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!
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Day 30