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Believe it or not, some prepper food tastes really good. In fact, it might even taste better than something your grandmother made you. Because of the usage of freeze-drying technology, food that would normally perish can last for up to 30 years. Every different type of food has a different shelf life though. Unlike dehydrated food, freeze-dried food always needs hot water added to it. Generally people do add hot water though so that it tastes like a real meal. This type of survival food is also excellent camping food. When you’re in a survival situation or just camping, sometimes you don’t have time to heat up water, in this case you can just add normal water. Eating some freeze-dried blueberries for energy or some freeze-dried meat for protein can be the difference between life and death.
There are other comparisons out there, but this comparison is based on taste! We actually tried the foods to let you know. The top 3 are the ones you should try. We didn’t even bother mentioning others because they aren’t even close! I also didn’t want to use this article to attack certain food companies.
The Best and Worst Survival Food
I’m going to make this easy for you if you just want to know the best and worst survival food. The best survival food is clearly Thrive Foods. They have really perfected the process of freeze-drying and selecting the best ingredient to use. If you currently enjoy eating good food, then you might as well eat good food in a grid-down or economically compromised scenario. The number one thing we tell people that are looking for survival food options is that they should be realistic with themselves and get food that is enjoyable to eat and not just cheap. Sometimes, cheap food is all people can do though.
Prepper Food Ranked
| Food | Value | Quality | Selection | Our Rating |
| Thrive Foods | 8/10 | 10/10 | 9/10 | 9/10 |
| Mountain House | 9/10 | 8.5/10 | 8/10 | 8.5/10 |
| Emergency Essentials | 8/10 | 7/10 | 9/10 | 8/10 |
The Best Prepper Food
A very close second to Thrive Foods is Mountain House Foods. Mountain House is widely known in the prepper world, as well as the camping world. You can even find Mountain House food at Walmart. This makes it a very accessible option for even the most entry-level prepper. Recently Mountain House, as well as a few others, went completely out of stock. This was due to the COVID-19 scare. It goes without saying that you should be prepared for an event like this by having a reasonable amount of food in storage. Now, every person is going to have a different idea of what “reasonable” is. Just look out for your family and don’t worry if you can’t yet afford an entire year’s supply of food. 2 weeks of food makes a world of difference in a disaster, so even just 2 weeks of food is enough for most people.
The most important thing is to purchase food at the right time. The right time is simply any time before disaster strikes. If you wait until the disaster strikes, it will be nearly impossible to find survival food.
The Worst Survival Food
For the worst survival food, we’re not going to name names here. But, if you paid around $300 for a 4 week food supply or got food within that price range, well, I hope you like dog food. It stands to reason that you will get what you pay for. You shouldn’t expect much from cheap survival food. We don’t actually sell or recommend any of the cheap stuff, but you’ll know it when you see it.
Why it Pays to have the Best Freeze Dried Food in a Crisis
We recently cooked some of the pulled pork from Thrive Foods and made tacos. It tastes 95% as if you cooked it yourself, which is pretty good for being freeze-dried. Most freeze-dried food makers use cheaper ingredients. They do this because they don’t actually believe in their product. They don’t think anyone will ever rely on it in a survival situation, and even if they do have to rely on it, they won’t care what it tastes like. I would argue however that you should be regularly eating the food you hope to eat for survival purposes. Because why keep it in your pantry if you don’t even know what it tastes like? You should be cooking some of your survival food to at least know what to expect if you have to rely on it.
Think about the last time you went to McDonalds and ate from the dollar menu. How did it feel afterwords? Probably not very good, for obvious reasons. Most notably, McDonalds is going to use the cheapest possible ingredients for their food and load it with preservatives so that you can buy it for $1. If however you are one of those people that can eat anything and feel great, then disregard this piece of advice. People typically don’t eat lower grade food all the time for many health reasons. You also shouldn’t be eating stuff like spam all of the time when you’re in a global pandemic or economic crisis caused by a global pandemic.
We all hope we never have to use our survival food, but even if you experienced something like job loss, having food on hand would be better than having nothing at all. Therefore you should get food that you actually want to eat. I’m not trying to get you to spend extra money on food because of some personal benefit either. We’ve had very lucrative offers from food companies that offer bad quality food that we have had to turn down.
Eat Your Freeze Dried Food Now!
But not all of it. Some of the companies that we recommend the most, like Thrive and Mountain House have multiple uses for the food during “normal times”. One of the reasons I actually like having freeze-dried food in my pantry is for snacking. I’m pretty bad about snacking. If I were to snack to my hearts content, I would eat 3 bags of Doritos every day probably. With freeze-dried food though, you can turn regular foods into instant snacks. Be sure to hydrate the food before eating though! It’s just really cool to have a meal that you can just add water too. You can snack on it as you would with chips, but it’s healthier and more nutritious because it’s what we make meals out of. You do need to add hot water before eating it though, otherwise it is not safe to eat.
Take your Freeze Dried Food Camping with your Friends or Family
Camping is a fun time to spend out in nature and cooking over the campfire is always fun. However, sometimes you don’t always want to fire up the propane grill or the campfire. This is where Mountain House foods specializes. Their food is excellent camping food. It’s specifically packaged to be great camping food. Being able to carry almost everything you eat at home with you on a camping trip is awesome.
Hopefully this comparison helps you in your quest to find some great survival food. While you’re at it you’ll also get some great “normal” food and camping food. Let us know if you need help planning out a food storage solution.
