# Oh no! Another food storage question



## grinder37 (Mar 1, 2013)

I'm a bit confused on a couple items for long term storage,it seems how long these can keep depends on what site you are on,lol.I try to do most of my own research before asking for help (sometimes,i'm a little too proud to ask for help,but not at the risk of my familys safety).The two items are Nesquik chocolate drink mix and Krustez(sp?)pancake mix where you just add water.My storage method is simply using mylar bags with a sealer and oversized o2 absorbers in fg buckets with gamma lids and o2 absorbers between the bag and lid as well.

Are these two that I should keep on a rotation or are they good for LTS?I think i'm good on the pancake mix,but can't find a reliable answer to nesquik.I have two young boys,so getting them to drink their powdered milk will be much easier with something sweet in it.Also,if Nesquick does not keep long term,what can I use as a sub?Any help is appreciated.


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## PaulS (Mar 11, 2013)

Any food that you store should be rotated through your normal eating pattern.
Long term storage is about six months to a year and you should never have more than a years worth of food on hand.

The food may "keep" longer than that but if your body is not used to consuming it you can get very sick from the sudden change in diet.
I am a fan of Krusteze Pancake mix and have used it since back-packing in my teens. Buy it in quantities as large as you can and use it.
Quick or "minute" oatmeal is another easy to fix food that keeps well and is good for you.

Everything we have is long term storage but as we use it up we replace it with new. Keep it dated and tape the instructions for use on the outside of the container.

Paul


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## snork (Mar 4, 2013)

I have some foodstuff specifically stored for very long-term storage. I am talking years. I have several months worth of pasta, beans and oatmeal stored that I have no intention of opening unless there is a serious SHTF scenario. That was a sunk cost. I know I have it and I will never accidentally dip into it depleting the supply. On top of that I have more stuff, which I rotate out.


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## Montana Rancher (Mar 4, 2013)

Best rule of thumb is the more processed the food is, the shorter the life expectancy. 

So your pancake mix stored the way you are doing will keep for a few years and be consumable but will lose nutritional value after between 12-24 months. It would be far smarter to store whole wheat and that can keep 25 years with almost no loss, and grind it to make your pancakes as needed.

As for the cocoa, the Neslies is mostly sugar and if you keep it dry it will store for a year or two. My suggestion is to keep your powdered milk for baking and just teach them to drink water. It's easy to get the protein and other vitamins from other sources and like you said it tastes like crap so what's the point?

Agree with Osweg that canned food is good unless the can bulges, I am currently using Campbell's cream of chicken soup expired in Oct 2010 with no problems, drinking soy milk expired 8/2012, and frozen game from 2011. The shelf life they USDA makes them use are intended when the food is kept in the worst possible conditions (I.e. high heat), when stored cool they will last years.

I have a case if C-Rats from 1979 and I had to throw about half the cans away last year from bulging, not bad for 30 years in storage. And they were probably old when I was issued them, I'll have to check the case.


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## Will2 (Mar 20, 2013)

I count sugar as one of my rations, not an absolute need but having wheat and sugar, and salt allows a lot of possibilities for cooking, make some natural vinegar and you have the basis for a whole lot of great tasting food, take dandelions that grow so readily (you can take the heads to make vinegar with), and can be planted to grow more than once a season. with a little sugar salt, and others taste is great, especially if filling on a scone. I've done up a lot of recipes on weeds. If you have kale to mix in, mustard even better. those prickly bushes will flower, and the flowers make a good flavourant also, the plant itself is edible if you remove the pricklies. But I agree having flour rather than pankake mix is the way to go, because with a little wood ash and flour and potentially some yeast, which you can either keep as baker or brewers yeast or naturally derived, can be kep for a long time by rotating yeasted bread, can make a really good pancake from scratch, if you have berries even better. Also flour lets you make pan breads, which can be made to taste just plain awsome if a little bit of oil is in your ration doesn't take a lot or just fry up some fish skins and scrape some fish oil off, the fish skins are a great barrier to cook onto scones or perogies fried in a fire/oven wonderful, you can also flavour with pine needles, and what i wanted to say toping break with wild grains, grown from grass... just springle them on the top and when the bread browns the grains and fibre and all with get crispy and add great flavour. Even rag weed seeds are an awsome nutritious foodstuff.

overall though I would pick an equal costing bag of flour over an equal amount of pancake mix any day of the week if I was in a camp situation. sugar and flour can be had at relatively low cost.


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## grinder37 (Mar 1, 2013)

Thanks for the replies guys,I actually forgot about this thread,lol.I do already have my long term staples packaged for very long term storage,including wheatberries,rice,oats,beans,sugar,salt,etc,etc. with no intentions of opening unless the need arises,but after a lot of research,i've decided to keep the pancake batter and chocolate milk mix in rotation with my short term foods as they are everyday food items that we always keep on hand anyhow,so rotating won't be an issue.I choose to go the "better safe than sorry" route to insure fresh product when needed the most.The main reason for my question though,which one of you mentioned,was rather they were too processed to be safe for long term since I found so much conflicting results from web searching,but I appreciate the extra info as well!Thanks again everyone!

And Will,welcome to the forum,but funny you mention the sugar,we have young two kids,so for us we don't consider sugar a ration but rather a staple,especially since it stores for close to forever when stored properly.Right now I have six 6g buckets of sugar and plan to add to that,lol.I'll ration it as needed so we can stretch it as far as possible.But i'm a firm believer in "food fatigue" when your kids are eating beans,rice and water as their main diet,it will be a shock to them and once food fatigue sets in,they would/could simply stop eating.One of my boys is almost 13 and we need to keep him strong,he's gonna be (and already is) a big asset with his hunting/fishing and basic survival skills.My other son is 3yrs old and autistic,so we must protect and insure that he stays eating,even on slim pickings,at all cost.So some variety foods and sweet treats are a must in our house.

And PaulS.I have to disagree with only storing foods (ones that are well known to store for many,many years of coarse) for only one years supply.I do,however, agree that those staples will need supplimented with other foods and proteins,but why only limit yourself to one year of food?In a worst case senario,it may take much longer than one year for things to even remotely normalize again.

Snork,your means of storage seams very close to mine,as mentioned I have foods,both staple and freeze dried,that I have no intentions of rotating for many years,others are rotated everytime we go to the store,lol.But when I started prepping a couple years ago,I got real serious,real quick.I dumped a ton of cash into my longterm stock for the very reason of not having to rotate out.I also homestead for supplimental foods (actually I already did that for many years),and am in the process of building cages in my garages to start raising meat rabbits to round out the diet.


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