Best (and Worst) Survival Food Kits

Survival food kits can be incredibly useful in an emergency, or they can be a complete waste of money.  It depends both on the kit you choose (and the nature of the emergency).

I’m all for preparing for the worst, but if you’re going to prepare, remember your brain is your most valuable asset.  Don’t buy dumb stuff.

Time and time again I see reviews for the best survival food, where people have bought huge stocks of survival food and never bothered to try it.  They never bothered to try it, or even to think about it before they bought it.

Does this kit make sense?  In an emergency, will this kit actually help me feed my family?

Best Survival Food Kits

I’ve written up an extensive review of most of the survival food kits on the market below, the best and the worst.  It’s a long article, and I’d encourage you to read it before making your final choice.

For those of you that prefer to cut to the chase, here’s the quick version:

• My Patriot Supply is the best all-around emergency food company right now.  Their food is tasty, their packaging is excellent, and they’re the best value for your money.
• Mountain House is the premium option.  Their meals cook right in the pouch with just boiling water, the flavor is amazing, and they have great multi-day kits.  They’re really expensive, though.
• Emergency Essentials is who I mostly use now for bulk freeze-dried fruit, vegetables, and meat.  Their quality is better than anything you can get in the grocery store.
• Nutrient Survival and Valley Food Storage are also good choices.  For Nutrient Survival, go with their #10 cans, since the smaller pouches aren’t packed for long-term storage.

ReadyWise and Augason Farms are a step down.  They’ll get the job done, but there are many better ways to spend your money.

I do not recommend the following companies:

• 4Patriots (different from My Patriot Supply): You’ve probably seen their advertisements, and they’re incredibly convincing.  That’s because they’re a marketing company that re-packs and re-sells survival food.  They don’t actually produce anything themselves, they just rebrand it.  I’d encourage you to read my full review of 4Patriots for details.
• Legacy Food Storage: You can read why in my Legacy Food Storage review.

Best Survival Food

When you look at a survival food kit, start with a healthy dose of common sense.

A while back my husband sent me a link to a survival food kit, with the subject line: What’s wrong with this?  I looked at the contents, and instantly knew what he was talking about.  It was a huge kit, all in #10 cans.

There’s nothing wrong with #10 cans in general, but once you open a perishable #10 can without refrigeration, you have at best 2 to 3 days before it spoils.  This kit included several #10 cans of beef gravy.

Get a spoon Bubba, you’re eating nothing but gravy for the next 48 hours.

Beyond just technical practicality, I think people get caught up in the fever of preparedness and don’t think about it from a rational economic perspective.  One pack of “survival pasta” I came across was 50 oz of elbow macaroni for the budget price of $50.

Are you kidding me?  Is there a gold bar hidden at the bottom?  A dollar an ounce for pasta is about, oh I don’t know, 20 to 30 times what pasta should cost.

While on the one hand, you are paying for the long-term storage packaging, and you should expect to pay a slight premium, use your head.  A slight premium doesn’t mean losing your shirt.  For that same price, you could buy a 5-gallon bucket and a gamma seal lid, along with 5 gallons of pasta…and then still have money left over for a celebratory 6 pack.

What Makes a Good Survival Food Kit?

Emergency survival food is just food that has a long shelf life, good nutritional profile, and ideally, is easy to cook.  The very best emergency food is food that your family will normally eat, and so that you already know how to cook it and are accustomed to eating it.  Let’s start with the basics:

• Easy to Cook: In a short-term emergency, you may not have fuel or time for hours of boiling.  For longer-term kits, this is less of an issue.
• Things You Know How to Cook: Wheat berries are great in theory, but unless you have a hand crank grain grinder and know how to cook with whole grains, you might be eating a lot of gruel.
• Manageable Package Sizes: Most emergency food is only guaranteed until you break the seal.  Make sure it’s packed so you can eat it all before it spoils, and resealable if it contains more than 1 serving.
• Plenty of Calories: While you can probably live on 1,300 calories a day, you’re planning ahead so you don’t have to, right?
• High Nutritional Content: Instant white rice and Kool-Aid have plenty of calories, but you can’t live on it for long.
• Reasonable Prices: Expect to pay a premium for a premade kit, but use your head and don’t lose your shirt.
• Long Shelf Life without Refrigeration: The power almost always goes out at the worst time.

Beyond the basics, here are a few nice to have traits:

• No Unnecessary Ingredients: Eating a chemical cocktail before the apocalypse doesn’t make sense, and it makes even less sense to compromise your health in an emergency.
• Can Withstand Freezing Temperatures: If you’re in a cold climate, and the heat goes out, all your home canned goods in mason jars may break.
• Comfort Food: Familiar foods and comfort foods help with the emotional side of managing an emergency.

If you have the time, I’d suggest investing in good food storage equipment and storing your own pantry staples, rather than actually buying a premade kit.  Things like a vacuum sealer or food storage buckets with airtight lids are reasonably cheap, and allow you to safely store your family’s favorite foods.

A gamma seal lid turns a 5-gallon bucket into an airtight food storage container, that you can open and then reseal.  Rather than #10 cans of prepared food that can only be opened once, you can pack just about any storable food into a 5-gallon bucket, and access it as you need it with a twist-off lid.

Then add in a few shelf-stable survival foods, like powdered butter, powdered eggs, and powdered milk.

Still, sometimes you want a bit of extra insurance, and outsourcing the planning takes one more thing off your plate.  If you are going to buy a pre-made survival food kit, here’s a rundown of the pros and cons of the top survival food kits on the market.

(I received free samples from most of these companies for my honest unbiased review.  As you’ll see, I’m giving my honest opinions below, and some of the brands I tried were downright horrible.  Others were amazing, and everywhere in between.  Regardless, these are my honest opinions on the quality of the survival kits provided.)

Mountain House

Really simple shelf-stable foods, like just add water oatmeal allow you to put food on the table quickly and without a lot of equipment.  The problem is, you can’t live on oatmeal packets alone.  Freeze-dried meals allow you the ease of instant just add water food, but they can be almost anything, including meat and high protein items.

I’m a huge fan of big buckets of dried beans, but those only help you for a long-term emergency.  For the short term emergency, when you need simple, quick-cooking food for a week or less, freeze-dried foods are the way to go.

Mountain House is the premium option for survival food and instant camping food.  Their meals cook right in the pouch with just boiling water, so there are no dishes, and in a pinch they’ll even rehydrate with cold water.  The flavor is amazing, and campers eat it every day.  They’re really expensive, though, so they’re what I’d buy if cost matters less.  (Read my complete Mountain House Meals Review.)

Mountain House sells a number of prepackaged emergency food kits:

• Three-Day Emergency Food Kit : Three just add water meals per day, totaling roughly 1,700 calories per day.
• Classic Emergency Food Bucket: A mix of their most popular breakfasts and entrees.
• Essential Emergency Food Bucket: 12 gluten-free meals, 22 servings in all.

I also love that they have a lot of really unique one-off items like freeze-dried ice cream sandwiches.  Are they practical?  Nope.  And they’re definitely weird astronaut food, but they’re great for making a 5-year-old feel better in a crisis, even for a few minutes.

Keep in mind that you’ll need some way to boil water, which can be a challenge in some homes without electricity.  This BioLite camp stove burns twigs and debris to cook and boil water, and it turns some of that heat energy into electricity for charging devices by USB cable.  All handy in an emergency.

Mountain House also sells #10 cans of freeze-dried food, which is much more economical than individual serving packets.   I got a chance to try freeze-dried rice from an “antique” 17-year-old can.  How does it hold up?  Pretty darn good.

I followed the instructions, poured on boiling water and it was pretty amazing.  It says “ready in 5 minutes” which isn’t quite right.  After 5 minutes of soaking, the rice tasted a bit like wet rice crispies.  I was skeptical, but it just needed more time. 

Amazingly, after 15 minutes of soaking, it fooled my husband who thought it was freshly cooked rice.

The Downside?

Instant freeze-dried foods are expensive.  They’re convenient, tasty, and nutrient-dense, but you’re going to pay for it.  Most of the Mountain House emergency kits cover 3 to 30 days, and their 1-year supply costs about $10,370.

It’s a good idea to have some packs around to get you through short emergencies and maybe even a few #10 cans for the medium term.  For long-term emergencies, like 6 months or a year, you can get a better deal by sacrificing a bit of convenience.

Long-Term Survival Food Kits

Once you’re past the short-term emergency, long-term emergency planning can be a bit trickier. 

How do you fit several months or even a year’s worth of food in a reasonable amount of space, and at a reasonable cost?  For the long-term emergency, you’ll need to be set up for actual cooking as instant freeze-dried food just isn’t practical or economical.

My Patriot Supply

For a long emergency, My Patriot Supply is my current pick for the best all-around emergency food company.  Their food is tasty, their packaging is excellent, and they’re the best value for your money.

Their meals are just add water, but they’re not instant.  You cook them in a pot on the stove or over a campfire, so you do need to be able to boil water.  That’s fine in just about any emergency other than the most dire.

A 4-week kit costs about $280, with over 2,000 calories a day, and their 1-year supply is about $3,190.  (Read my complete My Patriot Supply Review.)

If you’re worried about water storage and filtration, they also have stainless steel water filters made by Alexapure (similar to Berkey, but less expensive).

Emergency Essentials

For bulk freeze-dried fruit, vegetables, and meat, I mostly use Emergency Essentials now.  Their quality is better than anything you can get in the grocery store.

My kids love freeze-dried fruit, and we buy quite a few #10 cans of freeze-dried strawberries from them every year.  We also use their freeze-dried meat and cheese to make our own just add water camping meals.

Valley Food Storage

If you’re planning for a longer emergency, Valley Food Storage is also a good choice.  Their food is still mostly prepared, meaning that it comes in easy to make entrees that are ready to cook.  Unlike Mountain House, which has you pour boiling water directly into the pouch and stir, these do require a bit of cooking.  All the food is “just add water,” but most of it needs to be simmered for about 8 to 10 minutes to cook. 

That 8 to 10 minutes of simmer time means you’ll need a good cooking pot, but if you don’t have that in a long emergency your chances are pretty slim anyway.  What does that short cook time get you?  Really spectacular flavor.

When you’re planning on eating emergency food right out of the packet, there are only so many things you can offer, but when you’re willing to do a tiny bit of cooking the options open up dramatically.  Valley Food Storage’s dishes were hands down the best-tasting survival food I’d tried at the time.  (Until I tried Nutrient Survival, and then I’d say they were dead even.)

I also love that they offer quite a bit of creative variety in their entrees.  While most kits are filled with oatmeal, mashed potatoes, pasta, and other bland, starchy food, Valley Food Storage entrees really show some creativity.  Options like mango habanero chili and chicken teriyaki mean that you’ll avoid appetite fatigue in the long term. 

They also offer comfort food staples to keep the kids happy, like apple oatmeal and mac & cheese.  The choice is up to you.

What blew me away about these kits was the quality.  The first thing I opened up was their package of freeze-dried strawberries, which were hands down the best freeze-dried fruit I’d ever eaten at the time.  I seriously couldn’t keep my kids’ hands off them long enough to take a picture…  

I was so impressed that I actually went out and ordered freeze-dried strawberries from a couple of other suppliers, and I picked up a package from Trader Joe’s.  We did a blind taste test with the whole family, and there was no question.  Everyone, including my 3-year-old, could pick out the ones from Valley Food Storage.  The texture was much better, and the flavor was out of this world.  

They were so tasty I was inspired to make a batch of post-apocalyptic strawberry donuts using just food storage ingredients.   It’s always a good idea to practice cooking with your preps, and this was a good exercise that got the whole family in on the fun. 

Now I know I can make some pretty epic donuts from a homemade just add water mix, and my kids see cooking with our preps as just another fun way to get treats.  That pre-conditioning will come in handy if we ever actually need these in an emergency.

Valley Food Storage has a la carte options where you can buy just the meals that suit your family’s tastes, or you can just purchase a pre-made kit.  They have a number of options, ranging from 72 hour kits to 1 year food supplies.

The Downside?

Good quality comes at a cost.  Their 30-day emergency food kit costs about $760.  That’s less than Mountain House, where a 30-day emergency food supply is about $940, but it’s a lot more than a 4-week kit from My Patriot Supply at about $280.

Some of their meals also don’t cook quite right with their instructions, and the packaging in my more recent orders hasn’t been the best.  (Read my complete Valley Food Storage Review.)

Nutrient Survival

When they launched in 2020, I’ll admit I was skeptical of Nutrient Survival.  I assumed they started up as a fly-by-night operation to take advantage of the run on survival food at the time.  They offered to send me a few cans of food to test, and I was blown away!

Back then, they only offered a few products, but I tried just about all of them and they’re absolutely delicious.

They advertise that their survival foods are nutrient fortified, and high protein, with added Omega fatty acids to keep you healthy in a crisis.

Looking at the nutrition label, I was impressed.  Somewhere between 25 and 70% of the daily value of most nutrients in a single serving, plus more than 1400 mg of Omega fatty acids.  My doctor recommended I take a pricey Fish Oil supplement that costs 50 cents a capsule, and it only delivers 1280 mg. 

Not a bad bonus from your survival food…

They market their breakfast scramble in direct competition with the breakfast skillet from Mountain House.  They boast that theirs has more calories, protein, and nutrients for less money.  That’s all well and good, but how does it taste?

Nutrient Survival‘s version cooked fast and tasted great, and I’ll have to just take their word for the nutrition facts.  They make a darn good scramble!

Beyond their freeze-dried survival meals, Nutrient Survival also offers some really innovative ready-to-eat “cookie meals.”  They’re protein-rich and vitamin-fortified “cookies” that taste an awful lot like the Clif bars I take hiking sometimes.

My kids love them, and thus far I’ve managed to use them as a really effective bribe.  If they’re really good all day, they can have one special cookie for dessert.  Not a bad deal, and nutrition-wise they’re infinitely better than just about any other treat I could possibly offer.

In a crisis, keeping kids happy, comfortable, and well-behaved can be tricky…and these are perfect for getting the job done and feeding them at the same time.

Beyond the homestyle scramble and cookie meals (in both chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin), they also offer comfort food favorites like macaroni & cheese,  southwestern rice & beans, apple cinnamon oatmeal, maple almond granola, and nutrient-fortified instant chocolate milk.

They’ve added a lot more options since then, including Max Variety emergency food kits in #10 cans, and everything I’ve tried from them has been delicious.

The Downside?

Their smaller pouches aren’t packed for long-term storage, so for your emergency food stores, buy their #10 cans.  (Read my complete Nutrient Survival Review.)

It’s tasty enough to keep a few cans on the shelf to supplement your other emergency food stores.

Augason Farms

For the budget-minded, Augason Farms will get the job done, but it’s a step down, and there are many better ways to spend your money.  A low budget is going to cost you in either quality or convenience.  They offer two different routes, either pre-made just add water foods, or freeze-dried pantry staples (like powdered butter, powdered eggs, and powdered milk).  While I love the pantry items and use them regularly, the premade foods they offer are pretty horrible in my experience.

Augason Farms offers a premade 30-day survival food bucket rated at over 1,800 calories per day.  Most of the food included is labeled instant and is supposed to be easy to prepare with boiling water.  They may be “just add water,” but they’re not instant like Mountain House.  Most require 20+ minutes of cooking in a pot of boiling water.

Even though they require a substantial amount of cooking, I’ve been seriously unimpressed with the pre-made food I’ve tried from Augason Farms.  On the one hand, everyone has different tastes, and it may just not be a good match for mine, but my criticism goes beyond that.  I followed the instructions for this “creamy chicken flavored rice” and it just didn’t cook. 

I had to add nearly 3x the amount of water to get the rice to cook properly.  The “creamy sauce” was a slimy goop, and I wished I’d just had some plain white rice instead.  It would have been cheaper that way anyway…

Beyond the fact that most of the food in the kit requires substantial cooking, variety is lacking, as is protein.  The kit contains 30 servings of each of the following foods:  Cheese, Cheesy Broccoli Rice, Creamy Potato Soup, Creamy Chicken Rice, Hearty Vegetable Blend, Instant Potatoes, Macaroni, Maple Brown Sugar Oatmeal plus 80 servings of instant milk powder.  You are going to be eating the exact same set of foods every single day.

The samples I tried were technically food, and a lot better than eating rats, but I’d have to be pretty hungry to enjoy it. 

If you’re looking for a budget option, My Patriot Supply is a much better choice.

The Downside?

Their basic one-year kit contains 1,200 calories per day per person.  That’s enough to keep you alive, but you’ll need to supplement this kit with foraging, gardening, or hunting to make it realistic.  If you want more substantial amounts of food, you have to upgrade to their premium kit which includes a lot more variety and over 1,900 calories per person per day for only about 20% more money.  Well worth it, in my opinion, if you’re just looking for an easy solution, you don’t have to pack yourself.

ReadyWise (Formerly Wise Food Storage)

(Update: Wise Food Storage has rebranded as ReadyWise and changed their products, and their calorie counts are more reasonable now.  They’ve improved, but they’re still a third-tier choice for me: the food is low in protein, and the flavor isn’t great.  Here’s what I had to say about Wise Food Storage when I first wrote this post, and you can read my updated review of ReadyWise for current information.)

Wise food storage offers a number of just add water food storage kits, ranging from 1 month to 12 months.  Like Mountain House camping food, these just add water pouches are extremely convenient, but that convenience comes at a price.  These kits are some of the most expensive I’ve seen, and there’s not a lot to show for it.

While they do sell long-term emergency kits, but if you read the fine print, most only contain about 600 calories per person per day.  A “one-month emergency food supply” doesn’t list total calories per day, just that you get 3 servings of food. The problem is, when you look at the individual nutrition labels, a single serving has about 200 calories.  Saying 600 calories per day amounts to a 30-day kit is just a bald-faced lie, and I want nothing to do with a company that would lie to people that blatantly when it comes to their survival.

Their website is intentionally misleading, trying to hide the fact that their kits are short on calories, and they even insinuate that in a real emergency you should be eating 2 servings (ie. 400 calories) a day because who can expect 3 full meals in a crisis. 

I don’t expect to be eating like a king, but for the amount of money these kits cost, 400 calories is pretty pathetic.

As if that’s not enough, wait for it…they actually show pictures of how this kit could feed 4 people for a month, or 6 people if it’s two adults and 4 kids.  I don’t know about you, but I eat more than 600 calories a day, and so do my kids.  Over the course of a month, my husband and I would starve to death giving each of our kids our extra 600 calories a day, and our little ones would just barely make it through on 1200 calories a day each.

For science, I’d love to taste wise food storage’s kits, but I just can’t bring myself to give this company any money because of their dishonest marketing.  Even their “free sample” requires you to talk to a sales rep on the phone, and they require you to promise that if it tastes even halfway decent that you’ll buy a kit from them.  No thanks, I won’t be sampling these.

If you are going to choose a just add water option, go with Mountain House for the short term, and My Patriot Supply for 1+ months.  They’re both transparent about the nutritional content of their food, and high quality.

The Downside?

Misleading advertising, low calories, and high price…so just about everything.

All-Around Best Survival Food Kit

What would I pick for my family of 4?

For short-term emergency food, a classic bucket from Mountain House is the way to go.  If you’re looking for something to tide you over during a power outage or other short-term emergency, a just add water kit filled with proven camping food is just what you need. 

For long-term food storage, My Patriot Supply is the best all-around emergency food company right now.  Their food is tasty, their packaging is excellent, and they’re the best value for your money.  Just plan on cooking it in a pot rather than in the pouch.

For bulk freeze-dried fruit, vegetables, and meat, I mostly use Emergency Essentials, and you can combine them with your own pantry staples to make just about anything.

What Do I Store?

So now here’s the million-dollar question.  Now that I’ve done all this research for you, What do I actually store in my own basement?

We have a mix of options so that we can be prepared for a variety of different contingencies.  We keep a few Mountain House buckets available so we have a grab-and-go throw-in-the-car option if we need to evacuate for any reason.  The kids also love taking those camping, and will sometimes beg for a “camping lunch” where we cook them over a campfire in our yard. 

I say yard, but really, we live on 30 acres off the grid in the middle of the woods…so “yard camping” just means in the woods within sight of the house.

For the longer-term emergency, we keep about a dozen buckets of food sealed with gamma seal lids.  I don’t use mylar pouches because we constantly turn our inventory of flour, beans, rice, and pasta.  On top of that, I have #10 cans of powdered butter, powdered eggs, and powdered milk so that we can cook our favorite meals in a long emergency.

We’re avid canners, and here’s a stockpile of my favorite canning recipes if you’re curious.  Beyond home-canned food, we also have a number of #10 cans of freeze-dried fruit.  My little ones love freeze-dried fruit, and we buy quite a few #10 cans of freeze-dried strawberries from Emergency Essentials every year.

Beyond that, we hunt, salt cure meat, and grow much of our own food on our land.

Beyond Survival Food

Other things to think about…

Making Your Own Survival Food

If you can still get food locally or grow it yourself, you can create your own long-term storage survival food kits (my beginner guide to home freeze drying has the basics) with an in-home freeze dryer.

Water Filtration

Berkey water filters make some of the best in-home countertop water filters you can buy.  An Alexapure filter is a similar option, and it’s less expensive.  There are more filtration, purification, and storage options in my emergency water guide.

Power Generation and Storage

Having electricity, even a small amount of electricity, can bring a lot of comfort.  It’ll allow you to charge devices, run lamps, and some are powerful enough to run induction cooktops.  We have a Jackery 1500 portable power station with portable solar panels to keep it charged, and it’s enough to power almost anything we’d want in an emergency.  (They have smaller models too, which are good for just charging devices.  There’s more on choosing one in my roundup of the best portable power stations.)

Small Space Gardening

You can grow a substantial portion of your own food, even in small spaces.  We have a garden tower unit and we use it to grow fresh greens year-round for our family of 4 in our attached greenhouse.

Sanitation & Laundry

While I can’t help you with toilet paper, I’m all over off-grid laundry options and composting toilets.  We’re currently using a non-electric pedal-powered washing machine from Yirego and it’s really easy to operate (even by my 3-year-old).  We also use a composting toilet to save water/electricity and to generate more compost for the garden (if you’re interested, read more about our survival garden).  If you’re looking for an inexpensive option, there are kits to turn a 5-gallon bucket into a toilet, which is great for camping and short-term emergencies.