The Price of Food Storage
I had someone ask me today about buying a 3 month supply of food for their children. They wanted to know about dehydrated food. You all know I don’t believe in storing dehydrated food, except for milk and maybe cheese powder and powdered eggs, well, there may be a few more things. When our goal is two fold, to stay out of debt and to have a supply of food, I believe the best approach is real food, the foods we eat each day. You have heard it before but food storage saves me money because I never have to buy food, toiletries and cleaning supplies unless they are on sale. That’s right, saves tons of money and I have foods I can cook with every day. If an emergency arose my family would never notice a difference if I couldn’t go to the store.
I became curious about the cost of storing dehydrated foods so I spent an hour this morning doing a little research. If you follow the plan in Mother Hubbard: What She’s Doing Now, the same program we have been using in our Where to begin food storage, you would spend about $1,300 for a three month supply for a family of four. I checked several places today and the cost of a three month supply of dehydrated food for four people is between $2,000 and $4,000. Quite a significant difference. Think of the bills you could pay with the $700 to $2,700 difference and you would be able to feed your family real food!
Actually, I was pretty surprised just how big a difference there really is in the cost. So, once again food storage is not only a great comfort in case of disaster but also a great hedge against inflation and a great(and easy) way to save money.
Let me put in a vote for dehydrated food — if you do it yourself. You can store enormous amounts of dehydrated fruits and vegetables in containers that won’t come crashing down on you in an earthquake or could easily be removed in large quantities in a disaster. I make double crock pot meals and dehydrate half. I take these meals on the road, backpacking, and use them at home when I don’t want to do anything more than boil water. You need a heavy duty dehydrator to do all this, but it’s allowed me to buy large quantities of fruits and vegetables on sale and store them for later with little more effort than than slicing and putting them in the dehydrator. Next project: a solar dehydrator, for larger quantities yet with no energy costs!
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.