Thanksgiving Dinner

Last Thursday was the day many families come together and become almost comatose from ingesting so much food. I however had the opportunity to join a crew working a 15 hour shift at a retail store preparing Black Friday specials on Thursday night. I knew the area restaurants would not be open during this time so I would need something to eat. Hmm, what should I take?

A few months ago I picked up this container of Survival Tabs Emergency Food Rations. I had seen these sitting on the store’s shelves before and was intrigued. The label says “The best possible nutrition in the smallest possible volume.” Basically, you eat 12 of these 7/8”x1/2” tablets a day for all of your basic nutritional needs during an emergency. There are 180 tablets in this container so you theoretically have 15 days of food needs. When I got the jar home I immediately repacked sets of 12 tablets into mylar bags which are just 3.5”x4.25”. Three of these small bags now travel in my Get Home Kit. Yes, I still have a pack of crackers, an MRE brownie and a Millennium Bar in the kit too – comfort food!

It is important to test emergency gear and supplies before they are needed – and I had been woefully neglectful in testing these; honestly, I wasn’t too excited to try them. Wednesday evening I tasted one. Hmm, not too bad, chews up well and has a faint malted milk ball flavor. Will they be filling enough?

Commitment time – I pack two mini baggies in my side pocket with 6 tablets in each. The thought was that every hour or so I would eat one and see if that gets me through the night. A pack of crackers were also in my pocket just in case I needed a little more filling (it was Thanksgiving!).

It was a busy shift. When I found myself starting to feel a little hungry I just reached in my pocket and chewed a Survival Tab. The first one was several hours into the shift since I made a point of eating before going. Guess what? In 15 hours I only ate 5 of the Tabs and I was feeling pretty good. Again, I did eat before the shift but I expected to be feeling much hungrier at this point. I am now comfortable carrying these in my kit for emergency rations – rations which take virtually no space!

I added this photo because the package stated that the container could be carried easily in a standard canteen pouch. In fact, there is a separate plastic bag folded inside the lid so you can dump the tablets in the bag while using the container to hold water! And yes, as you can see in the photo, the container does fit very nicely in the canteen pouch with the black lid just peeking out. I always appreciate a well thought out design. In this case, I like the packaging approach overall – even though I repackaged for my personal purpose – and the Tabs worked great for this experiment.

Maybe someday I will test them as the only food source over a couple days? No, I will need to supplement that with my nightly ice cream!