I'm sure it's been hashed out here plenty, but I'm starting to move to freeze dried/dehydrated meals.
I have ration bars, canned soups, ready meals. Then I have long term like 5 gal pales of pasta, rice, etc.

Looking at the various buckets of emergency foods.

What say the forum?

I have years worth of food stored. Not one freeze dried pouch.

I'm right there with ya, but I like the idea of having some easier to cook food on hand.

I think freeze dried can be perfect for helping out with the boring diet.

The freeze dried banananananana chips and some of the other stuff makes a good snack.

I don't think it has to be done but I have some pouches and some #10 cans I got on lightening deals or major clearances at amazon and elsewhere.

I had pouches from group buys back when such things could happen, I ate em.  :D

At some point I think it can make sense, I rent so a lot of my stuff is portable and the nice thing about freeze dried stuff is how little it weighs.  A few totes of it on a trailer or the roof rack and you have a decent bit of food with little weight and anyplace I am headed has water as creeks, ponds, or little lake, as well as old wells and springs in the woods and what not.  I do not plan to bug out to a dry arid area.  I might melt.

At the same time, if I were more serious and strict I would say there are better uses for the money like more rice and beans.  :C

I went with other.

Regular food, rotated. I literally have years of Mt House I'm working on getting rid of while it's still usable,
and have about 150 #10 cans of dyhydrated (not FD) food from a Mormon supply store I got pre-Y2K that's
waiting on my patio for the next trip to the dump.

While I don't regret it -- it's an insurance policy I never had to collect on -- more than even I'm convinced
"storage food" is a waste, and you should just have a deep pantry you're rotating.

Honestly a case or ramen and some cans of veggies and chicken that you actually eat on a regular basis
is far more practical than #10 cans of FD whatever that sit for a decade. Less waste and no sudden changes
to your diet during an emergency.

I'm all for the idea of heavily stocking you regular use items, but that just won't work for me.
My diet consists primarily of fresh fruits/veggies, eggs, and fresh meat.

so in any disaster situation you're going to die?

glad you posted

You can substitute canned versions of most of those (do say a 50/50 mix of canned v. fresh) and add in some
FD eggs.

Trust me, it would be far less costly to you (and less traumatic to your diet) than going to 100% Mountain House,
etc.

As lot of this

Also, 99.9995% of shtf scenarios are not a mad Max event.

Ergo, freezers are your friend. It's easy to have generator and fuel enough to keep a chest freezer going for over a month.

We have as of now 5 chest freezers packed full of food. I have 3 generators capable of running all at once, and a HF 2 stroker that will run 1 at a time.

Realistically, freezers and generator power are the best solution outside of apartment dwellers.

But yes, I do have dried beans, powdered eggs, powdered milk, and enough grains to sprout for us or the chickens.

If you feel you need to toss that... A local farmer would love to have that for his animals.

Because I made the same mistake OP is trying to make, e.g. stored what I didn't eat, rather that what I did.

The dump stuff is going away because it's far too old (and it was dehydrated rather than FD, so it didn't keep well at 20+ years),
actually had a few swelled #10 cans that literally exploded when punctured -- but it was pancake mix, so it was probably just
moisture making its way in rather than botulism.

I'm still working on getting the MH stuff out of here -- in that case it's due to me storing food for a family of six
for a year, when I'm now a family of two and have developed food allergies incompatible with MH food, and the
SO is vegan, so neither of us can eat it. That's another pitfall of stored food you don't eat -- you may very well
find 5-10 years down the road it's completely incompatible with your diet.

Wise is inedible garbage. Buy Mt. House

If you are going to buy a large quantity of freeze dried foods you might want to look into buying a freeze dryer and making your own.

That way you are eating your own cooking.

We love ours. It will process raw or cooked food perfectly.

A porkchop off of the grill processed through the freeze dryer comes out like a piece of Styrofoam. Rehydrate it and it's a piece of meat that you can use a knife and fork on. The taste is just like it was when you cooked it.

Raw eggs, cooked eggs, it don't care.

I've had mine for a year and a half now and it rarely goes a week without running.

It paid for itself in about 8 months.