
Costco - Food for a whole year - $799 Awesome - pitdesi
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11487214&cm_mmc=BCEmail_Sept2010Mailer-_-Banner_-1-_-Thrive
======
ShabbyDoo
Let's say you don't care about the "lasts N years" part, but you want to
construct a least-cost diet which is not significantly less nutritious than a
more expensive food selection. What foods would be included? To keep it
simple, presume shopping to be limited to Costco/Sam's/etc.

I did some math at Costco after examining a 50 lb bag of rice. Someone earning
minimum wage must work five minutes to purchase 2000 calories of rice. While I
know one can not live on rice alone, has there ever been a time or place in
the world's history when so little effort was required for sustenance?

~~~
TheEzEzz
Beans are nearly as cheap as rice when bought in bulk. Beans and rice are a
complete protein. Potatoes are cheap too, and are a complete protein by
themselves. You could throw in some fish oil and a multivitamin and still be
paying around a buck a day for food.

I would much prefer that diet to living off of canned goods.

~~~
autarch
So you've accounted for protein, but you need a lot more than that. For
example, without vitamin C, you'll get scurvy. Without B12, your nervous
system can be permanently damaged.

I'd highly recommend a diet of more than just beans, rice, potatoes, and fish
oil. You need to include some fruit and vegetables, and if you're going to be
totally vegan, some sort of B12 source (fortified foods or a vitamin pill).

~~~
TheEzEzz
Sure, that's why I suggested a multi. If you want to get the vitamins
naturally I'd suggest some cabbage and the occasional egg to get your C and
B12. Actually, eggs and cabbage will pretty much cover all your nutritional
needs but aren't the cheapest way to bulk macronutrients. Still, 50 cents
worth of cabbage and eggs a day would be enough to cover your vitamin and
mineral needs.

I wouldn't eat that diet, personally. I'm a paleo guy and value quality
veggies and meat. I'm on a student budget and I invest most of it in food. If
I were raising a family of 6 on my current wage though, I think
rice/beans/eggs/cabbage/fish oil would be a pretty solid, reasonable diet on
the cheap, throwing in as much extra meat and veggies as I could afford.

------
bl4k
The company that sells this is called Shelf Reliance. They are a MLM scheme
with consultants all over the USA taking advantage of the general doomsday
fear in the community.

The super-positive comments on the Costco website give it away - _"i use it
into my everyday cooking! the freeze dried fruits and veggies are oh my
gosh...amazing!"_ \-- (hint: they are all/mostly consultants posting).

Most consultants will beat or match Costco pricing, so if you are hungry-poor,
can survive on ~800 calories a day and enjoy the taste of powdered donkey, or
you are the paranoid type, contact your local Shelf Reliance(tm) consultant
for an in-home consultation and party today!

<http://www.shelfreliance.com/?affiliate=bl4k>

~~~
prawn
Is there seriously a "general doomsday fear" in the US? I see small hints and
mentions in news items that suggest a lot of people have their backs up, but
what doom exactly are they expecting?!

~~~
protomyth
When I was in High School living in North Dakota, Dad always kept a week or so
of food and propane for a heater / BBQ in stock all winter. It was not
uncommon to have a storm that made travel bad for a couple of days at a time.
We did have a couple of power failures that lasted into multiple days.

~~~
prawn
Fair point. I guess the population in the US is far more spread out than it is
here in Australia (largely based around the capitals and coast).

Wouldn't people do well to just hold a larger stock of tinned food (for
example)? Would dehydrated food require clean water to become edible?

Only time in my 30+ years that I've heard of any even remote
survivalist/prepare-for-the-worst stuff in Australia was my parents filling
the bath on NYE 1999 just in case utilities failed due to Y2k!

------
lsc
HN seems to think this is a good idea... it looks like TVP, Textured Vegetable
Protein is the primary source of protein in this mix.

Have you eaten TVP? It was a staple of my childhood. It is not something I
would want to consume more than once a week or so. You can turn it into
something that almost passes for sloppy joes? but really, I'd place it a few
rungs below tofu on the ladder of foods I'd like to eat.

I mean, to be clear, I'm sure it's fine food for when TSHTF or what have you.
I'm just saying; if I had to eat that stuff every day? yeah, I'd go nuts.

From the product description: "The taste and texture of TVP (Textured
Vegetable Protein) is consistent with real meat, making it a great addition to
vegetarian diets"

Uh, this makes me wonder if the person writing that has either never tasted
meat or never tasted TVP or both? Now, the TVP sloppy joes my mom used to make
weren't bad (you know, maybe once a week) but nobody is going to confuse TVP
with meat. even that mechanically separated meat that was featured in another
article. TVP is another thing entirely.

~~~
rdl
Why would anyone feed their children TVP? Were your parents vegetarians, or
cheap (and not very creative about food)?

~~~
lsc
let's just say a little bit of both. I ate a lot of tofu and rice plus
nutritional yeast, too. My parents had me and then left the commune shortly
thereafter (oh shit, we have a kid! we have to move out and get real jobs
now!) with no real career experience, so they were raising a kid on 'entry
level' state employee wages, which isn't much. (now, state employee retirement
pensions, on the other hand? pretty nice. All my younger siblings got as much
college as they wanted paid for.)

as far as health goes, TVP, as far as I can tell, is pretty okay. It's one of
the few (single source) vegetarian sources of complete protein.

~~~
easp
It sounds like you were probably a child of the 70's. It wasn't exactly a
decade of plenty, and even with money, good eating often meant overcooked
roast or steak and potatoes, or maybe stinky fish. The only garlic available
in most places was a near delicacy, two small heads in an open fronted box
wrapped in cellophane.

~~~
lsc
I was born in '80. (I'm weeks from turning 30.) rdl mostly had it, I think. My
parents were mostly vegetarian, and they were poor, or at least wise enough to
dump every penny they could get into real-estate.

------
brc
I'm actually interested in this not for ramen profitability but for survival
rations. I'm not some post-apocalyptic tinfoil hat wearing doomsday person,
but I recognise that I live in an area that can (and has) had natural
disasters from time to time. In those cases, food quickly becomes in short
supply and sometimes transport isn't possible. I've been thinking about
building a up a 'canned food reserve' but this is a much better solution
because of the longer shelflife.

Note for the same reasons I'm investigating solar power, rainwater tanks and
bottle propane for cooking/water heating.

~~~
bl4k
satellite internet connection and dominos.com = solved.

~~~
pitdesi
Yuck! Dominos=cardboard [http://lh6.ggpht.com/_IBXj-
Mt28qU/SyXP2nBOiiI/AAAAAAAABrE/nq...](http://lh6.ggpht.com/_IBXj-
Mt28qU/SyXP2nBOiiI/AAAAAAAABrE/nq9HpGKC8RI/dominos\[5\].jpg?imgmax=800)

~~~
zdw
Dominos redid their entire standard pizza recipe (new sauce, crust, etc.) and
pricing structure recently.

$6 for a 2 topping large carryout is reasonable, and their web ordering and
status is quite good.

Give them another shot - you might be surprised, as I was.

~~~
there
[http://goto11.net/youve-got-30-minutes-to-write-a-python-
scr...](http://goto11.net/youve-got-30-minutes-to-write-a-python-script/)

------
zdw
On a practical note, seeing as most of the #10 cans contain 30-50 servings,
you'd have a lot of open cans at a time if you wanted any sort of variety.

I wonder if the "6 Cans of Whole Eggs (236 servings per can)" are freeze dried
or liquid.

I also think I'm overthinking this...

~~~
wallflower
From the Costco comments:

"The contents of opened cans can be easily stored in glass mason jars, the
ones used for canning, with a canning lid which is vacuum-sealed onto the jar
with a food saver jar attachment. For jars which are in constant use, use a
white plastic screw-on lid available with canning supplies."

------
gexla
Beats Ramen. However, "one year supply dehydrated & freeze-dried food
profitable" doesn't have the same ring to it as "ramen profitable."

------
noonespecial
Yes, it beats ramen, etc, but _where do you store it?_ Having space to store
all those cans would have doubled my rent back in the day. I would however,
have been a popular guy in 1999.

~~~
aberkowitz
Completely ignoring nutritional need, storage costs, water to reconstitute
food, etc, Ramen is much cheaper.

At $1.39 for 6 [1] it comes out to $253.68 [2]. That makes the Ramen only diet
more than 3 times cheaper than the Costco food.

[1] <http://www.walgreens.com/store/c/a/ID=prod6010665-product>

[2] 365 * (3 *(1.39 / 6)) - Rounded up the cent

~~~
patrickgzill
Ramen can be had for as little as 7 for a dollar, on sale.

However I think that a heavily ramen diet without veggies and meat would lead
to serious health problems.

------
rdl
This is pretty clearly just emergency prep food; no sane person would eat it
on a routine basis, unless you had extremely limited logistics. It's cheaper
to just buy normal bags of rice, etc. than to get the canned form, plus, it
would be a difficult decision between suicide and homicide if stuck eating
this for an extended period by choice.

It's great to see mass-market retailers get into food security like this, but
buying a pack of (IMO barely edible) food like this is probably not the most
efficient way to solve the problem.

Generally what people do in places which are often subject to 1-4 week natural
disasters (big snowstorms, usually) is to maintain an extra stock of storage-
compatible foods that you eat on a daily basis. i.e. if you eat rice, buy a 50
pound bag. If you eat meat, buy a quarter cow and put it in a separate chest
freezer (which can last through a few weeks if not opened, even without
electricity). If you eat a lot of veggies, go for #10 cans, or ideally, grow
and can your own.

The idea is to get the benefits of bulk-purchasing what you actually eat (so,
lower cost per unit all the time), plus having an emergency capacity.

Once you have a month or so of ready stores in your pantry, then maybe
consider the long-term 10 year storage stuff. Reducing your daily costs by
buying your daily foods in bulk gives you enough left over to start
accumulating other supplies.

------
patrickgzill
I would be interested IF I could read the nutrition label and ingredients. Ah,
here is the PDF: <http://www.costco.com/Images/Content/Misc/PDF/443250n.pdf>

The inclusion of freeze dried fruits and veggies sounds promising, but I do
wonder how the TVP would taste after a while.

Also, the inclusion of "hard winter wheat" means either boiling it to make a
mash, or having a hand-powered or electric grain mill present in order to bake
bread.

Further, the idea that "1/4 cup" of white rice counts as a serving, is
certainly an idea that is foreign to most Americans and I am sure, many Asians
as well. I suppose "48 servings of white rice per can" sounds better than
"each can contains 12 cups of rice".

As a reviewer points out, this year's supply provides about 1220 calories per
day. If computed as 2000 calories per day, the supply drops to 223 days.

------
zeeone
Seems lucrative at first, but I would subject myself to eating canned food for
a year. This kind of diet is completely deprived from nutrients. I can only
imagine the state of my health after a year. For a little more than that one
could shop at Trader Joe's and eat fresh, organic and locally made produce.

------
atomical
This sounds like a better value than the food insurance companies Glenn Beck
promotes. I would be interested in how many calories are in this package. I
eat >3000 a day when training hard.

~~~
dasil003
...training hard for the apocalypse?

------
ryanwaggoner
I wish I had a cabin in the middle of nowhere in Northern California to stash
something like this for when the world falls apart...

------
brownie
I'd like to see someone on here try this, ala JetBlue's Unlimited Flights for
30 days. It won't be me however...

------
param
Has someone tried this stuff? I don't know if I want to spend 800 bucks on
something that I can't eat.

------
jseifer
While I'm not arguing that you can get some nutrition from this there's no way
it's _healthy_.

------
laskito
They could sell it with Dharma initiative labels.

------
pitdesi
Eat for $2 a day, spend the rest on your startup!

------
ld50
having only myself to feed i'd be concerned about the quantities of food per
container. being obliged to consume the 236 servings of eggs after opening one
of the 6 cans in that set would be a tall order.

i've always understood "ramen profitable" to be a figure of speech. does
anyone seriously eat that filth?

i think a real hacker would be aware of their body and its various biological
processes ("know thyself" in a sense), and know that putting crap like that
into your "human experience system" is foolishness regardless of your budget
or time constraints. i work 12-14 hour a day 6 days (minimum) a week and still
cook for myself.

when my budget was tight my crock pot was my best friend. dried beans, frozen
veggies, minimal cheap starches, cheap fresh fruits, onions, garlic, canned
tuna/cheap lean meat, a few cans of seasoning and some olive oil were still
under $100/month.

nowadays i eat like a king for $400/month and i'm eating the sort of meals i'd
have to pay $20+ a plate for at a restaurant. if you're looking to cut your
budget learn to cook. it's easy. it's a process-- optimize it. takes me 10
minutes. dont eat filth. crap in -> crap out.. neglect your body and live with
the consequences. until we can grow replacements or figure out how to preserve
them indefinitely, it's foolishness.

------
ergo98
Digg and Reddit pander to this. Don't kill HN.

~~~
Locke1689
_363 days ago_

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying
that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)

~~~
ergo98
They should add a guideline making the obvious observation that the age of any
given account says nothing about the length of site use by the account holder.
Maybe then we could can the typical "semi-noob illusion" junk.

There was an imgur link on the front page a couple of days ago. I believe that
was the first time ever. Now the Costco Cavalcade
(<http://www.reddit.com/domain/costco.com> \-- these SEO clowns have learned
that they can grow an account legacy by posting this Costco garbage
constantly) has made its way here. Yay!

Protip -- Someone should post that TIL that Costco Sells Caskets! Instant
front page!

~~~
Locke1689
Personally, I would have been much more amenable to an argument why this is
not Hacker News versus why HN is Reddit.

------
holdenc
I vote that all future bank bailout money gets spent on Costco "Food for a
Year," and then let the banks fix themselves.

