgusting. Try pan-frying it. You might like it. If you still find it disgusting, at least I know you’re one less person I have to worry about stealing my spam in a zombie apocalypse.
I’ve got my essential spices. Of course, I’ve got my stock of food items that are referred to in this article and this article.
So out of curiosity and as part of my continuing education on survival, I did some research on what some other survivalists have found to be food items that they should not have stocked on.
Strangely enough, I came across an article from our friends at MyFamilySurvivalPlan.com and I surely could relate to what they have to say.
I just had to share this with you guys as you might be hoarding some food items that you really shouldn’t be stocking up on in your garage for a long haul SHTF situation. Here’s the list:
- Foods you don’t like (or even that you’re allergic to). I’ve noticed many beginners making this mistake. They take lists of survival foods off the Internet and just buy all the items listed there in bulk. Many of them don’t even think about their family’s likes and dislikes, they just follow the instructions. And the ones who do consider this aspect usually buy the foods they don’t like, as well. Simply because “it’s got an enormous shelf life, so we gotta get it”.
- Tuna cans. First of all — and I’ve warned you about this before — you have to be extremely careful about the origin of that tuna. You don’t want to feed your family heavy metals. You end up defeating your purpose. You want your family to be healthy and eat nutritional foods, but the chance is you’ll actually poison them without knowing it. Second of all, canned tuna changes taste and texture in less than a year. Let’s not even get into the smell issue …
- Items that could be considered survival food if they were packaged as such. There are many nutritional foods that could be lifesaving in times of crisis. Unfortunately, they’re not packaged properly for long-term survival … If you want to hoard items that aren’t packaged right for long-term storage, repackage them to suit your needs.
- Homemade products such as dehydrated foods. It’s ok to store them, I do that, too. But not in massive quantities, because they only last for about a year. They tend to go bad faster than the retail ones. First of all, you don’t use the same kind and the same amount of preservatives. Secondly, the retail ones are completely oxygen-free (machines to do all the packaging, so it’s much safer).
- Flour. It’s nearly impossible to get rid of those nasty eggs of flour weevils. And if you store flour for a long time, guess what? Those will hatch. And you’ll end up throwing out all the flour in your pantry, because it’s going to be filled with insects. Trust me, the sight of a bag filled with bugs is going to turn your stomach upside-down. It happened to me and it wasn’t pleasant at all.
If you would like to see the complete take of MyFamilySurvivalPlan.com on food items that you should not hoard, you can read the full article here.
Thanks again to the awesome folks at MyFamilySurvivalPlan.com for their always awesome set of survival tips.
