Last Updated on December 7, 2019 by Lisa Vargas
There are several different emergency survival food kits on the market today made by several different manufacturers. If you are trying to determine what the best survival food kits manufacturer is to buy your food from, this post will help to shed some light on some of the most popular manufacturers who make freeze-dried food kits.
25-Year Emergency Food Supply
if you are just getting started with your research on the best survival food kits, you will notice that there are several manufacturers out there that make various types of food. The question seems to be who makes the best survival food?
Some are more popular than others. Some have better storage containers than others. And some can be extremely expensive.
I wanted to make sure that you know a little bit about the manufacturers of these emergency food products, so that you can make the best informed decision possible. I’ve only listed some of the best below, so feel free to read a little bit about each one.
Mountain House Survival Food
Mountain House started in Oregon in 1969 and provides amazing food for preppers and campers that include breakfasts, entrees, desserts, sides & meats, and military preparations.
They originally started by providing meals for the U.S. Military Special Forces almost 50 years ago. They are a well-known company that you will find produces the highest-quality, best tasting meals around. You will find they are very popular with campers and backpackers.
The awesome thing about Mountain House is that they have a 30 year guarantee on all of their foods.
The Ready Store
Jeff and Amy David founded The Ready Store in 2002 and have become leaders in the emergency food storage industry. They were a simple family that believed in having extra food on hand and preparing for any type of disaster for their family.
They introduced other items such as meals ready to eat (MREs). In 2008 they introduced a new line of food called Saratoga Farms, which grew like crazy and is now a very popular brand among preppers.
Augason Farms
Augason Farms has been in business over 40 years and is one of the top suppliers of emergency preparedness foods.
Their company is a family run company that was started by Phil Augason in 1972 because he was disappointed at the time with the emergency food on the market at the time.
Believe it or not, they first started with powdered milk and moved into what you will see today as a full suite of emergency food kits.
Wise Survival Food
The Wise Company has been bringing excellency and high-quality to food prepping in the marketplace year over year. They supply a variety of different items including emergency food survival kits, supplies such as cooking gear, survival packs and pet kits, and medical first aid kits.
They are one of the most trusted brands of emergency food kits on the market.
Eden Valley Farms
Eden Valley Farms is not as big of a name as The Wise Company, but they still have great meal kits that will serve you well. Eden Valley Farms buys, mixes, freeze-dries, and packages all of their own foods.
They take pride that their entrees contain no MSG, no trans-fats, and no hydrogenated oils/hydrolyzed syrups. All of their bags are nitrogen flush sealed and they make sure to use poly-mylar bags to seal everything. A great company to try out some of their food items.
Prep Basics
Prep Basics‘ tagline is “Pure Goodness In Emergency Food.” Their products taste wonderful, have a long shelf life, and use only quality ingredients. They provide emergency food kits, dairy products, medical kits, and freeze-dried fruits and vegetables.
They don’t have their own website outside of Amazon, so you can view all of their products there. They don’t have as many choices as the other bigger companies like Mountain House or The Wise Company, but they still have tasty options .
Legacy Premium Food Storage
Legacy Premium Food Storage claims to have one of the lower costs per 2000 calories. You will notice that their prices are a little less then some of the bigger branded companies like The Wise Company.
They have supplies such as survival meal kits, drinks, dehydrated meats, fuels, survival seed kits, and much more. None of Legacy’s products are made with artificial flavors, GMA, MSG, or AYE (autolyzed yeast extract)
Valley Food Storage
Valley Food Storage is a fantastic company that takes great care in the quality of its packaging. Everything is packed in good-grade, high-quality mylar bags with all of the information you need written out directly on the label.
The best thing about Valley Food Storage is their 25 year shelf-life guarantee on their products. they have everything from long term food supply kits to water purification supplies. Valley Food Storage is a fantastic company that provides tasty freeze-dried food options for all occasions.
Northwest Fork
Northwest Fork is a much smaller company but I wanted to include them as they are vegan, kosher and soy, gluten, nut and GMO free. You can find some of their products on Amazon, but they are so small they don’t even have a store on Amazon.
NuManna
NuManna is a company that specializes in organic emergency food kits. They are a fairly new company that was founded in 2011 by Daniel Brigman. Mr. Brigman and his wife have a history and passion for emergency survival and has dedicated their lives to helping others and focuses in on high-quality and standards for all of their food products.
You can find defender packs, non-gluten, organic, meats, combo packs, and even water filters and fire stoves. Although not as seasoned as the other “big boys,” they still are making a name for themselves as a high-quality, organic emergency food supplier.
Chef's Banquet
Chef’s Banquet is a company you will run into that has a few products that fall into the meal kit category. They also have some nice freeze-dried fruit buckets and vegetable buckets, but probably their most popular item is their 30 day emergency food kit on Amazon.
Nutristore
As you are doing your emergency meal kit research you will see Nutristore come up from time to time with various canisters of freeze-dried fruits and vegetables. Nutristore was actually created by a company called FoodStorage.com.
Even though the Nutristore brand does not offer meal kits, you will find that they have some pretty healthy options to add to your emergency food storage reserves.
Lindon Farms
Lindon Farms is located in the foothills of the Wasatch mountains. They take pride in providing high-quality freeze-dried foods to families preparing for disaster. All of their products are manufactured in house, which allows them to oversee the quality of each batch that goes out.
Costco Survival Food
You might be wondering if Costco has survival food. And the answer to this question is an astounding – YES (kind of)! You can’t physically get emergency bulk food kits at Costco, but you can order them online on Costco’s website. Having survival food available at Costco makes sense since Costco is known for selling any item in bulk. That’s why there prices are so great.
Costco carries Chef’s Banquet, which you learned about above. They sell large, 27 lb. buckets of macaroni and cheese which contains 180 servings for you and your family. These survival food buckets, according to Costco’s guidelines have a 20-year shelf-life.
With all of that said, Costco’s Chef’s Banquet Macaroni and Cheese 27 lb bucket offering is so popular that it’s usually sold out! It can be difficult to get your hands on this survival food bucket. That’s why people tend to go to Amazon and order it just as easily.
You can read more about the emergency survival food that Costco carries by reading this Reader’s Digest article about Costco’s survival food kit offerings.
Best Deal On Emergency Food
After reading about all of these various manufacturers of emergency bulk food, you may be wondering which brand has the best deal. Well, essentially you can calculate that by determining the cost per serving. Each bucket may have a different amount of pouches, but ultimately you are looking for costs related to servings or cost per 2000 calories.
But this doesn’t always work. For example, Legacy Food Storage has the lowest cost per pound. The Wise Company starts at as little as $1 per serving. You can also calculate these survival food kits by price per 2000 calories.
As you can tell, there is a variety of different ways that you can calculate the value of this long term food source. It just depends on what is most important to you.
Last Minute Thoughts
So who makes the best survival food? Choosing the best survival food manufacturer is going to come down to taste quality, consistency of the product quality, and overall customer service. I would suggest you try a package of each of these, if you can, and get an idea of what flavors you like.