Tag Archives: Food

What to Look For When Purchasing One Year Food Storage

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Have you decided it’s time to beef up your food storage? It can be a daunting task. While building up a full year’s supply of food may seem to be a little extreme, it’s a worthy goal in these times of uncertainty. What should you look for when selecting a whole year’s worth of food? Here are some important things to consider.

Production Process

Is the food canned, dehydrated, or freeze-dried? Or a combination of all three? Each of these methods has it’s advantages and disadvantages. Freeze-dried foods, for example, a light-weight and have excellent color and taste retention, but they’re expensive. If you want meat, it’s the only way to go. Dehydrated foods will substitute textured vegetable protein (TVP) for meat. It doesn’t taste bad, but it’s not meat. Dehydrated foods will also be heavier.

Shelf Life

Shelf life for typical food storage items can vary from 10 to 30 years, depending upon the type of food, the manufacturing process, and the packaging. Your storage method will also be a factor.

Food Content:

If you expect your family to actually eat your food storage, you’ll want to pay close attention to what food your getting. Okay, I’m being a little funny here, but seriously, you need to have food that you like to eat and doesn’t require you to completely change your diet. Having barrels of whole winter wheat on hand used to seem like a good idea at one time, but if don’t have a grinder or just aren’t into making everything from scratch, you’ll want to consider not only the taste and nutritional value, but also the preparation time, skill level, and required tools or appliances.

Cost Per Serving

This is obviously an important factor, but not that easy to do since there are so many variable in servings, including weight, calorie content, nutritional value, and obviously taste.

Calories

Manufactures will typically tell you the total number of calories contained in their package deals, but you should also look at the number of calories per serving and the number of servings per day. The average person supposedly needs 2000 calories per day. Not all package deals will contain that many. And of course you also should try to calculate what your family actually needs.

Convenience

This can vary a lot depending on what types of foods you’re getting. Single-ingredient packaging require more time and skill because you are measuring and combining items to come up with the final meal. Pre-packaged foods require a lot less time and effort, but also severely limit the types of meals you can create.

Packaging

The days of 100 lb barrels of food are pretty much gone. Today you’ll likely receive the food in much more convenient #10 cans or in even more convenient mylar pouches. The cans are still too large for a typical family to consume in one meal, but after opened, and with plastic lids on, they’ll keep for several month, typically. The mylar pouches only contain a few servings so you’ll typically prepare it all at once. One drawback to the pouches is that they don’t stack up like cans. One company, Wise Foods, puts their pouches in square plastic buckets, which do stack easily.

Payment Options

Some companies will allow you to purchase on a monthly payment plan over an extended period. This helps a lot since most of us can’t afford to purchase a whole year’s worth of food all at once.

Turnaround Time

It can take up to 6 weeks to receive your food so it’s worth asking your supplier how long you’ll have to wait.

Avoid These Dog Food Ingredients

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What really is used as fillers in cheap dog food?

Used in low quality, cheap commercial dog food, fillers are basically put in the dog’s “food” to save the manufacturer money, not to increase nutritional values. Included are products that are not edible and difficult for our pets to digest such as: cereal byproducts, – cottonseed hulls, – crushed peanut shells, – straw, – corn and crushed corncobs, – weeds, and – feathers.

A cheap dog food filled with corn fillers, listed as corn, corn meal, and corn gluten meal should be avoided as this is used as substitute for higher quality animal protein sources.

These fillers are not just unpalatable, but can be dangerous to your pet. They can cause digestive problems, allergies, and in immune deficient puppies or older pets can cause severe medical problems..

What is a by-product?

Found in cheap dog food, meat by-products are euphemisms for parts of animals that wouldn’t be considered edible by any smart consumer.

Meat by-products actually do not contain meat. By-products are part of the animals that are left over after the meat has been stripped away from the bone. This disgusting cheap dog food mishmosh would then include heads, feet, entrails, hoofs,lungs, spleens, kidneys, brains, stomachs (still with undigested food inside) bones, blood (some with hormones and medications included) intestines and loads of other carcass parts that are not fit for human consumption.

Also, the boiled down flesh of road kill, zoo animals, and 4-D (dead, diseased, disabled dying) livestock is considered okay with these manufacturers. This also can include dogs and cats that have been euthanized. Avoid dog food with blood meal, which is an inexpensive protein booster. The animal source is usually not stated, and the blood can be contaminated with residues of hormones, or medications.

What is a non-specific meat source?

If the main protein source is listed as “meat” this is to be avoided.

It is always mystery meat such as: spoiled rotten meat from the grocery store (Styrofoam wrap and all), Road kill that can’t be buried on the roadside, heads, feet, skin, hair, feathers, carpel and tarsal joints, and mammary glands are used from the slaughterhouses.

Animals that have died from diseases, cancerous tissue and all, – tumors and worm infested organs are also rendered. Injection sites are rendered, blood clots and all. Stomach and unclean bowels are rendered. Contaminated material including blood is rendered. Carcasses with high levels of drugs or pesticides in excess of limits prescribed under the FDA (not fit for human consumption) are rendered.

Everything is pitched into large vats and slowly ground, then cooked at low temps till the grease rises to the top. And consider that this is what is listed on the ingredient list as “animal fat”. The rest of what is remaining is then pressed until the moisture is completely removed, and this dry raw material that is referred to as “meat”, is then used in the cheap dog food brands.

Why are artificial colors, preservatives and flavors used?

Flavor is added, because most pets wouldn’t eat the finished product without some sort of cover up for the horrible smell. These additional flavors are usually from rancid restaurant grease. The used rancid grease is picked up after sitting out in barrels, in the sun for weeks. This is what the pet food manufacturers buy to add as flavoring, which is sprayed onto the kibble. Also sugar or corn syrup is used to cover up the bad taste of the inferior kibble.

Different dyes are used to make the food look good to us, the pet owner. Dyes are known carcinogenic causing additives, and I’m quite certain my pet, or yours, does not care what color their food is.

Artificial preservatives are used to extend the shelf life of the dog food. The main ones to avoid are: BHA (butylated hydroxytolulene), propyl gallate, propylene glycol (also used in automotive antifreeze, and is suspected of causing red blood cell damage) and ethoxyquin. These are all potentially cancer causing agents that your pets are eating every day.

This all sounds pretty grim, but rest assured there are many extremely excellent, ultra premium dog foods now being manufactured without any of the above crap in them. These highly reputable and conscientious companies have philosophies aimed at providing you and your pet the best of the best when it comes to nutrition and peace of mind.

A lot of pet owners are also now making their own all natural homemade dog food, and this is always better than the junk the commercial pet food manufacturers are feeding our pets. It is easy, and comparable in price to buying the premium organic dog food brands, as long as you use a proper nutritionally balanced dog food recipe. There are many all natural, healthy dog food recipe books for sale, and also readily available on the internet are all sorts of high quality dog food recipes E-books and websites featuring home cooked pet food.

Whatever you choose for your pet, remember we speak for them, and choose the best for them that you are able to give.

How to Buy the Right Dog Food for Your Pit Bull Terrier

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Knowing exactly which dog food to buy for your Pit Bull terrier can be confusing. There are countless options available when you go to the store and many of them are very unhealthy choices. Dog food is offered in packets, cans, or large bags. Dog foods that are mass prepared can be high in quality and well balanced, it is important that you buy the best you can afford. Most of the larger dog food companies maintain testing laboratories that check for quality and nutritional value.

Basically, there are three different types of dog food.

1. Dry food

2. Semi moist food

3. Canned food.

Dry foods are made up of roughly ten percent water. The raw ingredients used to make dry dog food differs greatly from brand to brand, so stick with a higher quality food.

These dry foods are generally less expensive when compared to semi-moist and canned foods. This is beneficial if you own several dogs or have one that eats more than the typical canine. You can also purchase dry dog food in bulk quantities and store them for several weeks. Storing dry dog foods for too long may reduce the nutritional value of it however.

Semi-moist foods contain more water than dry foods, typically in the range of 25%. Semi moist dog food is usually offered in the form of chunks of meat or simulated hamburger. Given the choice, most dogs prefer semi moist foods over dry foods, however these foods aren’t as good for a dog’s dental health.

Canned foods are the most popular choice of dog food and it is available in two different forms. The first kind of canned food has a cereal component, making it a complete diet. The second type has a meat only component that doesn’t give the dog a very balanced diet unless something like a dog biscuit is given in addition to the bowl of food.

No matter what you choose to feed your dog, be sure to follow the feeding instructions on the packaging as they differ greatly. Don’t overfeed your Pit Bull by feeding him extra large portions or extra meals throughout the day and be sure to get your dog out for his daily walk.