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With the exception of water, long term food storage might be the most important part of preparing, some might even say more important than water because of how easily our food supply line can be cut off and how far food has to travel in today’s world to reach our table.

Most of us in the United States have never gone more than 24 hours without food and have no idea how it will affect them, and although we can survive without food for a few weeks, if will be our main priority long before that. So lets talk about some long term food storage ideas.

If the average person were to walk into your home and see a Legacy food bucket they would probably make some wild assumptions right off the bat, but when you think about it, other than the shelf life and quantity, how different is long term food storage food than a box of hamburger helper?

Long term food storage, water storage and preparedness in general is nothing more than insurance for the future. What concerns me the most is not a nuclear bomb landing in my back yard, it’s our electrical grids vulnerability’s, economic instability and basic supply and demand.

Having a large supply of long term food storage food during the great depression would have been more valuable than gold.

Imagine you or someone in your family had lost their job for an extended period of time, with money being tight it would be a daily juggling act to pay the bills and buy food for the family. If you had a six month supply of dehydrated food that wouldn’t be such a huge hurdle, and would alleviate some of the stress you might be facing.

Imaging there was a natural disaster like an earthquake, or a hurricane like Katrina, if you had a few weeks of food stored that’s one less thing you have to worry about, and could literally be the difference between life and death.

My point is that long term food storage is not all about doomsday and does not make you a “doomsdayer.” Everyone is different and storing food for emergencies is just the smart thing to do. Some people store as little as a months’ worth of food, and some people store year’s worth, it’s really up to you what you decide to do.

This can be more cost effective than making a large purchase because you can go to the store and buy a little extra food each time and slowly build your food storage. The downside of this is that this food will only last so long, most boxed meals and canned food last between 6 months to 3 years.

On the surface this sounds great, but is you buy a year’s worth of food from the grocery store you need to make sure it gets used and rotated properly. Regardless of how well organized you are and how good your rotation system is, you are bound to lose some of it to expiration.

Dehydrated Food: This is where long tern food like Legacy food comes in, I call this my second layer, this is food that can be stored and organized much easier and longer than grocery store food. It’s good to have a good short term food supply, but at some point storing and rotating all that food will become nearly impossible.

Legacy food storage products are prepared and packaged in a way that makes them shelf stable for up to 25 years, so even if nothing happens in the next 10 years, you still have your food storage and you haven’t had to throw anything away.

DIY Food Preservation: There is another option that you have and that’s storing all the ingredients yourself and preserving your own food. Lisa and I do some canning (nowhere near what some other people do) and this can be a good option as well.