I was ready to hate this food. In fact I think I wanted it to be bad so I didn’t have to pay to add it to my food storage. (John is cheap)
No We Were Not Paid By Wise Company To Do This Review!
(Scroll to the bottom if you want us to share the most popular purchasing options from Amazon and why we like or don’t like them.)
We highly recommend canning your own fruits and veggies
Aside from storing honey my own experience has been limited to grandmas jars of peaches and tomatoes. Any of you out there with grandparents or parents that regularly can things know how wonderful the results of canning can be. Although we highly recommend canning your own fruits and veggies we also know its hard to carry jars when you are hiking through a forest. So ill just say the obvious, put those jars in your bug-out or bug-in locations. I will admit that canned peaches (or similar) could also provide a decent amount of moisture when eaten. If anyone has any info on this let us know in the comments.
Why did we pick Wise?
Wise received a lot of bad press a few years back, and subsequent reviews beat the proverbial dead horse. So how can a company stay in business with such a bad product? For the FatherSonPreppers community we will do anything, including slice our arms open trying to break a SOG Tactical Tomahawk. So eating some survival food should be easy as pie. Also we really wanted to get into the long term survival food storage products. We think the idea of emergency food storage is worth investing in.
Sneak Peek – Wise Emergency Food Storage review.
Here are our main conclusions for people who don’t want to read or see great pictures.
[POS] – Food Tasted Great
[POS] – Scandal Was Squashed (see official company response below)
[POS] – Packaging Secure
[POS] – New Methods Adopted By Wise (Oxygen Absorbers)
[POS] – Light Weight Emergency Storage
[NEG] – Calorie/Serving Low
[NEG] – Make Sure to Break Freeze Dried Chunks Before Adding Water
[NEG] – Tastes Horrible After Spending a Night in the Fridge (leftover review at the bottom)
EPIC TASTE TEST! We Try 7 Different Meals.
Bring on the FOOD!
Meal #1– Creamy Pasta and Vegetable Rotini with Chicken. Click Here For Prices
This dish was absolutely my favorite. The meal was great. It was a bit soupy but I believe that’s how its supposed to be. The amount of meat was surprisingly high. I figured they would scrimp on the meat, so I was happy. I would be very willing to eat this instead of starving.
Meal #2– Cheesy Lasagna. Click Here For Prices
Both Dad and I loved this meal. It actually made me think I was eating lasagna. Plenty of meat, and the consistency was perfect. This one would be easy to rotate. In fact it might not last 20 years in my house.
Meal #3– Chili Mac with Beef. Click Here For Prices
Tonys favorite. His exact words were “good enough to eat after work”. In fact we were both surprised that it actually tasted like we thought chili mac should. The beans were tasty and the consistency of the overall meal was good and thick. One of the better flavors for sure.
Meal #4– Teriyaki Chicken and Rice. Click Here For Prices
The Teriyaki flavor was excellent! With a teriyaki dish we figured it could go either great or horrible. This meal seemed to really work, we liked that the consistency wasn’t too runny or thick. There was also a hint of other spices that really made us happy. We think you guys will like this one.
Meal #5– Noodles and Beef in savory Mushroom Sauce. Click Here For Prices
We were blown away to find actual mushrooms. They were pretty good! The meal tasted fine, but overall it was average. Nothing too special but more importantly it wasn’t bad. Lets all remember that as long as its not horrible, it will work. In fact as survival food it will work even if its horrible.
Meal #6– Pasta Alfredo with Chicken. Click Here For Prices
We had to hate one right? Well up until we ate this one we were sure they would all be good. We did not like this one. Had an extra bland taste and the consistency was too thick. Its possible that we got a packet with minimal spices but we feel that if this one can be avoided it should be.
Meal #7– BREAKFAST ROUND! Apple Cinnamon Cereal (oatmeal). Click Here For Prices
This oatmeal was pretty dang good. Had a decent cinnamon flavor without overdoing it. Dad thought the oats were a bit hard but he admitted that he may have not let them sit long enough. (we like to blame him) This is the only meal to actually pass the leftover challenge. (See Below)
Wise Food Storage company scandal!
It may or may not be a surprise to the preppers out there that companies often fight over a “small” customer base. But it seems that there was a large product launch by Mountain House at the time this study was conducted. We asked Wise Foods for an official response and here is what they said.
Thanks for reaching out to us about this! While Wise has always stood behind their products, they did get a lot of attention when this release hit and so took a look at any additional improvements they could make. Since that time, Wise has made an investment to improve the packaging of the pouches that their food comes in and make sure oxygen absorbers are included in every single pouch of food versus a method used previously. As mentioned, Wise continues to stand behind their products even before these improvements were made, but decided to make these additional investments to provide their customers with greater peace of mind.
As a side note, I find it a little coincidental that Mountain House came out with this release right as it launched its new 25-year shelf-life food pouches when previously they only carried food pouches with a 7-year shelf-life and were convinced until that point that a 7-year shelf-life was the max you could get out of food in a pouch. It makes one question their intent behind the release.
I hope this information is helpful. If I can provide you with any additional information, please let me know.
Mike
Packaging Emergency Food Storage Properly is Critical.
While our photographs are of each meal in a nice blue bowl (thanks for breaking out the good china Dad) we actually prepared them in the pouches just as the instructions said. This is important to us because you guys will most likely eat them while out in the hills.
The packaging seems great. We actually had to cut the top off the first one twice, it was sealed too well. The package is resealable, which is a newer feature. Also included in the packaging is an oxygen absorber (see below).
Light Weight Bug Out or Emergency Food Storage
A Few PRO Tips and the Leftover Review.
Survival Food Leftover Review
Survival, Camping, Emergency, or Prepping food storage options and what to purchase for each situation. (our take)
Camping or Hiking Food:
Emergecny Kits, 72 Hour Kits, Car Kits, Bug out Bags and anything else small and mobile:
Survivalist, SHTF, TEOTWAWKI, and Prepper food storage option:
All lies, every thing you’ve written. Wise food tastes terrible. But perhaps you simply cannot tell the difference.
Wise food will NEVER last 25 years, it won’t even last 5 years. They packaged their food without oxygen absorbers, and then used cheap pouches which leak through osmosis. If they’re now using absorbers, it’s because of thousands of complaints they’ve received (and a few lawsuits). But they’ve still not done anything about their cheap leaky pouches.
People have received unsealed pouches, leaking pouches and pouches that can have the air pressed out of them (proving they leak).
You’re obviously just interested in selling Wise food yourself, but you’ve chosen to deceive the public by doing so. This company is not a food storage company at all, it’s a multi-level marketing company that charges 6 times the price for better food found elsewhere.
Wise dealers are encouraged to repeat the lies by Wise food but are inviting multiple lawsuits against themselves. The number of cases against Wise is increasing because now their food has been around a couple of years and people are finding out just how lousy, tasteless, unhealthy and leaky (stale) their food really is.
Wise is a scam company using scam tactics. Your review utterly failed to mention ANY of these points, which makes you a liar (go look this up – these claims are found all over the Internet).
I was completely honest. If there are lawsuits I don’t know about how can I post them? Why not drop some info on us that isn’t crazy ranting. We all need the information, so share it!