Hi everyone, newbie here with more questions! I just bought a lot of Thrive products and was wondering if anyone knows if they really do store for 25 years? I plan to store them exactly as instructed and probably will rotate some (like the ones that keep for 3, 5, 8 years) but my plan was to have the Thrive as last resort food and build up a home store of the foods we eat every day so if something happens, we use those first and then use the Thrive if needed. Not sure if anyone has had the time to test them, but if so, did they really keep all that time?

Thanks 🙂

I have quite a bit of thrive product and have sampled it from time to time. I did open a pouch of thrive Banana's last year that were already 10 years old, and they were pretty good. I have no complaints. So I can tell you that they do store well for at least 10 years, beyond that although I do have quite a bit of product I've never had/tried anything older then 10 years.

Not quite the answer you were looking for, but I hope it helps.

Thanks DaScribbler, good to know they last at least 10 years. I was thinking maybe I will rotate them then just in case.

I'm pretty certain that Thrive, which recently exploded on to the market, is associated with the Mormons. This religious group has been into the food preservation game for years. I was one of their canneries last week actually. Freeze dried foods are an excellent way to store foods for the long-term. They use special machines that control the temperature and atmospheric pressure in which a process called 'sublimation' occurs. This process essentially 'vaporizes' the water/moisture within foods converting directly to a gas form.

In my opinion it's safe to say their freeze-dried foods will last as long as they say they will because the nature of freeze-dried foods have great longevity if stored correctly and they've been in the game for a long time - perhaps longer then some of the well-known brands.

Interestingly, thrive is the one company (that I'm aware of in Canada) that is really in-tune with the prepper market. Other freeze-dried players like Mountains House, Naturally High and Outdoor Gourmet are in the same market and while some of them sell them in number 10 cans they are meals rather then raw or single ingredients. Thrive sells number 10 cans of single ingredients such as apple slices, flour, rice, beans, etc.

While I have entertained purchasing Thrive the one thing that holds me back is the price. I am in contact with a couple of consultants and I'm planning to sample their food in the near future.

But, let me be more specific here. Thrive always says 'X' amount of servings. Well, what's a serving? Let's look at Ground beef for example:

http://www.shelfreliance.com/freeze-dried-ground-beef.html

It does say 48 servings for $46.19. But (after adding water as per their instructions) does one pound sound like you could get 48 servings from? Keep in mind one forth of this would be equivalent to a quarter-pounder burger from McDonald's. That's an expensive burger costing you about $11.72.

A serving according to the label is a quarter of a cup or 16g. I don't know about you but that isn't very much to me.

In the end, probably a great product that will last for years but (in my opinion) you're better off investing time and money into alternative means of preserving food or other freeze-dried sources because they seem very expensive to me (price to serving ratio).

1 serving dehydrated, when rehydrated could very well be 1/2 -3/4 cup. Take 1/4 cup of your frozen veg and put it on your plate, you may find that that is one full serving.

I just chose to have a few backup Thrive # 10 cans of fruit. Just for the kids. I would say Thrive is a great choice for last resort food, but rotation should be done at some point. Variety is good!

1 serving dehydrated, when rehydrated could very well be 1/2 -3/4 cup. Take 1/4 cup of your frozen veg and put it on your plate, you may find that that is one full serving.

I agree and I did take this into consideration:

But (after adding water as per their instructions) does one pound sound like you could get 48 servings from?

However, I stand corrected. The Thrive website specifies how to make 1 pound of ground beef and I assumed that this was the total of everything or the entire package contents - it's not.

The ratio is 2 1/2 Cups of Freeze-dried Ground Beef + 2 Cups Water = 1 lb. Fresh Ground Beef

Great, so we know how to make 1 pound from the package but how many total freeze-dried cups are contained within a number 10 can? Once we know this we'll be able to figure out how many total pounds of beef we can get. Well, we know that they advertise it as 1.69 lbs (total weight of number 10 can). So how many cups within 1.69 lbs?

I think a better question would be how many cups are in a number 10 can. This is the answer I found:

12 Cups (3 quarts) or 96 ounces by Volume.
Actual weight "in ounces" will vary due to the density of the product contained.

Ok, so if we have 12 cups in total and we know that we can get 1 pound from 2 1/2 cups then that we're looking at just under a total of 5 pounds of ground beef. This is considering the addition water.

So, according to thrive, the total servings is 48 from a product that can product just under 5 pounds of meat (after water has been added).

I'm not bashing Thrive at all - I'm sure it's a great product.

My point is it's a real mystery to figure out what an actual serving is. I don't know about anyone else here but there's a good chance you'll be burning through more calories in the event of an event. 100 Calories or 16 grams (converted to 'x amount of grams' by adding water) may not be a filling portion.

The misconception is that most people simply read the label and think "oh, it has 48 servings - that's a lot" where the truth is really defining what an actual serving is. I don't think I have to point out that it's in a companies best interest to give the impression that you're getting a lot more then you might be thinking - hence why I think the there is a lot of grey area here with Thrive in which some people are oblivious to.

It is a little like "two scoops of raisins" in the old Raisin Bran commercial.
As far as I know how many raisins are in a packet of Raisin Bran remain a mystery 😆

Or possibly somewhat like how many licks to get to the center of a tootsie pop!

To chime in here...nutritionally an adult male needs the equivelent of 2oz of meat protein per day to meet basic needs. In a survival situation the vast amount of your calories would come from base starches such as wheat, rice, pastas and beans. You will also get incomplete proteins from these sources. You add small amounts of vegetables... fresh if you have them or either canned or dried... plus dried fruits to fill out your nutritional needs. It will be necessary to have some sort of supplement on hand to give you what you need in the way of vitamins and trace minerals for optimum health. You aren't really looking at the meat portion of your prep stores to give you the full and satisfying feeling you would get from gorging on steak or a big juicy burger. It is there to meet the needs of diet regarding protein replenishment. To use the approximate reconstituted weight of the dried beef at 5 lbs... that would equal about 40 2oz servings. Still not the advertised 48... but closer.

JAB

It is a little like "two scoops of raisins" in the old Raisin Bran commercial.
As far as I know how many raisins are in a packet of Raisin Bran remain a mystery 😆

Or possibly somewhat like how many licks to get to the center of a tootsie pop!

lol!

"You aren't really looking at the meat portion of your prep stores to give you the full and satisfying feeling you would get from gorging on steak or a big juicy burger."

That was my thought as well JAB. I wanted the Thrive for a last resort and in the event of an emergency, we won't be eating three huge meals a day like we normally do. We will be rationing and I ordered fun things like brownies and yogurt bites as well to keep us sane. We will get a lot of our nutrition from the home store I will build up, but it's harder to build up on veggies and fruits (I am a vegetarian, and not yet a canner) so I thought Thrive would be a good option just in case, until I learn more. 😀