mystery meat

MYSTERY MEAT

I like Commander Zero, but of course he belongs with the philosophical adherents to Yuppie Scum Luxurious Prepping.  Because he can afford high priced preps, everyone should be able to ( not that I’m trying to be unfair.  He is correct, in a sense.  Even a minimum wage worker could afford to Yuppie Prep.  If that was ALL they did, just living like a bare assed savage, lived in a hovel and had a bicycle for transportation, not having a wife, that kind of thing.  My contention isn’t that folks CAN’T but rather don’t WANT to, and so frugal prepping makes sense ).

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There was a guy that just taste tested forty year old freeze dried foods and they were as processed and tasteless as the day he bought them.  Groovy!  For longevity.  But what was the cost?  $10k in 1975.  That is $80k today if converted to gold ounces.  There were, maximum, three years worth of calories ( I assigned a maximum amount of calories to each can, so what follows is actually understated ).  Which translated to $21,000 a year today.  This isn’t too far off what it would cost you today, especially since most commercial units assign you a ridiculously low number of calories per day, not much more that the Jewish workers on starvation wages got.

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Commander Zero responded that most people only use freeze dried as a supplement rather than for all their calories.  Okay.  Let’s just go with one pound of meat a day, assuming you had a fresh source of fruits and vegetables and didn’t eat dairy.  That is still $5k a year, JUST for meat.  I already did the math for you earlier, if you wet canned your meat.  One fifth the price.  Yes, you gave up longevity.  Figure a maximum of five years for home canned meat.  But commercial wet packed meat isn’t too much more expensive than the most expensive home canned ( I don’t include beef in my calculations, because of the high costs due to Texas losing its aquifer.  Right after I get done writing this I’m off to Kroger to buy boneless pork for $1.09 a pound ).

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And I’m not even advocating prepper food commercial wet canned meat.  Those are about one third the cost of freeze dried.  Just regular canned meat at the store is one fifth the cost of freeze dried ( if averaged over several types.  But even if you don’t buy lower cost fish or what-not, the price is no more per pound than the mail order wet can meat, even if not as healthy.  And you can buy less each time, making it easier to budget ).  Yes, it all has heavy salt content.  So does freeze dried.  What confuses me is why anyone buys freeze dried meat when commercial wet canned meat is so much cheaper.  Yes, you have longevity and low weight compact storage with freeze dried.  Or, do you?

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Studies have been done on several occasions on the longevity of wet can foods.  Aside from the vitamin loss, foods last for decades unaltered.  As long as you don’t store canned vegetables susceptible to vitamin loss, or high acid foods ( pineapple, tomato products ) which can corrode the can, you can duplicate the shelf life of freeze dried ( you might wish to add an extra outer sealant such as wax to assure this, as you know companies are cheaping out on quality.  The added expenses is just for future candles, anyway ).  At one third the price. 

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As far as the compact storage, I don’t know how much you are really saving over freeze dried.  Unless you are living out of a van or in a tent, surely the difference is negligible.  So that leaves weight.  $15 a pound for meat so you don’t have to hurt yourself lifting a one pound can from the supermarket.  Now, yes, you are actually saving because of inflation.  In forty years the cost of gold went up eight times, so I’d image the price of meat did also.  So I grant you that you are no worse off in that aspect.  HOWEVER!

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There are two important caveats to that.  One.  When you buy freeze dried food, do you REALLY expect that the apocalypse isn’t going to happen for four decades?  The guy wouldn’t have spent the equivalent of $80k if he wasn’t panicking and thinking the US wasn’t imploding.  He wasn’t worried about inflation forty years from now.  He was worried about eating in forty months.  What I’m saying is that no one buys freeze dried, at the price it is, without expecting to need it soon.  Really?  You are telling me there are people optimistic enough who think NOTHING will go wrong for ANOTHER four decades?

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If you worry about food inflation, don’t pay the premium to buy freeze dried, just put the $3 a pound of meat in gold right now.  Then wet pack meat at home for the same price and rotate it.  Now you have BOTH a supply of food on hand, AND the ability to offset inflation for double that amount of food, all at less than HALF the price of freeze dried meat.  The second caveat is, after 1975 we had oil left to continue industrial meat production.  Oil is highly deflationary in that is allows extremely cheap labor ( all those oil slaves ).  Forty years from now, there will NOT be any oil still being pumped from the ground. 

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Price inflation doesn’t mean crap then.  You won’t be able to buy meat at any price ( because there will only be famine and warfare and absolutely no trade ).  You can have three times the amount of meat now, buying grocery store wet can meat.  MORE meat is exactly what you want.  MORE food, MORE ammo.  Supplies on hand immediately is far more important than worrying about inflation.  It is starvation verses a philosophical concern over vanished wealth.  So to be clear, no, I wouldn’t store gold instead of food.  That was just to illustrate a point.  That the promises of freeze dried are overblown hype.  You could store gold ( silver might even be better, as far as usefulness in trade or barter being low denomination ) for short term, pre-collapse food inflation, though.

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There is ALWAYS another way to skin a cat.  It doesn’t matter how much or how little you spend, as long as you are maximizing the value for each dollar.  There are always better ways.  And, no, freeze dried isn’t completely without merit.  It is fine in niche situations.  Just beware it is the lower value solution most times.

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