Fresh meat is one of those things it’s basically impossible to keep in your food stockpile. That’s unfortunate, because it’s a great source of protein, but it’s just too perishable.
Even refrigerated, its lifespan can be measured in days; frozen, it can be kept for a year or two, but can you keep your freezer running if the power goes out? For most preppers, the obvious alternative is to stockpile canned meat instead.
Canned meat is an attractive option. It can last for years. It’s versatile; you can use it in a wide range of recipes. It’s also precooked, so in an emergency you can eat it straight out of the can. There’s a wide variety, too, from Vienna sausages to Spam to chicken chunks or ready to eat chilli. Don’t forget fish, either – tuna, salmon, sardines and many other fish come in convenient, long-lasting cans.
Durability, variety and convenience are all great, of course, but how does canned meat actually do as food?
Most preppers tend to be big fans of canned food, because while dried beans and rice are excellent staples they can quickly get boring, and canned goods – especially canned meat – are a good way to make them more interesting.
That matters, after all; good food improves morale, and that’s important in a crisis.
Eating My Meat Supply
Anyway, I’ve just had a chance to investigate canned meat in a bit more detail myself. With the state of the economy over the last couple of years it was sometimes difficult to find the spare cash to rotate out my food stockpiles as regularly as I’d like.
Eventually I found myself with shelves of food that was getting worryingly near its use by dates, and I decided it was time to do something.
The plan I came up with was to just stop buying fresh meat, and use the money I saved from that to replace my stockpiled meat with new cans.
In the meantime, even the oldest cans I had were still within date, so I’d simply use those to replace the fresh meat I wasn’t buying. What could possibly go wrong?
Related: 11 Meat Processing Mistakes You Are Probably Making Right Now
The first thing I noticed was that canned meat is easy to use. Because it’s precooked it also saves on fuel, which would be a big plus in a crisis, and it’s also pre-seasoned.
Some of my supplies were ready to be eaten right away; a can of chilli just needs to be heated. Cook some rice and you can make the chilli stretch further plus add some more carbohydrates to your diet, which is great if you’re burning a lot of energy.
Other things I had were easy to add to meals. A can of chicken chunks, a couple of cans of vegetables and some seasonings makes a pretty good stir fry, which again can be served with rice. A can of tuna, some rehydrated dried vegetables and a pack of ramen is a quick and tasty meal.
About eight cans of various meats and fish (mostly tuna) a week was plenty to give a diet that didn’t lack protein and was a lot more interesting than just beans and rice would have been.
How Healthy Is It?
It wasn’t all good news, though. I check my blood pressure every week, and after a couple of months I noticed it was starting to creep up – not enough to worry me, but it was definitely rising. It wasn’t hard to find the culprit, either, because basically all canned meats are much higher in sodium than fresh meat.
Half a can of Spam contains your entire daily recommended salt intake. So, if you have a tuna salad sandwich for lunch and then half a can of grilled Spam for dinner, you’re already well above the healthy amount of sodium.
And that’s without consuming any other salt throughout the day.
That’s why, if you raise livestock, hunt, or just have a little extra cash to buy fresh meat, I highly suggest trying this canning method—it can preserve it for over a decade. Plus, it tastes way better than the canned stuff from the store, and you get to control exactly what goes in it, unlike the store-bought versions that sometimes sneak in all kinds of preservatives and unhealthy additives.
By the time I’d eaten every can I had that had less than a year left until its use by date – just over six months – my blood pressure had risen from low normal to the upper half of the normal band. That still wasn’t a serious issue, but if your blood pressure is on the high side anyway eating too much canned meat could start pushing it into dangerous territory.
Canned meat can also have a pretty high fat content. That’s more true of things like Spam or other canned hams, and less so for good-quality canned chilli or chicken chunks. In an emergency situation I wouldn’t worry too much about the fat; there’s a good chance you’ll be burning it off anyway.
On the other hand if you’re eating a lot of canned meat but aren’t very active – for example if there’s been a nuclear attack and you’re spending a couple of weeks in your root cellar sheltering from the fallout – you’re likely to notice your waistline starting to expand.
I didn’t notice any real health issues from my canned meat experience, apart from my slowly climbing blood pressure, but I know some people have worries about it.
Food cans are usually lined with plastic to protect the metal can from acids and salts in the food, and that plastic can slowly release bisphenol-A (BPA) into the contents.
People who eat a lot of canned food show elevated levels of BPA. Is that a problem? I don’t know.
Some studies have linked it to various health conditions including cancer, infertility and asthma. On the other hand other studies didn’t find any health effects, and even the ones that did found that to get any risk you need levels much higher than you’d get from eating canned meat. Personally, BPA isn’t something I worry about.
So How Did It Go?
My canned food stockpile is now fully replenished and I’m back to the normal rotation cycle. Every time I go to the grocery store I get a couple extra cans of meat or fish, put them at the back of the shelf and add the oldest ones from the front to this week’s menu plan.
Related: “Long Shelf Life” Foods That Will Actually Go Bad Faster Than You Think
It’s nice to have fresh meat again as well, but overall I was pleased with how the canned meat phase worked out. I didn’t feel malnourished at any point, which wasn’t a surprise; the industrial canning process is actually pretty good at preserving the nutrients in food.
I didn’t develop any health issues except for slightly elevated blood pressure. I didn’t even get bored of canned meat, because there’s a good variety of it and it can be prepared in a lot of different ways. If you’re planning on eating a lot of Spam, tuna and hot dogs after the apocalypse, it’s probably going to work out fine for you.
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You do know that lean meat is not healthy right?. Fatty meat is.
Don’t believe what the establishment has sold you. Look at the eskimos. Blubber was highly prized. Can you eat only rabbit? No you cannot. It is too lean. You need fat.
Look back at the early settlers and hunter/trappers/indians. They ate alot of meat and used it all. No wasting by trimming fat or organs. Study the past. It will show you.
We are not going to be too choosy what is left to eat as seen what happened in the melt down in several south American countries because of politics and religion.
Canned food will become a highly praised possession to eat as many people will run out of items to can. The outdoors will be a ghost town as people will have hunted all the poor animals to extinction like the old west buffalo hunters did, native Americans starved.
Now we got NGO religious groups the arm of this radical administration bringing in Venezuela criminal gangs taking over areas in major cities. Colorado is experiencing this crisis. You don’t think these armed gangs won’t take over the food supply to extort power?
Food throughout history has been a great controller of governments to control the sheeple.
What happens after all our food stored preps are gone? Ever think you might be part of the massive starving mobs roaming the neighborhoods for food?
When you are starving mad, you don’t care what the food is, hope it does not get to this point. It is your America, will you hide behind false hope of food preps or take back our country from these religious NGO’s working with corrupt politicians?
These people are coming across the open border and plane flights, stop the Ukrainian money, how powerful are these NGO’s destroying America?
Theses illegals are eating free off our taxes and property values, we can’t buy new homes because non citizens are getting a free ride. We are left to eat a beat up can of beans from the dumpster. Right now this administration is planning for WWIII. In Australia kids school lunches have bugs to eat in place of meat.
In America the liberal environmentalist are making decisions, corporations, politicians to get rid of our farms, ranches, no meat cattle or dairy.
No Americans have voted for what is going on, but many are being led by lies.
Who will you vote for in November 5th, lies or the truth?
Don’t worry we will be eating what this article mentioned while the illegals eat like kings in freeloading America.
Let them eat cake, Bon Appétit!
This is actually incorrect by omission. Its not generalizable as you will not be eating what the eskimos were eating and making comparisons is apples to oranges. While I’m not a doctor or have formal training, I’ve done a lot of research, that largely has come from MDs.
That being said, a diet primarily in lean meat will cause protein poisoning while killing off your guts natural bacteria. It is not recommended or healthy by anyone.
A low carbohydrate diet is totally doable, with a few caveats. Even Dr. Atkins mentions that the diet is not recommended for anyone with degraded kidney or liver function, which is a lot more common than other people seem to believe, and this can occur even when you’ve been fine in the past; it requires regular blood testing to know for sure.
Aside from that, low carbohydrate (high fat, mid/low protein) diets can be sustained for a significant period of time with a lot of benefit, so long as you get the appropriate vitamins, minerals, and amino acids (including sufficient fiber).
Cholesterol on these diets self regulates, diabetes often clears up to full remission. I’ve heard the building blocks for bad cholesterol come from carbohydrates which are self-limiting in these austere environments, as a explanation for why bloodwork gets better while on these diets, along with blood pressure).
What most people don’t realize on these diets is if you have too much carbohydrates enter the blood stream, you will need to re-transition back from carbohydrates, and this may not be controllable through simple diet.
ATP is a sugar, which is normally stored in muscle, it can be released any time the body is stressed into the blood stream, be it from infection, sensitivity, allergic reaction (norepinephrine response), etc.
If you get sick, have a flushing reaction, etc, these can be indicators you are no longer burning ketones; and you will need some carbohydrates to transition back to ketone burning which can take several days. It also requires significantly more water during that period of time.
In the case of illness, it may even be a lengthy period of recovery time before this can happen.
Like anything , God who is our creator created you and i to eat a variety in season items from the garden , and from the land which he gave us to tend, take care of , make ready for our sustanance , or food supply .
Moderation in all things , that being said everyone should research why you dont just eat meat , just like the animal s in nature , they eat a variety .
your body was designed by your creator for natural items found in the wild .
Fruits, nuts , vegatables , and meat , in its entirety , not processed out so you get a load of one item too much at a time .
loading down the body , thats bad , too much of a good thing, and not like a glutten or pig or greedy fat animal that just eats themself to death , death by food .
Meat is to be eaten in its natural state . with fat , cooked , and in proportion to your body , or weight , or size , or structure or type of work you do .
Gluteny is a sin , but rejection of God , Rejection of the Holy spirit , Rejection of Jesus Christ is a even greater sin.
yes you will still live for a time , but there is a God Given Consequence for any and all sin.
what ever it is .
not my place to judge , but is my place to make known Gods word , Gods commands , Gods ways .
Like anything , there are God given laws of nature , and everything
Stay healthy , Moderation in everything
Chris, I must agree with you whole heartedly… thanks for your statement, it carries a good message with meaning…
Back to a form of reality God is watching, he his in control, but we have to make the proper choices in life. The movie Soylent Green is not too far off in the meaning of religion and politics destroyers of historical mankind.
Bill Gates buying up farmland and behind the digital world of a Chinese social credit system American style, you will own nothing.
Don’t think it is happening your wealth in taxes support illegals in food, clothing, schooling and housing. You Americans are being driven out of home by high taxes to support the world.
WAKE UP!
Megan, God helps those who help themselves, and tests mankind in various ways, with one of the biggest tests/filters coming up in the near future.
The test of whether to embrace falsehood (irrationality) or truth (rationality).
The former, ends with destruction, the latter ends with survival. The future is looking bleak because the world today has embraced senimental moralism, and tolstoy’s pacifism towards evil, and evil is just another way of saying destruction, while including the characteristic of blindness (when speaking of evil ‘people’ who continue acts of destruction mindlessly until stopped).
People don’t seem to have realized that inflationary economies are a set lifecycle which ends in sharp collapse, there may be different actors involved that choose how the system behaves somewhat but the dynamics are unavoidable.
You can see this in ponzi schemes quite simply. First stage, benefits are received upfront, second stage diminishing returns as outflows increase, third state outflows exceed inflows and the entire scheme collapses.
In an economy, the people who decide whether this continues are the group that hold the dependencies for continued survival, the producers. Business requires that they make a profit, or they stop (in purchasing power not dollars). Individuals require wages that support themselves, a wife, and 3 children (so 1 lives to 18).
There is a point in a ponzi, where neither of these can continue, and the state must step in (to produce food/strategic products). This is the de-facto adoption of communism, and with it comes all the failures of communism of which there are 6 unsolve-able problems, the foremost being the mathematically chaotic (unpredictable) economic calculation problem. For a full serving of the remaining 5, check out Mises (1930s), on Socialism.
The problem with communism is you cede power upfront, and then its a circle of progressively worsening madness, as the structural failures of bureacracy build up. Eventually you have slavery, and even then death/annihilation isn’t far from that, and the people who live through these systems lack rational though (because these are the first people who are killed to maintain continuity of government).
I’ve already done pretty close to the same thing… I use my canned meats all the time, at least 4 or 5 times a month… I love tuna salad, pan fried Spam and eggs, I sometimes snack on sardines, bean&wienies, vienna sausages… chicken salad sandwiches… and I truly love chili w/o beans, Texans don’t put beans in their chili, lol… Canned stews, and yes, I use a lots of rice.. Residing in SE Asia as an advisor, for over two yrs, your diet everyday consists of rice, with sparse amounts of somekind of meat or fish, I love rice with everything, even left over rice for breakfast as a cereal type serving… Living rurally as I do,surrounded by woods/forest, fresh meat can be easily harvested if need be.. smoking the meat, and or using it for jerky, extends its usefulness …I must add, Sodium is MY enemy, so I do my best to try and keep its consumption at a minimum … I did find this article somewhat interesting and informative, so I’ll give you about 4 stars out of 5..hahaha…
What happens when you eat the last canned food, then what?
All these articles we have seen are built on supply of certain items to prep.
Hardly any articles really address what do we do after nothing is left?
We can’t all join a union to support us when the base taxpayers are plain broke no more money to squeeze out of a human turnip, we are done.
I think the obvious answer is to source water and food IE: small and if possible large game. If the SHTF, you can fish as long as you have gear. This will be an unpopular statement, but protein from animals is the best food for your body, try to add fat whenever possible, and vegetables aren’t even needed so you can check a garden off your list. A friend of ours does raise chickens for the eggs, but allows for a few of those eggs to hatch into future food sources. You can also begin the journey of building a 15 year supply of food and water by freeze drying food and vaccum sealing water portions. Freeze dried food lasts much longer then canned food, takes less room to store, and you don’t need to spend continuous $$$$ on jars. The down side….the initial expense.
While you use your canned food, you plant crops, and raise animals.
You know how long it takes to raise them to maturity, what diseases to look out for, how to identify if they were poisoned, and then you bleed/butcher them, and then preserve the meat to start the cycle over again.
You keep track of how much food you, family, and animals need to survive, and plan a suitable surplus for error/austere conditions.
Its called animal husbandry and farming, and if you have the space that isn’t polluted, its like printing money.
Consider freeze drying. Food lasts almost indefinitely without refrigeration. The freeze dryer is a big investment ($3-5,000), but can be worth its weight in gold in a crisis.
Yes, we bought one 2 summers ago, and have not regretted it at all! Have you ever eaten freeze dried peach slices? OH MY GOSH! It’s like a peach explosion of flavor in your mouth! Same with many other foods!! Actually, I have a couple of trays of peach slices in my freezer right now, just waiting for me to finish slicing up enough other foods to process them in the freeze drier. AWESOME! I think I’ll be lazy and just spread a tray with cottage cheese or scrambled eggs, so we have more of that type of food preserved when SHTF!
Oh, no, not doing that! My organic farmer friends sent us home with organic watermelons and said if you freeze dry it, it will taste like cotton candy!! Better get to it, then!
Sounds great until the machine breaks during a SHTF and the manufacture no longer exists to repair it. The maintenance must followed to prevent early breakdown.
The compressor seems to be the Achilles’ heel of the device used.
I like the tried and true old fashion air dehydrator, yes the food may not last as long but it is cheaper to use or make you own dryer.
I think the idea is to have you food already done before a SHTF event. You won’t be freeze drying or canning anything once an event happens. You can easily freeze dry a years worth of protein and dairy in several months, but over 2-3 years you have your 5-10 years.
While you still have electricity and before there is any EMP takedown of the grid, why not spend a few hours pressure-canning your meat? I find it is super economical and much easier than messing with water bath canning of foods! With meat, all I do is make sure my pint jars and lids are clean and ready to go. Just slide the meat into a jar, put the lid and ring on, set the jar in the warm/hot water int he bottom 2″ of the pressure canner (set upon something to lift the jar off the immediate bottom of the canner, and set the dial on my stove and a timer. Let the pressure rise to 11 lbs. or 15 lbs., depending on what you are canning and your altitude, and let’r rip! One hour later, approximately, your jars are ready! Sounds complicated, but IT IS NOT! Plus, it is very unlikely that you will lose any of your product due to jar breakage! I LOVE IT, IT’S SO EASY!! Chicken meat and venison slide right in!! I sometimes can my venison as if it would end up being venison stew, so use larger jars for that! Today, one of my projects is to cut up some previously (recently) roasted turkey that was kind of dry, add in a bunch of turkey gravy and maybe some onion chunks and pressure can it. I know it will be awesome when all we have to eat is that and rice or instant organic potatoes. Just heat and pour and WHA-LAH!
Forgot to say that often, I put some broth or some type of liquid in the jars with the meat. That is fine, but I try to keep it from being too much liquid.
Best,
JESS
I’m in favor of doing food rotation and do note what needs to be used up soon so it can be on the menu.
As shared in another article here in the last week, no reason we can’t can meat for ourselves. That way, we can control the amount of salt added (hint: you don’t need to add any, but it’s tastier if you add a little at least), and we can also use canning salt, Celtic salt, or another real salt that will contain trace minerals, which will add to the nutritional value.
D
Could you please point me to the chapter and verse in the Bible where it says, “God helps those who help themselves.” I have heard of it, but could not find it in my New American Standard or the New King James Bible. Even a Google search couldn’t find it.
Thieves help themselves to other peoples things, does God help them?
I’m confused.
There is no such verse in any translation of the Bible, GOD’s word. Once again man’s traditions have supplanted the truth
The phrase is attributed to Benjamin Franklin.
Regarding the does the bible say God helps those who helps himself. Proverbs 24:27 says basically get your farm established and your fields planted, then build your house. Paul is more blunt, If you don’t work you don’t eat. We are to rely on God but that doesn’t mean we can sit on out butts and expect God to magically make food appear. In his grace he provides what we need to provide for ourselves. Using our God given talents or abilities to survive is not a failure of faith, but faith itself as long as we realize God provided in the first place and we are thankful.
I understand and agree that in most cases, starvation will kill a body a lot quicker than disease. But I feel like society is very misunderstanding and/or misinformed of nutrition. Animal fat, cholesterol, sodium chloride, these are all very essential nutrients to human health. I did read some mentions above about harmful preservatives. Nobody mentions Sodium Nitrate/Nitrate. It IS the harmful preservative no one takks about. And it’s listed on the back of almost every can of cured meat, pack of hotdogs, bacon, lunch meats, jerky, etc.
When heated to 98 degrees and above (temp of the human body), nitrates create nitrosamine, which is a known carcinogen. It’s toxic and mutagenic to our DNA in large doses, so 6 months of canned meat might get you through a life or death situation but the long term effects could be irreversible. All that to say that these articles, albeit informative, may not always be great information.
Big game. That can be anything. Horse, cow, deer, dod or cat. Meat is meat and will keep you alive. Now, having a pressure cooker or two and sufficient canning jars and lids, and salt and water is essential. You can kill game but you can’t make jars and lids. It takes 2 hours to cook a caldron of stew or meat. It takes an hour and a half to pressure cook 7 to 12 quarts of meat. One quart will sustain two of you nicely for a day. In 24 hours you can put up 96 days worth of meat (IF) you have the means to preserve it. A deer or ewe will provide you with 70 pounds of meat and will spoil after 3 days if not preserves. Be wise and be prepared while you can.
I mix in a foil envelope of flavored tuna (Starkist) with oatmeal and sometimes some cheese for a breakfast mug. Those envelopes go on sale often enough to keep quite a few of them on hand. Their expiration date is about a year and don’t require refrigeration to keep. Great for traveling, the envelope was easy to carry about. By itself, a sandwich and one folded over is about right for an envelope.
My Dad often used an entire can of Treet (low brow Spam :^) for a week of lunches way back in the day. Cutting two thin slices a day, he would insert these along with sliced tomato and lettuce into sandwiches at the office. Hardly ever had to go out during his lunch at the office – he used it to rest. He just needed to take two slices of bread and the veggies and done.