7 ms·

Business Is Booming for America’s Survival Food King

89 points by ductionist 9y ago

jmnicolas 9y ago
I was quite surprised to see on the photos that the food processing plant looked quite dirty. Don't they have high standards to adhere to ?
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
  Looks pretty clean. The floor is just scuffed up from heavy things being dragged on it.
- rabboRubble 9y ago
  Have you ever read The Jungle? There is a reason we have food regulation. Without regulation, food producers do nasty things. Vomit inducing things.
  - jmnicolas 9y ago
    "The Jungle" ?
    - xxpor 9y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle One of the most important books of the muckraker era
    - fake-name 9y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle Heh, beat. TL;DR it was basically a massive expose on the conditions in the food and meat-packing industry in 1904 that lead to the creation of what is now the FDA, and the establishment of regulations concerning food sanitation and requirements about ingredient purity that we still greatly benefit from today.
      - jamestimmins 9y ago
        Interestingly, it actually wasn't intended as an expose of food/meat-packing. It was intended to show the failings of capitalism and the virtues of socialism. But Sinclair's descriptions of the Chicago food industry made more of an impact than his political commentary.
- smnrchrds 9y ago
  To quote from Joel [1]: Way back in September 1983, I started my first real job, working at Oranim, a big bread factory in Israel that made something like 100,000 loaves of bread every night in six giant ovens the size of aircraft carriers. The first time I walked into the bakery I couldn’t believe what a mess it was. The sides of the ovens were yellowing, machines were rusting, there was grease everywhere. “Is it always this messy?” I asked. “What? What are you talking about?” the manager said. “We just finished cleaning. This is the cleanest it’s been in weeks.” Oh boy. It took me a couple of months of cleaning the bakery every morning before I realized what they meant. In the bakery, clean meant no dough on the machines. Clean meant no fermenting dough in the trash. Clean meant no dough on the floors. Clean did not mean the paint on the ovens was nice and white. Painting the ovens was something you did every decade, not every day. Clean did not mean no grease. In fact there were a lot of machines that needed to be greased or oiled regularly and a thin layer of clean oil was usually a sign of a machine that had just been cleaned. This is what a dough rounder looks like.The whole concept of clean in the bakery was something you had to learn. To an outsider, it was impossible to walk in and judge whether the place was clean or not. An outsider would never think of looking at the inside surfaces of the dough rounder (a machine that rolls square blocks of dough into balls, shown in the picture at right) to see if they had been scraped clean. An outsider would obsess over the fact that the old oven had discolored panels, because those panels were huge. But a baker couldn’t care less whether the paint on the outside of their oven was starting to turn a little yellow. The bread still tasted just as good. [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/05/11/making-wrong-code-look-wrong/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/05/11/making-wrong-code-...
acabal 9y ago
I always found the prepper mindset a little curious. It seems to me that any kind of major disaster that would totally knock out reliable access to food and aid for 3-6 months (i.e. something worse than the recent hurricanes, more along the lines of climate-change-driven famine apocalypse) will also probably have knocked it out for far longer than that. What happens when one runs out of one's few months of stockpiles? For those of the prepper mindset, it would make more sense to start homesteading instead. That is, learning to grow and preserve one's own food, instead of stockpiling a little food but in the end still relying on our national food supply network. Homesteaders, I think, will be the ones who survive the true nuclear/climate change apocalypse, not preppers.
- hayksaakian 9y ago
  I think you're over looking the impact that natural disasters can have. Think about hurricane Katrina, or even the more recent season. Just because there is some aid doesn't mean your access is reliable enough for an entire family. There's never enough to go around to everyone who needs it, so the best you can do is be prepared.
  - ThrowawayR2 9y ago
    Beyond that, on the west coast, there's concerns that there are massive earthquakes that have been overdue for a while and may occur sometime in the next couple of decades. "There is a 17 to 20 percent chance that northern Oregon will be hit by a magnitude-8 quake in the next 50 years." https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/a-major-earthquake-in-the-pacific-northwest-just-got-more-likely/495407/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/a-major-...
- bsder 9y ago
  Absolutely. The "preppers" are idiots. You can't survive more than a couple of weeks, at best, completely off the grid without extensive training and preparation--certainly not in an urban or suburban environment. The big one that people never seem to realize is that gasoline goes bad much quicker than you expect. However, Katrina cracked the shell of the idea that the government will help out competently in a timely fashion. You may be on your own longer than you think. And planning for that is simply sane in areas like California (fires and quakes), the Gulf Coast (hurricanes), or the Northeast in winter (ice storms).
maxerickson 9y ago
13,600 calories is enough food to actually feed a family of 4 for about 2 days. The "servings" of the meals listed on their website are about 250 calories. 500 calories is small meal for many adults.
- NikolaeVarius 9y ago
  I presume these are supposed to be survival rations. In a survival situation, I damn hope you're on a reduced calorie diet.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    700 calories a day isn't going to make that much difference over a week or two. It'll be a little happier.
  - CapitalistCartr 9y ago
    Why hope that? Having enough calories is essential to being able to do strenuous work. Taking hunger out of the equation is the point of having a food reserve.
    - HorizonXP 9y ago
      I’d be more concerned about water TBH. Most of us carry a fair amount of fat, enough to survive several weeks without eating. Having rations available extends that timeline a lot. But without drinking water, that’s all moot, since you can’t survive long without that. Really depends on your timelines. Prep for short-term disaster scenarios on a 1-2 week timelines should be manageable for most, and really we should all be doing it. Prep for longer timelines is much harder.
      - gozur88 9y ago
        >I’d be more concerned about water TBH. Most of us carry a fair amount of fat, enough to survive several weeks without eating. They used to call it "the law of twos" - you can live two minutes without air, two days without water, and two weeks without food. So yeah, water is the big concern. Two weeks without food is the low end, but electrolyte imbalances can kill you even if you still retain plenty of stored calories.
sandworm101 9y ago
If this is really survival food, it is very complicated and expensive. Plain, normal, rice can be stored basically forever if you keep it dry. A few kilos of rice will keep a family alive through any natural disaster. Looking at the foods offered by this company, their customer base seems to be prepping for post-hurricane dinner parties.
- sbierwagen 9y ago
  White rice has little fat or protein, and brown rice doesn't store very well. The gold standard for prepper grain is hard red wheat: https://store.lds.org/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product3_715839595_10557__-1__195792 https://store.lds.org/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product3_715...
  - slv77 9y ago
    It’s mostly a cultural preference... Rice works as well as hard red wheat as far as calorie density goes and in the short term that’s all that really matters for adults. Rice also has some advantages as it’s more versatile in terms of cooking and taking flavors. A few cases of Minute Rice, a small camp stove and a variety of seasoning packets would be a win over a large bag of wheat. Longer term wheat has a higher protein content and has an advantage that it can be sprouted to increase vitamin content but you would need to be in pretty dire straights for that to make a difference. Neither wheat nor rice have enough fat content needed for long term survival. Neither wheat nor rice will sustain toddlers without a supplemental high quality protein source like milk or eggs.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Brown rice is ~1600 calories per pound. So a few kilos won't last several people all that long. Cheap though ($1/pound at mass market retail in the US). Dry pasta is about the same on both measures.
  - sandworm101 9y ago
    1600 will keep 4 people alive for a few days. Not fat and happy, but alive. A few kilos wold keep them alive for a couple weeks.
madengr 9y ago
Why not just buy canned food? Much cheaper and don't have to rehydrate it. Just eat though it.
- slv77 9y ago
  Most people are limited in storage space and canned foods aren’t very calorie dense as you’re storing mostly water. Inside cans are also coated with a plastic liner and over time that liner breaks down and can contaminate the food. This reduces shelf life especially for acidic foods like tomatoes or fruit. Families that want to store a couple of weeks of canned food need yards of shelf space and need to eat a lot of canned foods to rotate it before it deteriorates.
Taniwha 9y ago
I've somehow found my way onto some prepper spam list, and can't for the life of me get off - these people are bat-shit crazy, they need a big food poisoning scare or something
protomyth 9y ago
If you live in the north and don’t have a week of food stores then you are a bit of an idiot. Having long lasting food available is a peace of mind thing. Heck, given some history, having food in your car during the winter isn’t a bad idea. Last winter, I was stuck in my apartment for 3 days.
Dowwie 9y ago
Camper, back packer here. I benefit by this market as consumers demand better tasting food. A lot of dehydrated food tastes horrible, but some companies are competing by improving product. If you want to try some decent dehydrated good, try the Mountain House brand. Their beef stroganoff is surprisingly good. Doomsday prepping has really taken off in America. It's upsetting to think how many are squirreling away resources in a fortified bunker.
- chiph 9y ago
  Or stashed in a back closet somewhere. I lived in hurricane country for a long time, and having a week's worth of bottled water & shelf-stable food in the house just made good sense. (I was without power for 10 days after Hugo in 1989). I will say the taste has really improved over the years. I was fed some of the original MREs back in the 80's (guard duty at a USAF base) and the ones the military have today are way more palatable. Same with the freeze-dried food.
kalleboo 9y ago
I live in a country with regular earthquakes and recent experience with the government response to massive emergencies. Our preparedness is this: Water for 3 days, food for less than a week. Those things come in quickly from the government. After that initial couple of days, what people in stricken areas are desperate for: batteries to charge their phones. Toilet paper. Soap. Diapers. Sanitary pads. Plastic bags for waste. After that, the most important thing is having enough savings to rebuild your life after your home, belongings, town, job are all gone.

89 points by ductionist 9y ago

I was quite surprised to see on the photos that the food processing plant looked quite dirty. Don't they have high standards to adhere to ?

HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
Looks pretty clean. The floor is just scuffed up from heavy things being dragged on it.
rabboRubble 9y ago
Have you ever read The Jungle? There is a reason we have food regulation. Without regulation, food producers do nasty things. Vomit inducing things.
- jmnicolas 9y ago
  "The Jungle" ?
  - xxpor 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle One of the most important books of the muckraker era
  - fake-name 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle Heh, beat. TL;DR it was basically a massive expose on the conditions in the food and meat-packing industry in 1904 that lead to the creation of what is now the FDA, and the establishment of regulations concerning food sanitation and requirements about ingredient purity that we still greatly benefit from today.
    - jamestimmins 9y ago
      Interestingly, it actually wasn't intended as an expose of food/meat-packing. It was intended to show the failings of capitalism and the virtues of socialism. But Sinclair's descriptions of the Chicago food industry made more of an impact than his political commentary.
smnrchrds 9y ago
To quote from Joel [1]: Way back in September 1983, I started my first real job, working at Oranim, a big bread factory in Israel that made something like 100,000 loaves of bread every night in six giant ovens the size of aircraft carriers. The first time I walked into the bakery I couldn’t believe what a mess it was. The sides of the ovens were yellowing, machines were rusting, there was grease everywhere. “Is it always this messy?” I asked. “What? What are you talking about?” the manager said. “We just finished cleaning. This is the cleanest it’s been in weeks.” Oh boy. It took me a couple of months of cleaning the bakery every morning before I realized what they meant. In the bakery, clean meant no dough on the machines. Clean meant no fermenting dough in the trash. Clean meant no dough on the floors. Clean did not mean the paint on the ovens was nice and white. Painting the ovens was something you did every decade, not every day. Clean did not mean no grease. In fact there were a lot of machines that needed to be greased or oiled regularly and a thin layer of clean oil was usually a sign of a machine that had just been cleaned. This is what a dough rounder looks like.The whole concept of clean in the bakery was something you had to learn. To an outsider, it was impossible to walk in and judge whether the place was clean or not. An outsider would never think of looking at the inside surfaces of the dough rounder (a machine that rolls square blocks of dough into balls, shown in the picture at right) to see if they had been scraped clean. An outsider would obsess over the fact that the old oven had discolored panels, because those panels were huge. But a baker couldn’t care less whether the paint on the outside of their oven was starting to turn a little yellow. The bread still tasted just as good. [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/05/11/making-wrong-code-look-wrong/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/05/11/making-wrong-code-...

acabal 9y ago

I always found the prepper mindset a little curious. It seems to me that any kind of major disaster that would totally knock out reliable access to food and aid for 3-6 months (i.e. something worse than the recent hurricanes, more along the lines of climate-change-driven famine apocalypse) will also probably have knocked it out for far longer than that. What happens when one runs out of one's few months of stockpiles? For those of the prepper mindset, it would make more sense to start homesteading instead. That is, learning to grow and preserve one's own food, instead of stockpiling a little food but in the end still relying on our national food supply network. Homesteaders, I think, will be the ones who survive the true nuclear/climate change apocalypse, not preppers.

hayksaakian 9y ago
I think you're over looking the impact that natural disasters can have. Think about hurricane Katrina, or even the more recent season. Just because there is some aid doesn't mean your access is reliable enough for an entire family. There's never enough to go around to everyone who needs it, so the best you can do is be prepared.
- ThrowawayR2 9y ago
  Beyond that, on the west coast, there's concerns that there are massive earthquakes that have been overdue for a while and may occur sometime in the next couple of decades. "There is a 17 to 20 percent chance that northern Oregon will be hit by a magnitude-8 quake in the next 50 years." https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/a-major-earthquake-in-the-pacific-northwest-just-got-more-likely/495407/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/a-major-...
bsder 9y ago
Absolutely. The "preppers" are idiots. You can't survive more than a couple of weeks, at best, completely off the grid without extensive training and preparation--certainly not in an urban or suburban environment. The big one that people never seem to realize is that gasoline goes bad much quicker than you expect. However, Katrina cracked the shell of the idea that the government will help out competently in a timely fashion. You may be on your own longer than you think. And planning for that is simply sane in areas like California (fires and quakes), the Gulf Coast (hurricanes), or the Northeast in winter (ice storms).

maxerickson 9y ago

13,600 calories is enough food to actually feed a family of 4 for about 2 days. The "servings" of the meals listed on their website are about 250 calories. 500 calories is small meal for many adults.

NikolaeVarius 9y ago
I presume these are supposed to be survival rations. In a survival situation, I damn hope you're on a reduced calorie diet.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  700 calories a day isn't going to make that much difference over a week or two. It'll be a little happier.
- CapitalistCartr 9y ago
  Why hope that? Having enough calories is essential to being able to do strenuous work. Taking hunger out of the equation is the point of having a food reserve.
  - HorizonXP 9y ago
    I’d be more concerned about water TBH. Most of us carry a fair amount of fat, enough to survive several weeks without eating. Having rations available extends that timeline a lot. But without drinking water, that’s all moot, since you can’t survive long without that. Really depends on your timelines. Prep for short-term disaster scenarios on a 1-2 week timelines should be manageable for most, and really we should all be doing it. Prep for longer timelines is much harder.
    - gozur88 9y ago
      >I’d be more concerned about water TBH. Most of us carry a fair amount of fat, enough to survive several weeks without eating. They used to call it "the law of twos" - you can live two minutes without air, two days without water, and two weeks without food. So yeah, water is the big concern. Two weeks without food is the low end, but electrolyte imbalances can kill you even if you still retain plenty of stored calories.

sandworm101 9y ago

If this is really survival food, it is very complicated and expensive. Plain, normal, rice can be stored basically forever if you keep it dry. A few kilos of rice will keep a family alive through any natural disaster. Looking at the foods offered by this company, their customer base seems to be prepping for post-hurricane dinner parties.

sbierwagen 9y ago
White rice has little fat or protein, and brown rice doesn't store very well. The gold standard for prepper grain is hard red wheat: https://store.lds.org/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product3_715839595_10557__-1__195792 https://store.lds.org/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product3_715...
- slv77 9y ago
  It’s mostly a cultural preference... Rice works as well as hard red wheat as far as calorie density goes and in the short term that’s all that really matters for adults. Rice also has some advantages as it’s more versatile in terms of cooking and taking flavors. A few cases of Minute Rice, a small camp stove and a variety of seasoning packets would be a win over a large bag of wheat. Longer term wheat has a higher protein content and has an advantage that it can be sprouted to increase vitamin content but you would need to be in pretty dire straights for that to make a difference. Neither wheat nor rice have enough fat content needed for long term survival. Neither wheat nor rice will sustain toddlers without a supplemental high quality protein source like milk or eggs.
maxerickson 9y ago
Brown rice is ~1600 calories per pound. So a few kilos won't last several people all that long. Cheap though ($1/pound at mass market retail in the US). Dry pasta is about the same on both measures.
- sandworm101 9y ago
  1600 will keep 4 people alive for a few days. Not fat and happy, but alive. A few kilos wold keep them alive for a couple weeks.

madengr 9y ago

Why not just buy canned food? Much cheaper and don't have to rehydrate it. Just eat though it.

slv77 9y ago
Most people are limited in storage space and canned foods aren’t very calorie dense as you’re storing mostly water. Inside cans are also coated with a plastic liner and over time that liner breaks down and can contaminate the food. This reduces shelf life especially for acidic foods like tomatoes or fruit. Families that want to store a couple of weeks of canned food need yards of shelf space and need to eat a lot of canned foods to rotate it before it deteriorates.

Taniwha 9y ago

I've somehow found my way onto some prepper spam list, and can't for the life of me get off - these people are bat-shit crazy, they need a big food poisoning scare or something

protomyth 9y ago

If you live in the north and don’t have a week of food stores then you are a bit of an idiot. Having long lasting food available is a peace of mind thing. Heck, given some history, having food in your car during the winter isn’t a bad idea. Last winter, I was stuck in my apartment for 3 days.

Dowwie 9y ago

Camper, back packer here. I benefit by this market as consumers demand better tasting food. A lot of dehydrated food tastes horrible, but some companies are competing by improving product. If you want to try some decent dehydrated good, try the Mountain House brand. Their beef stroganoff is surprisingly good. Doomsday prepping has really taken off in America. It's upsetting to think how many are squirreling away resources in a fortified bunker.

chiph 9y ago
Or stashed in a back closet somewhere. I lived in hurricane country for a long time, and having a week's worth of bottled water & shelf-stable food in the house just made good sense. (I was without power for 10 days after Hugo in 1989). I will say the taste has really improved over the years. I was fed some of the original MREs back in the 80's (guard duty at a USAF base) and the ones the military have today are way more palatable. Same with the freeze-dried food.

kalleboo 9y ago

I live in a country with regular earthquakes and recent experience with the government response to massive emergencies. Our preparedness is this: Water for 3 days, food for less than a week. Those things come in quickly from the government. After that initial couple of days, what people in stricken areas are desperate for: batteries to charge their phones. Toilet paper. Soap. Diapers. Sanitary pads. Plastic bags for waste. After that, the most important thing is having enough savings to rebuild your life after your home, belongings, town, job are all gone.