Sarah Kanning

…I may be willing to use this food item to sustain life. Perhaps.

These things come in various sized blocks; pictured is part of an 1800 calorie block, which is enough to feed one person for one day. They also come in 2400 and 3600 blocks, the idea being a handy block of shelf-stable food you can easily throw in an emergency pack or your glove compartment (or in with your camping gear).  Main ingredients: flour, vegetable shortening, and sugar. Tastes like slightly lemony shortbread as made by a very large institutional bakery (think: schools and prisons). The 3600 calorie block also doubles as a handy defensive weapon.

I originally thought, given the ingredients (it’s a cookie!), that I might be tempted to blow through two or three of the blocks at a time. Turns out this is not the case; eat one and you are ready to stop eating for several hours at least (and go out foraging in the meantime for wood sorrel, dandelions, clover, tall fescue, or anything resembling a vegetable).

And if it’s lightweight, calorie dense food guaranteed not to go bad for years that you need, you could just buy a 12-pack of Twinkies (though they aren’t nearly as compact).

So basically, made for true emergencies and for people who don’t actually like eating.

In other news, I’m going camping tonight, which I may use as a reason to try out some of those just-add-boiling-water pouches of freeze-dried camping food, another fave of many emergency preparedness advocates. I’ll report back.