Today was Day 27 for my test of Mountain House food packets as emergency food, The Thirty Day SHTF Test Diet. Lots of preppers recommend storing food for a disaster; this series tests it out. As detailed earlier, this diet has turned into a weight-loss diet too.
Three days to go, less than half a week, and I seem to be running out of stuff to report. I fell back into the split-shift sleeping, with a few hours' of night owling in between, but this coexists with me starting the day at a reasonable hour. The meals were standard, meaning there was nothing to complain about or note as odd, and no health effects have surfaced. I got through the day without any troughing or loss of energy.
Today's Meals
As noted above, I once again had to rely on the breakfast in the wee hours of the morning to get me to sleep. Today's was the Scrambled Eggs with Ham and Peppers:
As per the standard procedure, one cup of boiled water, stirrings, and less than ten minutes' wait got it reconstituted:
Yet again, the food tasted like regular: not like freshly-made, but regular processed food. As is usual with this variety, there was some excess fluid that tasted like egg soup.
The dinner was Turkey Tetrazzini:
Except for two cups of boiled water instead of one, this packet reconstituted with the same procedure used for the eggs:
As the picture indicates, the added water turned into sauce (though not thick sauce.) The turkey was a mix of dark and white; the whole thing tasted like a reasonable-quality frozen dinner of the same flavor.
A lot of the Turkey Tetrazzini was sauce, which does show in its Nutrition Facts box. The ones for both meals, with the eggs on the left and turkey on the right:
show that the calories for the turkey dinner are low. Even after doubling, as the values on the right are per half-pouch, the turkey clocks in at only 600 calories. Both meals were high in sodium; the turkey was relatively high in vitamin C. Again, I've felt no sign of vitamin deficiency these last twenty-seven days. For emergency purposes, you can get by on them unless your mileage significantly varies from mine.
The daily weighing shows virtually no change in weight from yesterday:
if anything, it bumped up a bit.
Effects, So Far:
As noted above, I'm essentially the same. There's been no detrimental effects I can detect. Although my energy is not high, it's sufficient to get through a normal day. With snow season over, a normal day is more sedentary than earlier; I no longer have to go out with the shovel. But even during those days, with the exception of the February-blahs phase, I tackled the snow with my shovel as per normal.
Part of this normalcy results from me being an experienced, if yo-yoish, dieter. Once you have experience, you have a good idea of what you're in for.
Conclusion
As with yesterday, steady. No signs of ill health; energy level normal though not peppy. Since I'm three days away from closing this experiment up, I'm fairly confident in saying that a 30-day emergency stretch of existing on Mountain House food alone is endurable. Any nasty surprises, other than the blahs, have been either well hidden or nonexistent.
Thanks for reading.
And feel free to comment below!
Day 0
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17
Day 18
Day 19
Day 20
Day 21
Day 22
Day 23
Day 24
Day 25
Day 26
Day 27
Day 28
Day 29
Day 30
Just three more days!!! Almost there - Rooting for you!
Thanks so much! Just read Why Aren't You Listening?: it was a nice read. :)
Oh, cool. thank you for having a read, I am glad you liked it!
You are almost there you had a great posting run it was full of information, things that made you go whaaaat, the up’s and downs. Overall I think I will be a little sad to see these postings from you go. After the 30th one I will be looking forward for your next adventure here on steemit. Thanks again and keep up the great job and steem on.😁👍👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👍👍👍👏👏
Thanks once again for dropping by. Yes, it has been an adventure. Once it runs out, I'll have to think of something else. :)
You're in the home stretch now!!
Looking forward to your Sunday post with the final analysis.
Either you really like the scrambled eggs with ham and peppers, or you had an abundance of them in your stash. You just ate that one the other day!
It's the latter. Mountain House only sends out two kind of breakfast packs in its 30-Day kit: scrambled eggs and granola with blueberries. I think they include six kinds of dinners.
Ahhh, I kind of was thinking that. I know I ordered a free sample from a place as did a few other people, we all got the same meal. Beef Macaroni I believe it was.
Yeah, and the 30-day box I got had about 10 macaroni and cheese dinners. Six varieties, and one third were mac and cheese. Hmm..
When you have finished i take it you are gonna do a 'conclusion' or round up?
I would also like to know at what point you got bored with eating this stuff and started thinking about eating something else...
Yes, I am; it's coming Sunday, the day after the final day.
From time to time, mostly in the last two weeks. There was one time, a little less than a week ago, that I was tempted to get some takeout.
aah man, sounds like it turned into an endurance event.
That's exactly what it is.
Awesome experiment, very useful information -
especially with how you keep the journal :)
I must say... These aren't bad at all...
The meals don't look filling tho. Lol...
Either ways, I think it's really daring of you to try this experiment out on yourself...
Well done 👌
I couldn't get anyone else to volunteer. ;)
Oohhh... That explains it... 😊😊