Best Emergency Food Reviewed

You never know when you’ll need emergency food.

Whether it’s a natural disaster that’s struck your city or a pandemic that’s affecting the food supply in your region, having a stash of emergency food can keep you and your family healthy during a crisis.

Can you purchase an emergency food kit?

While storing up on emergency food might make you think you need to purchase all the individual items yourself, and this is recommended, you can make things easier for yourself by buying emergency food that comes in a kit.

What’s great about these kits is that you can put them aside and forget about them, thanks to how they have long lifespans.

With that in mind, here’s everything you need to know about choosing emergency food kits in this post spend a bit of time evaluating what you need.

We’ll feature five kits and look at what they have to offer you in your time of need.

Some Fun Facts About Modern Emergency Foods

The U.S. military introduced the Meal, Ready-to-Eat (MRE) in 1981, and today, over 130 million MREs are consumed annually by military personnel and civilians.

A lot of people are into freeze-drying now in their homes. An interesting fact: Freeze-drying removes up to 98% of a food’s moisture content, preserving its taste and nutritional value while extending its shelf life to 25 years or more.

Emergency food is designed for space efficiency, with compact packaging that can reduce storage space needs by up to 90% compared to traditional canned foods.

Nutrient-dense emergency foods are crafted to meet dietary needs, with some boasting up to 2,000 calories per serving and essential vitamins and minerals.

Now let’s go onto some Emergency Food recommendations and reviews:

Mountain House 3-Day Emergency Food Supply Kit

You can use this kit during an emergency or even when backpacking in the outdoors. Here’s what you should know about it.

Featured specs

• Breakfast, lunch, and dinner food packets
• TerraCycle packaging

Benefits

• This kit contains food packets that you just need to add water to in order to eat. Pour hot water into the food and wait about 10 minutes before eating it. 

• These food packets will ensure you get enough calories a day – the meals will give you 1,706 calories per day.

• So, what do you get in the pack? There are breakfast, lunch, and dinner packets. Breakfast meals include buttermilk biscuits, pork sausage gravy, and two granola bars with milk and blueberries. The lunch and dinner packets contain two chicken fried rice (that’s gluten-free), two chicken and dumplings, and two beef stroganoff with noodles.

Drawbacks

• Some people who have purchased this product have reported that the packets are high in salt. That’s something to bear in mind if you’re looking for low-sodium food.

Extra Features

• The food packets are made out of TerraCycle material, so you can easily dispose of them when you’re done. TerraCycle packaging means that it was manufactured from waste that would have ended up in landfills, so it’s good for the environment.

• You don’t have to worry about the food expiring because this kit comes with a 30-year taste guarantee. That means you can keep it for a long time without worrying that it will lose its nutrients (the ingredients have been freeze-dried) or taste. That’s definitely a plus when storing food for the long-term future.

• What if you don’t have access to hot water to prepare these meals? No problem – you can use cold water, but just bear in mind that you will have to cook the meals for double the time – 20 minutes – before eating them to ensure that the food properly hydrates. 

Buying Advice

This emergency food kit costs around $70. It’s the best-tasting emergency food that’s easy to use, convenient, and can keep you well-nourished for up to three days.

GOOD TO-GO 5-Day Emergency Food Kit

If you need food to keep you going for a bit longer, this Good-To-Go kit will supply you with enough meals for five days. Let’s take a look at its features.

Featured specs

• Vegetarian
• Clean ingredients

Benefits

• This best survival food is really easy to prepare – just add hot water.

• One of the biggest benefits of this emergency food kit as compared to the previous one we featured in this guide is that it’s vegetarian. There are no meat products in the packs.

• You get five breakfast meals and 10 entrees in the pack and can expect to enjoy the following meals: two herbed mushroom risotto, five granola, two smoked three bean chilli, two kale and white bean stew, two classic marinara with pasta, and two Mexican quinoa bowl.

• If you’re worried about what’s actually in this food, you’ll be pleased to know that it’s made from organic ingredients.

Drawbacks

• While this kit has earned many five stars in reviews, one of the things that you might not like is that it’s quite expensive for a five-day emergency kit.

Extra Features

• This food kit is gluten-free, which is great if your body can’t tolerate gluten.

• These food packs can be stored in the home for between two and five years before going stale. The granola will last two years while the entrees will last between two and five years, so make sure you use them within that time frame.

Buying Advice

This Good-To-Go kit costs around $100, so it’s a bit more expensive than the previous product we featured in this emergency foods review, but it’s worth it if you follow a vegetarian and/or gluten-free lifestyle and want your emergency food to form part of that.

With its organic ingredients, it’s the best-tasting survival food.

AlpineAire Foods Ready Meal Kit

You can easily feed yourself and another person with this AlpineAire kit.

Featured specs

• 28 food servings
• Five-year storage

Benefits

• You get two servings per pouch (and 28 servings in total) in this kit, making this the perfect emergency food kit for you and another person.

• The meals are delicious. You get the following packs in the kit: two mountain chili, two pasta Roma, two Himalayan lentils and rice, two Santa Fe black beans and rice, two sweet potato chicken and rice, two three-cheese lasagne, and two chicken gumbo.

Drawbacks

• It’s not as easy to get AlpineAire foods as it is to purchase other emergency kits, as people have complained about them being difficult to source at times.

Extra Features

• These food packs work in the same way as other emergency foods in that you just need to add hot water to them. However, AlpineAire Foods has made doing this even easier. You don’t need to measure out the water you need because you can make use of the fill line on the packet.

• These packs can be stored safely for up to five years.

Buying Advice

This AlpineAire Foods Ready Meal Kit costs around $80. It’s got everything you need and more to stay nourished and fed, whether you’re on an outdoor adventure or you’re in an emergency situation that has forced you to stay indoors. 

Wise Company 124-Serving Ultimate Preparedness Pack

This kit has 124 servings, so it’s no wonder why it’s called the “ultimate preparedness” pack.

Featured specs

• Food and drinks for seven days
• Convenient storage box included

Benefits

• Stored in pouches, these meals offer a great variety of foods that are ready to eat.

• While you can carry the pouches with you, such as if you’re hiking or backpacking, you can also store them in the included storage box for the ultimate convenience at home.

• You get a range of different meals: eight servings of creamy pasta and vegetable rotini, eight servings of savoury stroganoff, four servings of pasta alfredo, four servings of cheesy macaroni, eight servings of southwest beans and rice, eight servings of chicken-flavoured noodle soup, eight servings of tomato basil soup with pasta, eight servings of apple cinnamon cereal, eight servings of brown sugar and maple multigrain, 32 servings of orange delight mix drink, 12 servings of whey milk alternative, four servings of vanilla pudding, eight servings of yogurt, and four servings of freeze-dried peaches.

Drawbacks

• While the pack is huge (and a bit costly), it is only recommended to feed one person for seven days. This might be a bit of a let-down for you if you were hoping to invest in a bulk emergency food product.

Extra Features

• Although these foods will only feed you for a week, it’s good to know that when left unopened these parcels have a 25-year shelf life. You can safely purchase them and store them at home in case you need them in the long-term future.

• As you can see from the list of what’s in the kit listed earlier, you also get some drinks included, which is a nice bonus as some other emergency food kits only contain food packets.

Buying Advice

This kit costs around $230. It’s quite costly but could be just what you’re looking for in an emergency food supply because it’s got all the food and drinks you’d need if disaster struck.

Augason Farms 5-20100 72-Hour 4-Person Emergency Food Storage Kit

This is an affordable, easy-to-use emergency kit of food parcels. Let’s jump into its features!

Featured specs

• 20-year food storage
• Plastic container included

Benefits

• The pack contains the following foods/meals: three pouches of Morning Moo’s Low-Fat milk alternative, three pouches of creamy potato soup, three pouches of creamy chicken rice, two pouches of hearty vegetable chicken soup, two pouches of creamy broccoli rice, two pouches of instant potatoes, and two pouches of maple brown sugar oatmeal.

Drawbacks

• One of the drawbacks is that the kit is packed with high-starch foods.

Extra Features

• These food parcels have a shelf life of up to 20 years.

• The plastic container comes with a handle so that it’s easier to transport.

Buying Advice

This emergency food kit by Augason Farms costs between $70 and $160, depending on if you want a 14-pound or 28-pound pack.

Emergency Food FAQ

Now that we’ve looked at some great emergency food options, we can look at some questions you might have about emergency foods.

What should I stockpile for an emergency?

When thinking about what foods you should always have in stock in your home in case there’s an emergency that results in you being unable to buy food from the local store, one of the first things that come to mind is non-perishables.

These foods include tinned goods, such as beans, but also include other items that have long shelf lives, such as peanut butter, canned vegetables, dried fruit, rice, dry pasta, and nuts.

When stockpiling foods, don’t forget about drinks! You should aim to stockpile bottled water but also have alternatives handy, such as energy drinks that will help you keep your electrolytes at a healthy level as well as powdered milk.

You’ll probably want to stock up on tea and coffee, too!

You should also focus on having a good supply of fresh foods available. Of course, fresh fruit and vegetables won’t last long, but you can get a few days up to a few weeks out of them.

You just need to know which ones to have handy. Here are examples of some fresh produce that will last for a decent amount of time.

• Apples can last up to three months as long as you keep them in a dry, cool area of the pantry or kitchen.

• Citrus fruits such as oranges can last for up to two weeks without needing to be kept in the fridge.

• Potatoes can last for up to a month as long as they’re kept in a cool, dark cupboard.

• Unripe tomatoes can last for a few days at room temperature.

The above fresh foods are therefore good to stock up on whenever you go to the grocery store because if an emergency strikes you’ll at last have some fresh produce to eat for several days. 

What is the best survival food with a long shelf life?

We’ve already touched on some fresh produce items that have long shelf lives, but what survival food will last the longest before losing its nutrient value?

There are many foods that will last a really long time, so let’s check them out.

• White rice comes out as one of the best survival foods to keep in storage because it can be kept for up to 20 years.
• Another solid choice is hard grains. Items such as millet, dry corn, buckwheat, and spelt, can last between 10 and 12 years.
• Don’t forget about beans! There’s a reason why these always come up when people talk about emergency foods. A variety of beans, such as pinto beans, kidney beans, lentils, mung beans, and blackeye beans, can easily last up to 10 years, provided they are kept in airtight containers.

Remember that you can ensure your emergency food stays fresh for longer by making sure you store it correctly. Here are some general rules to follow:

• Keep food off the floor and on a shelf or in a cupboard. This is important to prevent the food from becoming damaged in the case of a flood as well as to prevent it from being attacked by rodents or bugs.

• You should store your food in an airtight plastic container. When buying emergency food kits, a good one to purchase is the Augason Farms food kit we featured in our reviews. It comes in a food-grade plastic container that also has a carry handle for easier transportation.

• Avoid storing your food in places where the temperature fluctuates as this could cause it to spoil. The ideal temperature for foods is between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit to ensure that their nutrition is maintained.

• It’s equally important to prevent foods from being in humid conditions. Always store your emergency food supply in a dark, dry place. You don’t want moisture to accumulate and affect the lifespan of your food or cause it to spoil.

What type of food is good for emergency storage?

When dealing with an emergency, you will have to ensure that you first eat food from the fridge that will perish quickly, such as in the case of your power being cut.

It’s good to know that items from the fridge, such as butter, margarine, fresh products, opened jars of jelly, hard processed cheese, and bread will all be able to last you for a few days at room temperature.

These are good to store as soon as possible when a disaster strikes to ensure that you can still make use of them.

That said, it’s always a good idea to ensure that you have non-perishable foods such as those we’ve already mentioned, so that you can have a more long-term setup available.

This is especially important if you don’t know how long you’ll need to depend on the food you’ve got in your fridge, kitchen, and pantry.

When storing your emergency foods in the kitchen cupboard or pantry, a good tip is to ensure that you store the foods in such a way that the ones with the shortest lifespans are most visible so that they will be eaten first.

How big of emergency food storage do you need?

One of the biggest questions you might have when it comes to emergency food storage is how large your food storage should be.

As can be seen in these reviews of some emergency food kits, there are different kit sizes available, such as ones that will ensure you have food for five or seven days.

It’s recommended by the Department of Homeland Security that you have a basic supply of food that will last you and your family members a minimum of 72 hours.

It’s not always easy to stockpile enough food for longer than a week or two, especially if you’re on a budget, but if this is important to you then you should get into the habit of purchasing a few items at a time when you do your regular grocery shopping.

This will ensure that you start building up a larger emergency food stash.

When planning ahead for an emergency, you can figure out how much food to store by planning your meals and thinking about how much you eat and drink in a day.

Then, multiply this amount by 21 if you want to have three-week storage.

Planning foods for storage that are based on what you and your family currently eat is a good tip because it won’t only help you plan enough food but it will ensure that you focus on familiar foods that you enjoy.

Remember that during an emergency, eating familiar foods can boost your morale.

Conclusion

You never know when there’ll be a food shortage.

That’s why it’s always a good idea to plan ahead and ensure that you have food kits from the best emergency food companies in the house should the worst happen.

In this article, we’ve featured survival food kits as well we’ve also featured some important questions about the best emergency meals and how you can ensure that you stay healthy during tough times no matter what happens.

Start storing up!