Preps for Allergies

[cumbyhm1217]

My son has a chemical Allergy and cant eat anything with dye or artificial flavoring. My husband has been trying to find things that he can eat, but MRE's and Bars that i would have in my bags he can not eat. The ones he can eat have a 1 year shelf life if that. We have notices that the food that we are storing at home for when TSHTF he can have because it is not processed or have any additives.

Question....

Does anyone have any suggestions so that my Little one will have food to eat in a SHTF situation? Any sites that have high calorie All natural bars or MRE's?

[Aim2Maim]

Are you looking for BoB type items,i.e. calorie bars, tuna packs, small packable foods, or for general Bug in bulk foods?

[cumbyhm1217]

BOB type food, Bulk stuff we are good on

[Aim2Maim]

Does your family regularly eat cliff bars, granola, jerkey, trail mix, etc? Those items don't really have a long shelf life but if you have and eat them regularly just rotate in and out of BoB's. MRE's, MH meals, and those are probably going to have too much artificials for him. Thats the problem with long term storage foods is that they aren't the best nutritional things for us. Tuna packets? I'm sure he doesnt care for those, but they also have chicken. Peanut butter is a good calorie/fat content staple. Again aside from freeze dried or MRE type items it will be difficult to come up with food items that last for longer than a year.

[cumbyhm1217]

We have found that it is really hard to store food for him. I do have some cliff bars in my EDC for him because hey are all natural.... but its still only 260calories per bar. we dont do nuts yet with him, he is ony 19months.

[duodecima]

I worked on this a little for someone with gluten & soy issues. I had found a "Make your own survival bar" recipe here. I replaced the packet of orange jello with 1 packet of knox gelatin and 3T of sugar. I experimented with using vanilla as a flavor (1 tsp) and I thought this tasted fine, other people didn't think their oatmeal bars should taste like vanilla. Older daughter thinks they taste good (I agree, at least when they're fresh, not going to unseal them for another 6 mo or so...), picky eater won't eat them (but wouldn't eat a Clif bar either...). I like that there are 1 and 2 year updates on how they stored. I find them bulky, even when I vacuum pack them. I did mine as a series of bars, not one big brick.

As long as you're OK with rotating, I think PB (or Nutella!) have pretty high caloric density, like 2800 kcal/lb. Unless there's a history of nut allergies, PB might be a good emergency food. Crackers are pretty light weight tho, or I'm sure there's some higher-calorie food to spread it on. Due to picky eater, I also have big ziploc bags of "normal" food, and while a lot of it has dyes in it, some stuff (like powdered milk packets, instant oatmeal, instant grits, raisins) don't have dyes in them. Looks like gerber makes a no-dye fruit snack. Ramen noodles don't seem to have any artificial dye. Not sure about the soup base. (My BOB is full of nifty junk food we only eat in case of emergency. It will distract the kids somewhat, I hope, in the event...) All of this, of course, has to be rotated, and is also bulky but it means I'm pretty sure picky-picky preschooler will actually eat something.

[Aim2Maim]

Dried Fruits? Again the problem your are most likely to face is calories vs. shelf life. As you said cliff bar is only 260 cal hardly enough for a day worth of food. The same with dried fruits, jerkey, tuna, chicken. It's snack food and not enough calories to get you through a long bug out. Some foods that are packable and have good amount of calories he may not eat, my son is picky as hell when it comes to food (3y/o) and he is just as stubborn in that when he wants something thats what he wants and doesnt want to eat anything else. Things to maybe look at would be some pasta and rice sides. Would probably cost a little more for all natural ones but my local health store sells them in packets just like the ones at wal-mart. Most likely you are going to have to experiment with what is good for him, what he will eat, and how long it will store.

[Chantrea]

You need to be careful with the dried fruits--a lot of them contain sulfites, which can create problems.

It's tough to do this without nuts. I know that Larabars are color, additive, and preservative free; they are spendy though. And contain nuts. I had to do an elimination diet once for perservatives and dyes (which really sucked, they're in everything) and that one one of the few grab and go things I could eat.