Added a few cases of can goods from Aldi's .39 cent sale today. I noticed a lot of the stuff was made in China including some canned goods. All of the frozen seafood stuff is from China. Walmart is almost as bad. Don't know about you but I refuse to eat food from China.

Hell, I refuse to feed my dog food from China.

This. I certainly wouldn't rely on it for my emergency stash.

100% !!!
Besides food, I go out of my way, and pay the cost to BUY USA made items.
Pay'in 15 to 25% more for a USA made item is a no brainer.

Here is a little tip from OBR. As some of you may know, when my arm isn't in a cast I am a manger at a large grocery store.



DO NOT  eat prawns from china.  They are mostly caught near sewage outlets.

I'm often amazed at the shortsightedness of many on here, honestly, when it comes to food, health and nutrition.

People stockpile the cheapest, most nutritionally worthless garbage they find by the case just because it's cheap and it gives them a feeling of security.  

I honestly have come to believe that the majority of people in the survival community either don't know or don't care at all about nutrition, health or quality food.  It's evident by the endless pictures I see of low quality food and preps, stacked deep as can be ... stuff I wouldn't want to eat even during the best of times, let alone at the worst of times when a piece of bad meat or sickness brought on by malnutrition could very well cost you your life.

As I see it, the mindset seems to be this ... Grassfed, all natural fresh meat is the best, but it's expensive, so we can't buy that because we "cant afford it".  The next step down is brand name (Boars Head) meat from a deli ... but you can get the "same thing" from a store brand for cheaper, so why not do that? Hell, you don't even need to get fresh meat when you can buy Spam!  Hell, why buy brand name brand Spam when you can buy Wal Mart brand meat in a can! But even that is too expensive ... let's go to Aldi and buy a case of Chinese brand "meat" in a can just because it's cheap! It doesn't even have to be real meat ... some synthetic wax and 100 chemicals can probably replicate meat pretty well and they can surely sell it for cheap as can be.

When you reduce your purchasing preferences to such an extent that price is the only discriminating factor, it's obvious that quality is going to suffer greatly.

You are only given one body and we are all getting older with each passing day ... as I see it, buying quality food and giving my body the nutrients it needs to thrive is just about the cheapest money I'll ever spend for long term well-being.  It's what preventative medicine is all about.

I'd personally rather have (and do have) 3 months worth of expensive, nutrient rich, high quality food than 3 years worth of empty calories in a can.  Many obviously disagree with me, as evidenced by their stockpiles.

I'm not saying that you that have to be nearly at my extreme level of food elitism ... but god damn, if you're even considering buying $.39 canned prawns from China, you seriously need to reconsider your priorities and run a cost / benefit analysis on your food intake.

much?

Duggan
What do you stock ?
I am not trying to be a smart ass, I am concerned about having the best balance of supplies.
I just recently realized many of my foods are low protein & low everything.
Thank You.

I agree with Duggans point to a degree.

their should be an equal balance of quality food stocks in your larder to ensure good nutrision. AND some bulk goods for the times
you need to fill hungry bellies regardless..

I keep cans of potatos, peas and carrots etc for simply adding to the Stew Pot of bunnies, gophers, black snakes and other bush meat
SHTF eventually turns into gourmet vittles..
and those cheap canned veggies will make Trade Bounty for those non or unsuccessful hunters in the group to trade for fresh meat
with the one who is a better fur and feather harvester..

TRADE is good in some cases


CHEF

I LOVE CHINESE GIRLS!

Good post Dug...

You probably won't win any popularity contests with it though.

Another issue to consider is many of the discounters purchase items in bulk offshore and repackage them. The USDA does not require many of these products to display country of origin on the  package. Given the well publicized issues in China with baby formula adulterating  and the ongoing problems with other consumer goods from China I refuse to purchase any foodstuffs from there. Also the USDA is so busy(and short handed) with issues such as food borne illness and focusing on meat products that the vast majority of imported products are never tested.  there are plenty of ways to buy it cheep and stack it deep for preps without falling into the trap of what looks like good buys. Another point to consider is packaging size, many discounters reduce the contents of a standard can or box as compared to the national or better store brands...bottom line is as always is  Caveat emptor

Hiya guys...

We love Aldi's.  We save a ton on our grocery bill.  BUT, you must shop selectively!!!  We avoid all the made-in-china crap (80% of the store it seems).  "Distributed by" is worthless.  Check for "product of"...

There are lots of foods (not SHTF stuff) that is USA.  Milk, eggs, breads.  Others are product of "okay" countries (check stickers on fruit).  What is amazing is some of this stuff (a larger percentage than you might think) is product of germany.  If memory serves correctly Aldi is a european chain (or of European ownership).  Just recently I picked up canned red cabbage (in jars) product of the Netherlands.  

You can score good food in Aldi's.  You must turn on the brain and READ the labels.  Read the labels each trip.  Country of origin changes weekly in some cases.

I would remind some of you that there are those of us who are lucky if we can afford to put away a few cans of the Chinese crap.  If I had the money for anything else I would buy it, but during a good week I can barely afford the Chinese junk and am thankful for it.  A simple, "I prefer to buy American made food", would suffice.  The way I understand it, a lot of the food from china came from the US, was packaged in China and returned.  So what's the difference?

I am not a fan of food from China. Or vitamins, or drugs, or even cosmetics. Their standards are just so low for those kind of things that I don't trust them.

They have gotten incredibly good at manufacturing reasonable quality stuff at a price point that is just astounding.

However, I don't have a problem with imported foods from most other countries, although stuff from Mexico bothers me some. About the only stuff I buy that comes from Mexico is bottles of hot sauce that are 78 cents at WalMart.

I have tried several different versions of fake Spam, including a name brand version, and found I did not like them, even at a reduced price.

Aldi has some canned corn beef that I like though. I think it is imported from South America.

I am on a low carb diet so grains, potatoes, fruits and similar high starch or high sugar foods just are not something I eat so I don't buy them. Sugar and starch are mostly empty calories anyway so it's not like I am missing any actual nutrition. I don't store them because I don't eat them.

The calories in a lot, maybe most, of foods sold for long term storage are mostly empty calories from starches and sugars. The reason is that the empty calories are cheap. And many of the foods that are not mostly empty calories have a lot of added empty calories for some reason.

For me, if I were inclined to do so, of the commonly purchased long term storage foods, the only thing usable would be stuff like dehydrated/freeze dried eggs. Even many of the freeze dried meat entrées have a lot of empty calories added to them.

Of course in a dire situation, I suppose I would eat whatever was available to me, if my normal diet was not.

Ok, there is a lot of agriculture around here, but I do not have the time to take fresh meat and vegetables and can it all for my preps.  Seeing as how the preps will be used in an emergency, and we don't know when the preps will be used, I gotta buy the canned stuff for long term storage.  I have a variety of canned items, including fruits and vegetables, and I would like to start canning on my own next year.

But when I am avoiding society during an envisioned "bad times", I have the Aldi's corned beef hash, reduced sodium Spam, and canned tomato sauce with meat added, as well as a few cans of Mountain House eggs and bacon, beef stroganoff and beef stew.  These things will provide some sort of sodium and protein until (hopefully) I can begin to barter with local farmers for fresh stuff.

Speaking of Aldi's, their price on a #10 can of Beaumont brand ground coffee has been holding steady at $4.99.  It may not be gourmet, but I don't see the difference between it and the bigger names of coffee that go for $7-8 at Wal-Mart.  I've got 8 cans, which I rotate, due to suspected shelf life.

me too.

The only thing I continue to buy that is made in China ( to the best of my ability ) are pre-89 AKs

Time to buy more Aldi spam!

Oh yeah, I forgot:  This thread reminds me of this:

You think you're tough for eating beans every day? There's half a million scarecrows in Denver who'd give anything for one mouthful of what you got. They've been under siege for about three months. They live on rats and sawdust bread and sometimes... on each other. At night, the pyres for the dead light up the sky. It's medieval.


That Spam is gonna taste mighty good when there is nothing else available.  

Amen !

Not sure were the .39 prawns came from you talking about but I only bought the canned veggies from the U.S.A.  I always check food stuff for country of origin, if not U.S.A. I don't buy it.
My preps include include all kinds of food. grains, beans canned foods ans a freezer full of U.S meats.

Also keep in mind that there are NUMEROUS stores that carry food from China. The other day, we were in Harris-Teeter and the Dole peaches in the plastic container, although they say "Packaged in Thailand" actually contain peaches from China (printed around the neck of the plastic jar). I just don't trust foodstuffs from China nor do I trust containers from China to package food in (either from the store or for my own uses). There have been too many instances of contamination, presence of heavy metals, etc. in Chinese products for me to give them an express trip directly to my bloodstream by eating them. What I've found recently is that the price of these things in the grocery store doesn't change regardless of where they come from. So, there's no real "premium" in terms of cost to buy American if you're buying one of the brand names anyway.

I suspect that the "name brand" producers assume that people will not read the label for country of origin and just buy the brand. Ergo, the brand name products can switch suppliers at will. Or, so they think. The consumer is getting smarter about that, as this thread and what I hear from friends would tend to confirm. One of the "issues" that many of the brand name producers have with Wal-Mart is that WM tries their best to convert consumers to generic so that Wal-Mart can change suppliers at will. This destroys the brand identification that many producers spend boatloads of marketing money to achieve.

BTW, when my son was in high school, one of his classes had an experiment where they dehydrated various food stuffs and measured how long it would take for the food to spoil. The winner, by a long shot (as in 4-5X), was dehydrated SPAM. There's always room in my preps for SPAM!

I worry about quality with ANYTHING from China.

I worry about supply and availability of US made foodstuffs if SHTF...

Therefore, I've been focusing on increasing my ability to produce my own food as much as storing mass produced foods.





Oh, and I wouldn't feed my dog Spam!

SPAM salad....

1 can SPAM.....chopped fine

1 onion......chopped fine

1/2 cup pickle relish

1 teaspoon celery seed

2 table spoons miracle whip.

mix well.....serve on wheat bread made from ground red wheat from your stores.


Slice SPAM thin......toss in HOT pan and brown.....serve with eggs over easy........onions in the mix is nice too.

Not something to eat everyday......but better to try and figure out ways to prepare it now......than later.

I tend to avoid food, toothpaste, or anything ingestible from china if I can help it.  yeah I bought a storebrand toothpaste and the label said from India or china IIRC.  They just spook me with good reason.  

I do shop at a oriental grocery and am fairly choosey.  I will buy specialty jarred sauces and spices there (mostly Korean).

At Aldi's I do try to read the labels.  The Spam copy is inspected by US inspectors but that can be outside the country.  I prefer it to spam because it has a lot less salt.  (I'm thinking Mexico and S. America)  That canned corned beef is from Brazil.   I bought a few cans of it and it kind of turned me off with the high content of ground up blood vessels and tubes.  I guess I'm not hungry enough yet to not be picky.  

Other stuff I enjoy and some stuff wasn't up to par.  The german baked pastries were always a bit off to me, dry probably from age/shipping/being previously frozen before sale. I don't know.  Bread/rolls/bagels are cheap and cheap tasting.  Depends what you want.

My god if you want nightmares just google Chinese Fish Farms.  That stuff is over here in droves and is farmed in poop water.  Also farmed Tilapia is high in the wrong Omega fatty acids.  It is not really a good fish for you.  I was reading that you were better off having a hamburger or a steak than fried Tilapia.   Watch your false assumptions!

Well said.  

Aldis, walmart, grocery stores.  It doesnt matter. You have to read the label at every store. We have stocked up on aldi veggies and alot of the soups.
If you check the labels every time you go, you will find that it seems the stuff is packaged in different places at different times.
Alot of the stuff is from europe as one reply said. There are some of us that have been on quite a budget lately.......we have to stock up somehow.
We try hard to buy American as much as possible....but sometimes you do what you have to do.

I wouldn't either, I like it too much for myself!

Spam omelette. MMMMMMMM.

I'm assuming that Spam is made in the US.... I actually never checked the label before. Recently, I've been buying the lite version since it has less sodium.

If a product has no country of origin, just states where its distributed from does that mean its from the USA?

This thread got me looking through some of my groceries and can goods, very little of it has anything besides where in the states it is distributed from.

I'm not certain, but I think that virtually everything that comes from China that an end consumer can see has China written on it somewhere. I've heard that's one of their laws but I have no evidence of that directly. I had also heard that the USDA was considering imposing regulations that require the country of origin to be listed on the labels of consumer foods. Again I don't know specifically whether that has been imposed or whether there was some opposition to that from food distributors. Some packagers will take food from a variety of countries depending on where that particular item is in season. That may be why there was some opposition to it. I rather like the idea of knowing where the stuff I'm eating actually comes from.

I am a huge spam fan. I stack it deep, and bust one out maybe once a month to enjoy fried in slices like this.
FWIW, I had some of the Great Value walmart branded spam and it was very decent. Its all lips and assholes anyway... may as well get it cheap, huh? I mean Duggan is right on with his good-food vs bad-food ideology, but spam is in a category by itself, hehe.

anyone who will eat a hot dog and not eat SPAM.....has some unusual ideology. for that matter stop and get a snack at Taco Bell.....or just about any fast food joint.

Some
Part
Are
Meat

I don't eat it often right now, maybe once every couple of months.  This morning was a spam morning.  Cubed, scrambled with eggs, onion and a little shredded cheddar.

The Beaumont coffee isn't half bad compared to name brand Hills Bros.,Folgers.

This if we do not start to keep it here  we will lose it.

It might sound ridiculous but SPAM is fantastic in a paella.  It's a Spanish one dish unstirred rice dish for you folks who don't know what it is.  google for the propper method.  Ingredients vary, seafood, chicken, pork, rabbit, etc.

I start the thing with cooking the spam and then the onions and garlic in the spam oil, then some boneless chicken thighs,  add the rice stir in to coat with oil, some water and some shrimp, scallops, red peppers.  I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out.  After the initial stir you don't stir it agian, you arrange the ingredients on top for looks and let the dish simmer away.  The rice gets brown on the bottom.  It's on purpose, it's called the soccorat.  I serve with a wedge of lemon and damn, I'm now hungry.

I agree buy USA when possible. BUT I do feel I will have some bulk supplies that are not gourmet. I have lots of wheat, oats and pintos from the LDS I also have some freeze dried stuff. But as a rule cans are the cheapest long lasting thing we rotate. Day to day we eat alot of wild game and our gardens produce in season and canned. We also have fresh eggs every day. We have a varied but inexpensive diet that is fairly health in my estimation. I sure would rather have some cheap ass canned veggies and meats than nothing when month four hits and I am out of work or something.

knock yourselves out.  I can't afford to spend 15-25% more for a comprable good, just because it is made in the US.  The trick being to find an equivalent American made product.  The American stuff that I can find that is "15-25%" more than an import item is crap.  

I do not eat Chinese manufactured foods (to my knowledge).  

With you both 100%

I get an uneasy feeling about eating foods prepared in China. I notice a lot of fruit in pretty glass jars becoming popular in the supermarket; all from China.



What's even more unsettling is the amount of ingredients that go into our food and drugs that originate from China and we have no clue.



Eating fresh always seems to turn out to be the best way to go.



And it's Aldi, not Aldi's. Just sayin.

I spent an hour at the local Aldi today.  Aside from the toys and other non food consumer junk I found NOT ONE FOOD ITEM that came from China! I did however spend half what I spent at Meijer last week when I was working to later to shop at Aldi for the same food.

Not only is the sewage sewage, but it is also full of pesticides, industrial chemicals, and significant quantities of prescription drugs.  
If you research what farmed fish in China are fed and the medications they are dosed with, you probably wouldn't want to eat them.

The Chinese use sewage for fertilizing just about all their crops. It's just the way they do things. Ironically, farmers in the US who use cow manure as fertilizer call themselves organic and charge extra for those products. Realistically, cow manure is no cleaner or safer than people manure.

I am more worried about the other pollutants.

Mountain House uses ingredients from China in some of their stuff:

MH faq's

Mountain House purchases hundreds of ingredients from all over the world. Out of the hundreds of ingredients we use, there are only 3 ingredients from China. These 3 ingredients are used in the following flavors: Spicy Oriental, Chicken Teriyaki, Beef Teriyaki