Survival Food Sunday
Vol.1 Issue 1
The Tasty Brick
UST Emergency Food Ration Bar
Hello, and welcome to Survival Food Sunday. For our first time readers (all of you, because this is brand new) I would like to introduce myself, my name is Eric aka douchefish, and I am here to write about “survival foods”, you have probably seen them advertised on television, seen them on the camping supplies shelf of your nearby big box store or online.
I am talking about the MREs that the military uses, and the freeze dried meals backpackers like to carry, those 72 hour buckets that WISE Foods annoys me with while I am watching Fishful Thinking, you know what I am talking about, “Survival Food”.
Our first entry is something I have started calling the “brick”. The “brick” is actually named Emergency Food Ration Bars and has the UST company logo on it (the product is manufactured by MayDay Industries for Ultimate Survival Technologies). I found this little gem at Walmart in the camping aisle, right above the Luggable Loo (I own one of those) and below the Mountain House freeze dried cheesecake bites. On a side note, we did purchase and try the cheesecake bites and I must say that they were VERY “meh” and that $5 would have been far better spent on the freeze dried Neapolitan ice cream sandwich which is quite delicious.
The brick measures 6” x 4” x 1 ¼”, weighs 18 ounces (1.2lbs or 0.54kg) and is scored into 6 cubes measuring 2” x 2” x 1 ¼”. The brick has 2400 calories TOTAL (400 per 2” cube) and that tells me this thing is one day’s worth of “food” for one person. You COULD ration and get more days (up to I would say at most six) from it, but you probably wouldn’t want to.
The Packaging appears to be made of mylar and has a very tight vacuum seal. The manufacture date, lot number, expiration date and nutrition information are all printed on the back. My particular brick was made in September of 2018, and expires September 2023. Not bad, still rather fresh and I like that. I am not a nutritionist, but for short term emergency use, the numbers are pretty good. I looked up the numbers for another brand’s brick and although the UST brick has fewer calories, each calorie has more nutrition. PLUS the UST brand brick has iodine listed in the nutrition facts chart. Iodine is very important to your health and is almost always over looked by, like, everyone on earth.
I feel like I am writing sponsored content. Do you feel like you’re reading sponsored content?
After opening the package (no knife required due to the tear notches that actually open the package completely) and removing the brick from the wrapper I was a bit surprised. Where I was expecting a pale, white block of nutrition was instead a pound cake. Well, a brick that looked like a fresh baked pound cake anyways. I must say, that as far as appearance is concerned, this was going quite well.
The package claims that the brick has an apple cinnamon flavor, and I certainly could smell the apple and cinnamon. So far, the brick has a pleasant look and smell and I am happy.
Now for the part you are actually interested in, THE TASTE. I never really expect these foods to taste any better than “edible”, I learned my lesson the hard way with some chili mac back in 2008. The apple cinnamon flavor, was both an over exaggeration and incomplete description in my opinion. But, in their defence, labeling it as apple cinnamon is far better than waxy saw dust with very light notes of apple and cinnamon.
I admit that my expectations for flavor are quite low and surpassing them should be quite easy. Notice I said SHOULD be quite easy. Many times my expectations are not met. In this case I feel that I got exactly what I expected to, maybe even a little more. I didn’t want to toss it in the garbage nor did I say the words “I bet even the dogs wouldn’t like this”. Would I choose to eat it again? Yes, but for educational purposes. I am curious what it would be like to try and spend 24 hours with the brick as my only food source and I will likely attempt it soon, and by soon I mean “sometime in the next five years”.
I will be purchasing more of these bricks and keeping one in each vehicle. Based solely on my non expert observations I feel the brick will be more tolerant of the extreme temperatures of Kansas winters and summers. Of course I will have to keep a close on things for any sign of distress in the product. I am going to contact the manufacturer with my thoughts on car storage and see what they have to say.
In summary, the UST Emergency Ration Bars is a good value. Don’t purchase this product online though, you want to be able to inspect the packaging for damage and manufacture date for freshness before you spend your money. They also seem to be far cheaper when purchased from a brick and mortar store than on the internet. We paid $5 for one brick at Walmart and I feel like this was a $5 well spent. Is this product right for you? I have no idea, I’m not you. Am I recommending you purchase this product? No, because I have no idea what your needs are or what life goals you are trying to achieve.
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