Long Term Food Storage
What Distinguishes Eden Valley
Eden Valley Farms offers the best long term food storage products being sold in the emergency essentials industry. What makes our emergency food storage products the best, keep reading.
Quickly perishable foods are easy to keep track of, in terms of expiration. It’s a quick and simple experiment to track the amount of days until a bottle of milk goes from edible to rancid, so its expiration date is accurate, give or take a couple of days. But what about new companies that claim to have shelf stability food storage products that last upwards of ten or twenty years? Is anyone sitting in a laboratory for upwards of ten years before they put a long term food storage product on the market that claims to last that period of time? Probably not. Could anything be worse than being in an emergency situation, and realizing by opening one can of food at a time (especially if it claimed to last much longer), that all of your emergency food supply is inedible? This is where the importance of food science comes in, because the reality is that although it would be unrealistic to sit in a laboratory for twenty-five years before releasing a new long term food storage product, at Eden Valley, we are dedicated to ensuring all of our claims are accurate, and telling you exactly why and how they are.
When Emergency Food Storage Goes Bad
In the study of emergency food storage, it’s important to understand that a long term food storage product goes bad when its first ingredient goes bad. It’s also important to know that a food going “bad” doesn’t necessarily mean that it is inedible, but that foods gradually lose their antioxidants and vitamins and make them less nutritious as a whole. If you already have an emergency food supply, take a minute to research a product’s ingredients and how long each of them lasts. In our competitor’s emergency food storage products, it might quickly become clear that the time frame its shortest lasting ingredient is edible for is nowhere close to the expiration advertised. This is just one aspect that distinguishes Eden Valley, but there are many more.
When Does Emergency Food Storage Perish
One of the first problems with many food storage products that claim to be long lasting or meant for emergency essentials is either high water or oil content. Most oils, like sesame oil and soybean oil, have a shelf life of around a year (depending on whether they are stored in a pantry or refrigerator), and are recommended to only be kept for around half of this time. But have no fear, because Eden Valley did the research for you, and found that coconut oil and palm oil last for years, far longer than other oils on the market, and often beyond their own proclaimed shelf lives. Thus, it goes without saying that because we are dedicated to only using the optimal ingredients for each of our products, we use only the best oils, and in small quantities to stall the onset of rancidification as long as possible.
The Problem With Soy
On the subject of oils, one is particularly evil (and widely utilized in long lasting food products): soybean. Both soybean oil and soy protein isolate (SPI) are used in processed baked goods, protein bars and powders, diet drinks, fast foods, and meat substitutes. Concerning long term food storage, one of the biggest worries with soy use is in meat alternatives. Soy protein is used to make textured vegetable protein, which can be made to have a texture that mimics the texture of meat. This makes soy protein appealing for long lasting food products, but a variety of factors make soy problematic. The first is that it contains phytoestrogens, which can mimic estrogen and lead to lower testosterone levels in males. This testosterone deficiency is known to cause emotional changes like depression, physical problems like hair loss and body fat increase, and changes in sexual function (according to Mayo Clinic). As though soy didn’t already lose all of its appeal, it can depress thyroid function, reduce protein and vitamin digestion, and make red blood cells clot and reduce their ability to distribute oxygen (Dr. Mercola).
A Potential Enemy: GMO’s
If you’re reading this article, chances are you already have formulated a strong opinion towards to the biggest nutritional superstar and criminal of the era: genetically modified organisms (or GMOs). Made to increase crop yields and artificially avoid pests, GMOs have taken over the US food supply, and though many studies (often backed by GM food companies) claim that they create no dangers or side effects, it is slowly becoming more evident that genetically modifying foods leads to more food sensitivities, blood abnormalities, and changes in the stomach lining (tested in mice). Assuming that as the years go by more studies will reveal the further issues with artificially tampering with our food supply, Eden Valley avoids the use of GMOs, ensuring that we give you the purest food possible.
A Secret Danger: MSG
In a survival situation wherein you can’t afford to be worried about how healthful the food you’re eating is, there are certain widely used ingredients that you will want to avoid (and that many food processing companies aren’t worried about you avoiding). One of these ingredients is monosodium glutamate, more often referred to as MSG. Though, like GMOs, the health risks of monosodium glutamate are often dismissed or played down, as time passes, more and more studies are linking MSG to an inflammatory response in the nervous system that leads to both small problems–skin irritation and stomach or headaches–and much larger problems like brain damage and stunts in hormonal development in children. MSG, as we see it, is not worth the risk, especially in a situation in which you and your family are relying on our products for an extended amount of time, and these reasons are precisely why Eden Valley avoids MSG.
Beyond The Product: Emergency Food Storage Packaging
Okay. Now we have a great food storage product, devoid of all of the dangers above. But one factor in long term food storage is exactly that: how it is stored, and in particular, how it is packaged. No matter how amazing and healthful the food storage product is, improper packaging can take huge amounts of time off of its lifespan. A huge, and lamentably common, mistake in food storage is #10 cans. Think about it: aluminum is an excellent conductor of heat, so if the can gets heated in any way, then the food inside the can immediately absorbs that heat, which makes the food (remember the oils) break down and go rancid faster. Furthermore, water content will make the can rust, which leads to potential breaks in the metal, ultimately leading the contents of the can to be exposed to outside air and spoil further and faster. Instead, we use poly-mylar, which is not only waterproof, but also much more durable, as well as flexible, making it the perfect option for emergency food storage.
Also related to packaging is the method that food companies use to avoid oxygen getting to the product, which is often oxygen absorption packets. Though these aren’t a bad option, there is a clearly better one, which Eden Valley repeatedly opts for. This method is nitrogen flushing, which helps to better preserve the food. It might sound foreign, but the average American is familiar with the applications of nitrogen flushing: it’s the air that fills the empty space in your bag of chips (and elongates their shelf life), along with your coffee grounds, snack foods, and commercially baked goods. The combination of the material used to package our foods and the methods used to avoid oxygen are what distinguish the quality of Eden Valley packaging–and we keep that process as trustworthy as possible by avoiding machine processing, which opens the process to mechanical errors.
Be Informed. Be Ready.
Clearly, the mission at Eden Valley Farms is to create food storage products that you can trust in an emergency situation, and from the above research and information, we hope that you can see the amount of care undertaken in order to deliver the optimal emergency supplies to you and yours. We encourage you to engage in your own research on our food storage products compared to others on the market, because it will convince you even further as to what makes our products stand apart from and above the rest. As always, be informed and be ready.