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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Outdoors blog

Mountain House freeze-dried meals good for 30 years

Leave the stove at home and simply use cold water with this new freeze-dried entree.
Leave the stove at home and simply use cold water with this new freeze-dried entree.

CAMPING -- No worries about eating that Mountain House freeze-dried food you haven't used since buying it in the early 90s when BILL Clinton was running for president.

The company has raised the shelf life for all entrees in cans and pouches to 30 years, the longest in the freeze-dried food industry.

The shift comes in response to new consumer research showing a majority of consumers view the shelf life of long-term emergency food as the time that the product will “still taste good.”

Consumers will begin seeing this change reflected in the ‘Best By’ date on Mountain House packaging by the end of the year, if not sooner.

This change retroactively affects all pouches and cans made within the past 30 years, the company said in a statement.

A company panel sampled foods that were at least 30 years old and had been stored in ambient temperatures in various warehouses and reported:

"Although differences in flavor and texture were evident – as were personal preferences – the tested recipes scored above average on a food-industry standard “hedonic scale.”

"This was corroborated by numerous astonished reviewers of Mountain House Military meals that had been stored for up to 42 years.  Mountain House is the only brand in the industry that can legitimately make this claim."

“There is a lot of confusion in the emergency food market surrounding the concept of shelf life,” notes Jim Merryman, President of OFD Foods, makers of Mountain House. “During the 40+ years of my career at OFD Foods, we’ve always used the conservative standard of ‘tastes as good as new’ for Mountain House shelf life, while many competitors use the low standard of ‘will sustain life’. These are two very different standards of shelf life.”

“It’s critical to note,” says Merryman, “that the results of these real-world tests are based on nearly fifty years of Mountain House Military expertise in a number of interlocking areas: recipe formulation, ingredient sourcing, research and development, cooking, freezing, freeze drying, proprietary packaging, moisture control, oxygen control, and unwavering process control from beginning to end.  If even one area is missing, it would jeopardize shelf life...."

Personal test note:

Years ago, I did a field test with freeze-dried food from five companies. I offered blind samples of the five meals to a group of six Spokane Mountaineers on the first night of a backpacking trip after a hard day of hiking. 

Mountain House received the highest rating.  In discussions later, and after comparing ingredient labels, we concluded that the higher sodium content of the Mountain House meal made it more desirable in the field.



Outdoors blog

Rich Landers writes and photographs stories and columns for a wide range of outdoors coverage, including Outdoors feature sections on Sunday and Thursday.




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