I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had the “one-and-done” conversation with people who are rightly concerned about investing in long term food storage but don’t want to be inconvenienced by it.
Being compelled enough to invest money into food storage, buying a bunch of it all at one time, and then (having their conscience soothed), put it away and forget about it. Their thinking is that they have done their due diligence, with minimal inconvenience and now can get on with life giving no more thought to it.
The first time I heard this philosophy was a friend many years ago. They had learned of a new brand of food being sold locally, that had a very long shelf life. It was kinda pricey but the shelf life was attractive. They bought a year’s supply for their family of four, stacked it into a corner of their basement, and brushed off their hands so-to-speak. They were more than content with this marvelous plan; they had their food storage and didn’t have their life complicated with having to eat it. Simple. I admit, the idea was a little unsettling to me; it didn’t seem that life could really be that easy. Fast forward a couple decades. My friend had passed away of cancer. Their children had grown up. Her husband had remarried and moved to a different city. He called me one day. They’d had a house fire! All was lost including their long term food storage, which he had carried with him ten years before. Insurance had provided the money to replace it and he wanted to do exactly the same thing they’d done before.
1. USE IT
The reason he called me? Because he knew that at the time I sold Thrive Life foods, a relatively new brand of freeze dried food. “Just give me a reasonably varied assortment of food like I had before.” he said. He had no intention of ‘wasting’ it by eating it. It was intended as 100% food insurance, to be packed away again. We talked about the fact that most of the food he had depended on to ease his conscience for so long, was well over 20 years old, and not all of it was freeze dried, meaning it didn’t have the 25 year shelf life he thought it did. We talked about what he’d had previously – including milk and eggs (neither of which at the time he bought it, claimed to have the 25 year shelf life he believed everything had). As a friend, my counsel was to USE some of the food he was buying for two very important reasons: 1) to KNOW what one had, and 2) to know HOW to use it. Long term food storage is not the same as buying perishable food from the grocery store. It requires a little different ‘thinking’ to get used to it. He was adamant about “not bothering with all that”. What he had done two decades ago was conscience soothing and he wanted more of that.
We came up with a reasonable selection, and it was sent to him – which he stacked in a corner somewhere to never think about again.
His details involving the house fire may have been unique, but his philosophy was not. I have had that same conversation with many people over the years.
them: “Oh freeze dried food! I have a ton of that in my basement.”
me: “Great. How do you like it?”
them: “Oh, I have no idea; I’ve never used it.”
me: “Why not?”
them: “Because its FOOD STORAGE! And besides, I haven’t got a clue what to do with it.”
me: “How long have you had it?”
them: “We got it the year after we were married.”
me: “How long have you been married?”
them: “37 years.”
me: “Wow. You know its 12 years past its expiry right? You don’t have milk and eggs in there do you?
them: “Yes.”
me: “Well, I know the food you’re talking about, and the shelf life of milk used to be 5 years, and eggs was 3 years. Those are over 30 years past their expiry date. You might wanna dispose of them. . . . . I wouldn’t even open them if I were you, just throw them out. . . . .
So, . . . just curious, when were you planning to figure out how to use this food anyway?”
I have another friend who had pretty much the same idea. She had a lotta long-term-food-storage that she’d never had any intention of using, but a few years ago it became alarmingly evident to her that it was waaaay past its prime. She doesn’t want to waste it, (and waste all the money she spent on it), she wanted to learn how to use it. She had no recollection of how long she’d had the food (decades she admits), and there was no date on the cans. Apparently the labeling laws have changed since then.
My counsel? To USE it of course. I promised to come over and show her how to use them. We opened up her first can – broccoli. It was absolutely indistinguishable. Looking nothing like broccoli should, and smelling terrible. Nothing anyone would want to eat. “What can I do with it?” she asked.
“Throw it in the compost.” was my suggestion.
We opened a can of spinach with similar results.
The spinach on the right is a 7 year old can recently opened. It is what freeze dried spinach SHOULD look like today, tomorrow, next year and 17 years from now.
To be fair, the food we opened was much older than it was ever intended to be. It is not the manufacturer’s fault that the food was not used when it should have been. It is the result of faulty “save-and-protect” reasoning. But on the other hand, from the beginning she never knew what she had, what it looked like, or how to use it anyway. Ironically that scarcity mentality intended to not ‘waste’ food by using it, resulted in ultimate waste. Wasted food is wasted dollars. It’s simple math.
I well remember that same brand of freeze dried food when it was a new thing, trying to wrap my mind around the concept of it and trying to justify the cost. I bought some, used it, didn’t see the value at the time, nor the point. As the science of freeze drying got better over the ensuing years, the food got better, and the nutrition got better.
2. FIND THE BEST
In 2009, when I first started buying Thrive Life (the brand I finally settled on after trying several on the market), their guarantee was that the produce went from field to freezer in less than 24 hours. I was impressed with that. By the time I put that into print, the company corrected me – their guarantee was now less than 12 hours. “Can’t get better than that” I thought. Produce picked ripe, washed, peeled, chopped and into the freezer in less than 12 hours? Incredible. “Can’t get better than that” I told people.
Wait! In another year, they raised the bar again. Produce picked at perfection when all nature’s goodness was at its height, and then washed, peeled, sliced and into the freezer in less than 6 hours! (usually 2 to 4 hours). Amazing. NOW with a pretty good degree of confidence I can be sure “it really canNOT get better than that!”
In summer months my household eats directly from my backyard garden. I am hard pressed to get produce from my garden to the table in four hours! Truly it cannot get better than two to four hours.
What does that mean to you and me? Why is that such a big deal?
Because all fruits and vegetables begin to deteriorate within the first hour after harvest. That’s why. They begin the process of deteriorating in colour, texture and nutritional value immediately. To pick a fruit before its fully developed is to start out with a handicap. Thrive Life has a commitment to excellence that forbids picking produce before its ripe. Then its a race against the clock. That produce is washed, peeled (if needed), sliced or chopped and flash frozen to -40C within four hours! In that frozen state the food is transferred to a facility where all the remaining moisture is removed in the second step of the two step process of “freeze-drying”.
When spinach or broccoli or mangoes or strawberries or whatever, goes into that BPA free can at the end, it is more nutritious than those same ‘fresh’ fruits we buy in the produce department of our local grocery stores – that in nearly all cases were picked before they were ripe, and have been shipped a thousand+ miles to ripen on the supermarket shelves sometime in the following week or two. Without any moisture, that food is sealed in an oxygen free can, giving it an exceptionally long shelf life. Zero moisture + zero oxygen = zero decomposition. So when I open a can of peaches that was packed 7 years ago, it is as nutritionally sound as it was the day it was sealed. If I open that can another 7 years from now, it is still the same. THAT is what we’re talking about. And that’s why timing is such a big deal.
3. Benefits of using freeze dried food NOW
FAMILIARITY
Becoming familiar with freeze dried food while our lives are comfortable and predicable is so important. Sometimes people fool themselves into believing they’ll use it when they have to, but a crises is not the time to start experimenting with foundational necessities like meals. There are bound to be some differences between what you’re using now and freeze dried food. Familiarity brings confidence, and confidence removes fear.
When we are prepared, there is no fear. 
KNOWLEDGE
With familiarity comes knowledge and skill, opening a whole new world of possibilities. Learning how to use freeze dried food will make meal preparation a lot quicker and easier. Those fruits and vegetables are already washed and chopped, ready to eat straight out of the can, or to throw into your soup, casserole, omelette or stir fries. The cheese is already shredded, the meats are already cooked – ready to refresh and add to your meal.
You’d be surprised at how streamlined your meals become. You can have dinner on the table in minutes.
ZERO WASTE
Not only will you reduce the waste of produce in the fridge going bad before you can get to it, and the waste of trimming a good portion of your broccoli, cauliflower and peppers etc, but you will eliminate the waste of those cans of food timing out. Think of the waste that my friend experienced having to throw out most of her ‘shelf stable’ canned food. My other friend who replaced it all after the fire – he would have had to replace it all anyway, fire or no fire – because most of it was long expired before the fire.
When you regularly USE your food storage, it replaces perishable groceries that would other wise go into the trash. The North American average for household kitchen waste is up to 40%. That’s an incredible figure to wrap your mind around. If you’re the average North American consumer, up to 40% of the food you buy is going into the garbage! What if you could reduce that waste? How much money would YOU save in a month, in a year? Take a minute (knowing your monthly food budget), and use some simple math to roughly calculate what that might look like to you. Imagine what you could do with an extra $3000 or $4000 a year! You could probably have your food storage built up in a very short time for one thing.
CONVENIENCE
One of the things we will depend on in any emergency is having food that will be convenient to prepare with fewer resources than we’re currently accustomed to. Knowing what that food is and what kind of variety is available ahead of time is helpful. Also knowing what your family prefers and doesn’t prefer ahead of time is pretty helpful too. You don’t want to learn that when its too late.
4. SCARCITY vs ABUNDANCE
A scarcity mindset is a way of thinking that focuses on the idea that there is a limited supply; one becomes obsessed with protecting it. Its a trap many of us fall into when it comes to food storage: “This is food storage. It must be protected.” But we’ve already seen where that thinking leads, and its a slippery slope. When the supply is not being replenished, protection mode kicks in. So what is the antidote?
Rotation. Rotation is a “1st in-1st out” mindset. It is continuously using and replacing. It is treating your food storage like groceries and your groceries like food storage. It is the philosophy you’ve heard me repeat many times if you’ve read anything I’ve ever written on the subject: Store what you EAT, and Eat what you STORE.
If you are constantly adding to your food supply every time you buy groceries, and constantly eating from it, then replacing it, you are ROTATING. This keeps everything fresh and updated, saving you money and providing peace of mind. Your food storage becomes an organic thing with a pulse, not an inorganic box of dead food that nobody wants that cost you too much money. Consider a different perspective.
5. CHANGE THE WAY YOU LOOK AT IT
When you change the way you look at it, everything about it changes. The missing link between the SCARCITY mindset and the ABUNDANCE mindset is ROTATION. Rotation of “using and replacing” helps us regain control, and allows us to see abundance instead of scarcity. Change the way you’re looking at things.
I truly believe that when we are prepared, there is no fear. It is a personal mission of mine to help people gain the freedom and peace of mind that BEING PREPARED offers. And that includes FOOD STORAGE. Part of that is to help people stop wasting the food they purchased and are currently purchasing, and to help people acquire their food storage in the best possible way, getting the best prices and benefits in the process.
This is a course of action I have followed my entire adult life; it is very important to me. In the process, I discovered Thrive Life freeze dried food in 2008, and by the beginning of 2009, I brought it into our family bookstore – Generations Bookstore in Edmonton, Alberta. One of our major sidelines was food storage and emergency preparedness so it was a perfect fit. Since that time, we sold the store, but I kept Thrive Life with me as a personal consultant. I believe it is the best brand on the market today for high quality freeze dried food, and I am committed to helping people benefit in the same way I do from it.
In our house I’ve put it to the test. We’ve used it almost daily since those early years, and I know of which I speak.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on food storage and all things related. I welcome any questions you might have about Thrive Life specifically. Who knows? You might even want to become a consultant yourself.
Warmly,
Cindy Suelzle