# THRIVE foods anyone?



## TexasMama (Dec 3, 2012)

First of all, I know the old adage about store what you eat and eat what you store...which is what I'm wanting to do. I'm currently working on building up our food storage of rice/spaghetti/flour, etc. along with sauces, canned fruits and more.

One of the companies I've seen that interests me is THRIVE (Shelf Reliance.com) and I am seriously considering becoming a consultant not so much to "make money" as to buy products for us at a discount. There are a lot of neat products on the site that I think we might like to have...and of course I'm thinking I could stock up when they go on sale, etc.

But there is no one around here who sells it (that I know of) so it isn't like I can taste it. Also, I haven't sat down yet and compared the price of them with other companies. I guess I like their products because I could see myself using their products with other things in my normal everyday cooking.

Has anyone bought their foods or researched them? I'd love to hear input on your thoughts about not only the taste - but how the pricing works out. I suspect it will be more expensive but I would continue to buy things like sugar and flour and stuff on flour locally and pick and choose the items we'd like (like the brownie mix where you only add water).


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## jsriley5 (Sep 22, 2012)

contact them ask for samples??


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## Cud579 (Apr 26, 2010)

I attended one of their parties. It was fun. I too have thought about becoming a rep for them just so I can buy their product at a discounted price. We had made a taco salad with their products, brownies and milk. It was all very good. I did purchase some products then.


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## Grimm (Sep 5, 2012)

This was discussed not long ago.


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## kejmack (May 17, 2011)

If I were you, I'd buy a can and cook it up before you invest. Some of that stuff cooks up like mush and tastes less than appealing.

I found it is more efficient to store the ingredients and then cook the meals from that. The only freeze dried stuff I store is butter, cheese, and some meat. It is WAY cheaper to make your own meals.


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## MaryV (Jan 31, 2009)

I have a lot of THRIVE food. I like it and wish I had more. You do have to learn recipes to make the individual food items into meals. there are recipes on the website but you can experiment and make your own. its expensive though. I have settled now for buying the fruit, cheese, and meat as much as possible, and get my veggies canned from the grocery store. I tried the TVP but dont like it and I hear it isnt good for you.


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## mma800 (May 7, 2012)

I replied to a question like this last week I think. I have the monthly Q shipment of Thrive foods and have been very happy. I have been very pleased so far. I didn't know they had reps and parties! No one around her that I know of.
I get an email ir two a week with recipes for using the Thrive food. I print up the ones that interest me and put it in a binder. Survival mom always has good recipes too. :flower:
I am happy to have cans of shortening, sour cream, cheese, eggs and milk. I have learned to dry my fruit and veggies, spices etc. but there ain't no way I will be getting a cow or goat any time soon!:laugh:


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## Grimm (Sep 5, 2012)

MaryV said:


> I have a lot of THRIVE food. I like it and wish I had more. You do have to learn recipes to make the individual food items into meals. there are recipes on the website but you can experiment and make your own. its expensive though. I have settled now for buying the fruit, cheese, and meat as much as possible, and get my veggies canned from the grocery store. I tried the TVP but dont like it and I hear it isnt good for you.


TVP is textured vegetable protein. Far from tasty but healthy. I get the unflavored TVP from the health food store and store than along with canned meat. I can add the TVP to any recipe and it doesn't alter the taste unlike the flavored TVP.


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## DJgang (Apr 10, 2011)

Grimm said:


> TVP is textured vegetable protein. Far from tasty but healthy. I get the unflavored TVP from the health food store and store than along with canned meat. I can add the TVP to any recipe and it doesn't alter the taste unlike the flavored TVP.


Is it soy protein?

My natural med doc told me to stay away from soy.  that's the reason I've not purchased, but if you do, I imagine spices will go a long way with TVP


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## Grimm (Sep 5, 2012)

DJgang said:


> Is it soy protein?
> 
> My natural med doc told me to stay away from soy.  that's the reason I've not purchased, but if you do, I imagine spices will go a long way with TVP


There is some soy in it. My DH doesn't even know when I add TVP to soups or chili.  Since I use the unflavored I try to add it to foods with strong flavors so the texture is not noticed.

As for Thrive foods, I hear the real meats are a better bet money wise than the TVP. Less of an adjustment to the system if you are not use to TVP.


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## DJgang (Apr 10, 2011)

Grimm said:


> There is some soy in it. My DH doesn't even know when I add TVP to soups or chili.  Since I use the unflavored I try to add it to foods with strong flavors so the texture is not noticed.
> 
> As for Thrive foods, I hear the real meats are a better bet money wise than the TVP. Less of an adjustment to the system if you are not use to TVP.


Sometimes self reliance will put a meat on sale, I got a #10 of freeze dried roast beef tips for 35.00. I didn't think that was too bad. It's the only can that I have, I would like some more, but I'm scared to use the soy. I think it messes with your hormones so be careful.


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## Grimm (Sep 5, 2012)

I eat a little soy every so often. I went soy crazy when I was pregnant with Roo.

I did get my gluten free order from Augason Farms. Can't wait to try some of it this weekend.


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## Locutus (Apr 24, 2012)

Before buying any TVP or other products containing soy, do a web search on "the dangers of soy."

When I was initially looking into food storage, I avoided the packages like their "1 year supply" because they invariably contained TVP, as well as items that had a very high dollar to calorie ratio (celery is something like $107.00 for 1000 Calories!)

It's true that the real meats are a better value than the TVP when you consider that the TVP shelf life is only 10 years, compared to the meats which have a shelf life of 25 or 30 years (can't remember which).

To get the best value, I calculated a value that I call dollars per Mcal ($/Mcal) for each item considered. This requires a bit of explanation: The caloric values on food labels are actually kilocalories, or 1000 calories. Scientifically, a calorie is defined as the energy required to increase the temperature of one cc of water by one degree Celsius. This is a tiny amount of energy, so food labels actually use kilocalories (Kcal) when they state Calories (note the upper case "C"). So if a Kcal is 1000 calories, then a Mcal would be one million calories.

So let's say you have a #10 can of food that boasts 100 servings at 300 Calories per serving, and the can costs $15.00. You would compute $/Mcal as follows:

Total Kcal: 100 x 300 = 30,000 Kcal.

15 / 30000 = $.0005 per Kcal

.0005 x 1000 = $.50/Mcal

I use Mcal vs. Kcal because the dollars and cents results are more intuitive.

So you may say, "Well, Locutus, that's all very interesting (yawn), but why would I want to do all that number crunching?"

Well, I'm glad you asked. Here's why. Trying to compare the costs of various brands of storage foods and supermarket foods is futile without a common denominator. Since the goal of a food storage program is to sustain life and health through a protracted crisis, the most important common denominator, in my view, is how many calories can I store for the longest time with the money I budget for food storage. Using the $/Mcal calculation, I can compare any two or more foods, so long as I know the total calories per unit purchased.

You could further crunch these numbers to account for shelf life. Going back to the TVP vs. Meat example (and I don't remember the costs of these so I'm going to offer hypothetical numbers here. So bear with me.), Let's say a #10 can of TVP has 50000 Kcals of food value, has a 10 year shelf life, and costs $20.00 per can. And let's say a #10 can of ground beef also has 50000 Kcals of food value, but has a 25 year shelf life and costs $35 per can.

TVP:
20/50000 x 1000=$.40/Mcal
...but, you'd need to buy 2.5 cans in 20 years to match the total shelf life of one can of the beef. So...
.40 x 2.5 = $1.00/Mcal equivalent over 25 years.

Ground beef:
35/50000 x 1000 = $.70/Mcal.

So in this example, TVP would cost 30 cents more per Mcal than the ground beef, over the course of the beef's 25 year shelf life.

What I ended up doing was to make an initial buy of over 1.5 million Kcal of food storage (about a 4 month supply for my family), combining purchases from several sources. I bought carefully selected foods from Thrive, Augason, LDS, Costco and Safeway to optimize both the cost per Mcal and the shelf lives of the various foods. Staple foods that I wanted to last a long time generally came from Thrive, LDS and Augason. Foods I intended to rotate through generally came from Costco and Safeway. Some exceptions include things like sugar and salt, which I packed myself in mylar bags with both oxy-sorb and dessicant packets, then the bags went into buckets which also got oxy-sorb and dessicant packets.

My average cost for everything came in close to $1.00/Mcal, which in theory would cost about $8.00 per day total, to feed a family of four at 2000 Calories per person per day. That's cheaper than the fresh foods we consume now. This included some of the more expensive items for variety, like the freeze dried entrees. I tried not to get too many of such items because not only are they more expensive, but are also loaded with sodium and perhaps other not-so-healthy ingredients. I also did include some freeze dried fruits and vegetables, but went a little lean on these, figuring that I will always be producing some fresh fruits and vegetables from our garden.


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