BE INFORMED, BE READY 

 

Brandon Scott is a prepper’s prepper. When he’s not being mistaken for a member of the Duck Dynasty, he can be found buying, selling, bartering, trading, and generally preparing for the inevitable collapse of the US economy. For Brandon, it’s simple math. By varying estimates, the US taxpayer is in debt to the tune of one to several trillion dollars. That can’t go on. And like many of us, Brandon has seen the warning signs and prepared his family accordingly. A successful businessman in his own right, Brandon owns his own home, is a husband to a beauty queen and father to three intelligent children. He takes their well-being very seriously. Additionally, Brandon sees the moral imperative to warn his neighbor. So if you get him talking about the Constitution and the proper role of government, be ready to spend an afternoon learning.

 

Four years ago, having already well prepared his suburban Utah home with food and water stores, he was shocked by what he found one morning in his basement. Like any good prepper, Brandon knows that you have to rotate your food supplies. Nothing lasts forever. But what he found stunned and infuriated him. He pulled out a number 10 can of pancake mix to make breakfast for his children. This particular can, from a reputable food storage company, was sealed in 2007, and was informed that it had a stamped shelf life of 25 years. This was 2011, only four years into the supposed shelf life, and this can was bulging at both ends. Curious and somewhat infuriated, Brandon took the can, and several more like it that he found after digging through his food storage, to the School of Nutrition, Dietetics, and Food Science, in the College of Life Sciences, of Brigham Young University. He had just one question on his mind: How could this have happened?

 

His meetings with graduate researchers, tenured professors, and food scientists led him on a six-month journey of scientific research and discover that opened his eyes and gave him an insiders perspective of an industry ripe with shady business practices, exorbitant margins, and downright deceit and corruption.

 

Armed with his newfound knowledge, Brandon set out to fix what he found in order to ensure his family’s survival when the shit hits the fan. Thus was born Eden Valley Farms.

 

In my position as a US Army Officer in November of 2013, I had met Brandon just before I left for the Army in 2010 and we became fast friends. Back then he didn’t have the beard that distinguishes him in a crowd, but he was not any less enthusiastic about anything he touched. Working with him upon leaving the Army, I got a crash course in what makes for good food storage, to avoid if you can, and what to never touch at all.

 

I’ve compiled a short list of the do’s and don’ts of buying and preparing your long-term food storage. This information comes from university food scientists, farmers, and industry insiders who spoke candidly to me on several occasions over the last nine months.

 

 

 

SHELF LIFE IS A MYTH 

 

First of all, anyone who tells you without blinking that their food has a 30-year shelf life is selling you snake oil. Here’s the fact: The only group, entity, firm, company, or otherwise that has ever done a shelf-life study on long-term food storage is the Mormon Church, and their study only covered staple items like wheat.

 

Not a single company, including the one I represent has done the study and for two reasons. One, it’s freaking expensive. Two, in order to determine if food is really good after 25 years, you would have to set it aside for 25 years and test it and taste it after 25 years and nobody wants to do that.

 

I have noticed that the only people that read the labels on the food that they buy are those who suffer from allergies, be it a gluten intolerance or a reaction to nuts. You must- it is imperative that you do- read the labels. And here’s why:

Your Food Will Only Last as Long as Its Weakest Link (Ingredient)

 

What Brandon found that day at BYU was that a lot of companies, including the most reputable firms, are filling their food with cheap ingredients in order to pad their bottom line. If you go to the store and buy a bottle of canola or vegetable oil, it will last about 18-24 months in your kitchen cabinet. Most of the items on the market today are loaded with soy bean oil, canola oil, and many other oils hydrogenated oils.

 

How can a company claim that their canned food will last for 25 or even ten years if one of the ingredients goes rancid after no more than two years? It’s impossible but that’s exactly what happens all over the industry.

 

Cheap oils like canola, vegetable, sunflower, and soy bean oil are used in large quantities simply because their cheap. But that means your worry-free food storage probably won’t be there when you need it.

 

Look for tropical oils. At Eden Valley Farms we use only Coconut Oil or Palm Oil when our recipes call for it. Tropical Oils have a shelf-life of 12-15 years, and we readily tell our customers that. Twelve to Fifteen isn’t 25, but it’s better than two, and it’s much better than being lulled into a false sense of security.

 

A similar problem is found with foods that contain meat. No matter what you do to it- dehydrate it, freeze dry it, etc- animal protein will break down and spoil in five years. Seven if you’re lucky. For that reason, we don’t put any meat in our products. We use the highest possible quality grade-A extracts, bases, and stocks. I regularly show customers at our factory store a small sample bottle of dehydrated grade-A Andouille Sausage Extract. I could live in that bottle.

 

If the product you’re looking at is a vegetable-based dish, such as sweet and sour Rice (it seams every company has a sweet and sour rice dish) or some sort of beans and rice, make sure it doesn’t contain any kind of sweetener like high-fructose corn syrup. Avoid hydrolyzed syrups, sweeteners, or oils. They will not last. If the dish you’re inspecting is full of vegetables, legumes, and/or pasta, and spices and doesn’t contain any hydrolyzed or otherwise artificial ingredients, you can probably safely assume that you’ll get 20-25 years of shelf life, under the right conditions. That means store it in the dark, off the floor, in the coolest part of the house. I once helped a lady who told me she had put all of her number 10 cans in storage in a shed in the backyard in Virginia. She said she was shocked to find that over the summer they had all rusted. I wasn’t shocked at all.

 

 

 

AVOID MEAT SUBSTITUTES

 

With my warning against meat comes one more caveat. If you are male, you should avoid Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP). TVP is a soy-based meat substitute found in many food storage recipes. Every company in the industry uses it. Every company but Eden Valley Farms. The problem is that soy messes with male chemistry. It elevates estrogen levels and in large quantities can lead to health problems in men. In documented extreme cases, high levels of soy consumption (from things like soy milk) can lead to breast cancer in men. You probably don’t want that.

 

If you want to eat meat with your food storage (and who doesn’t) you’re better off hunting, or, more realistically, you’re better off bottling your own meat. You can do this at home. Youtube has plenty of how-to videos. Or, call the Mormon Church. Most local congregations maintain some form of canning facilities that they allow the public to use. Call them. (Those Mormons are everywhere).

 

 

 

 

LOOK FOR NITROGEN FLUSHING
 

There are three major manufacturers in this industry, and there are a few smaller independent manufacturers like Eden Valley Farms. But what that means is that most of the other companies you’ve heard of are repackaging and rebranding someone else’s food. Quality control suffers, and margins go up.

 

Of all the companies in this industry, only a few flush their products with nitrogen before sealing and packaging them; Eden Valley Farms is one of those companies. Some companies claim to flush their food, but they do not nitrogen flush all of their food, only some of it.

 

Nitrogen flushing is essential to the long-term quality and “freshness” of your food for one simple logical reason. Nitrogen is denser than and therefore dispels oxygen. Bacteria needs oxygen to grow and survive. If there is no oxygen, there can be no bacteria. The industry standard for oxygen content is about 5%. (For reference, at sea-level, the atmosphere is 21% oxygen.)

It’s not a 100% solution. In fact, it’s more like 3-4% solution; nitrogen flushing is effective at eliminating all oxygen with allowance for a 3-4% margin or error or residual content. But why take a chance with oxygen absorbers? You know what absorbs lots of oxygen? Bacteria. Brandon found that out the hard way.

 

 

AVOID #10 CANS 

 

They’re bulky, they’re very uncomfortable to carry in a backpack in an emergency, and they’re not truly resealable. Oh, and they rust. Let’s not forget that. Plus, what do you do when your can opener is lost or breaks?  Yes there still are ways to open a can without a real can opener, but scraping cans on concrete is a lot of work and you might severe a tendon opening a can with a knife. In a grid-down scenario, that’s nightmare.

 

Avoid number 10 cans. Look for heavy-duty, poly-mylar, resealable (and nitrogen-flushed) pouches. I’m not talking about cheap gold foil like some shady companies use. The lined, industrial-grade, poly-mylar pouches we use at Eden Valley Farms can be beaten up, thrown in a lake, resealed, and generally neglected but they’ll still protect your food. If the basement floods, they’ll even rise to the surface, making collection a game of sorts; bobbing for food, as it were.

 

 

 

WHAT ELSE?

 

With all of this, there’s other common-sense things to look out for that are often over-looked.  Stay away from MSG and trans-fats. You probably shouldn’t trust GMO foods either. Look for Sea Salt. It’s lower in sodium than regular table salt. Avoid companies that sell you bulk kits with “1000 Hearty Servings” when 300 of those servings are sugar-filled “drink mix.” Often times our customers inquire about bulk orders and we always tell them that we don’t do “set kits.” They may have allergies or picky kids. Why buy case after case of stroganoff if their children won’t eat it?

 

What Brandon has done and what I have helped him do, is establish an honest, reputable food manufacturing company that we ourselves trust with our stomachs and lives. I can vouch for the fact that Brandon’s kids devour his Strawberry Creamy Wheat for breakfast. It’s a common myth that if you’re starving you’ll eat anything. It’s simply not true. I lived in Brazil for two years before finishing college and after 18 months there I couldn’t eat another spoonful of beans and rice no matter how hungry I was. Anyone who has worked in a fast-food restaurant could probably share a similar experience. We’ve set out to create a variety of recipes that are flavorful, hearty, and most importantly healthy. We’ve set out to make sure that our food will last as long as it’s supposed to. By all measures we’ve succeeded. I’m not saying you have to buy from us. Hopefully, at the very least you can use this information to help prepare your family for what’s coming. Hopefully you’ll be better armed with information and skepticism and will be able to avoid the pitfall that Brandon found himself in. Fortunately, Brandon made that mistake before the SHTF.

At the risk of advertising, feel free to hit us up with any questions. Dwells@edenvalleyfood.com. We’ll hook you up with exactly what you need or set you straight one way or the other. Regardless, we’ll be honest with you because we really don’t feel like going to hell.