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Legacy Foods is currently one of the top emergency food producers on the market. Legacy food products are made in the United States, have a 25-year shelf life, and boast a low cost per pound. With non-GMO and gluten-free options, their products don’t require you to sacrifice your health for the sake of emergency calories.
Their MREs (meals ready to eat) are also tasty and nutritious. We repeatedly held their entrees under a magnifying glass and regularly found them more calorie-dense and nutritious than the competition. Add a little hot water, and you're good to go.
Legacy Food Storage is one of the leading sources of emergency food. Their products, which include gourmet foods and beverages, water filtration systems, emergency solar lights, and survival fuel, are all manufactured right here in the United States.
Let's have a closer look at this company, concentrating (in this article, anyway) on the food. (We can discuss their other products later!)
About Legacy Food Storage
Legacy Food Storage has quickly amassed a loyal following of online customers from around the nation.
The company was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Salt Lake City. All of their emergency food products are currently manufactured by their partner, Honeyville Grain. Honeyville has been in the food production business since the 1950s. Their manufacturing facilities have been certified by National Sanitation Foundation as Safe Quality Food Level 2 Food Safety rated facilities. They are capable of producing gluten-free-, USDA organic-, non-GMO-, kosher-, and halal-certified food products.
The company’s extensive loyal customer base is another promising sign. Legacy has over 4,000 mostly positive reviews, 22,000-plus Facebook fans, and a five-star online rating. There is also an ever-growing number of vloggers who’ve brought their positive feedback on Legacy to the internet.
If you decided to shop Legacy on Amazon, you would quickly discover that their meals are garnering healthy 4-5 star ratings overall. For example, the 240 Serving Meal Pack you see at the right has a 4.8 star rating (as of this writing).
What They Offer
Legacy has one of the most extensive lineups of emergency food products on the market. Customers can choose from an extensive collection of meal packages and bulk items that include side dishes, entrees, breakfasts, drinks, seeds, meats, and more. The gourmet menus include several popular American standards, including but limited to pasta alfredo, white bean chili, and beef stroganoff.
A 720-serving package, which includes a whopping 185 pounds of food, will cost you approximately $2,050 plus or minus (and before taking into account any Legacy coupon codes that they may offer). This breaks out to approximately 144 2,000-calorie days. That’s not bad, especially when you consider the fact that all that food fits in six large plastic buckets and comes with a quarter of a century of shelf-life.
Legacy Food Storage Shelf-Life
Legacy Food Storage products come with an impressive 25-year shelf-life. Their extended longevity is due in part to Legacy’s proprietary packaging and processing. All products are freeze-dried before being sealed inside oxygen-controlled packaging. This process extends the life, flavor, and nutritional value of Legacy’s MREs. Moreover, it eliminates the need for regular rotation and expiration date anxiety.
Legacy Premium Food Storage products come in six-serving double-nitrogen-flushed mylar pouches. The pouches contain less than 2% oxygen at the point of packaging. Even still, Legacy has enhanced each pouch by inserting an oxygen absorber inside their pouches. The absorbers are engineered to remove any oxygen that may build up throughout a product’s extended shelf-life.
Legacy’s mylar pouches also play a huge role in their food’s impressive shelf-life. The pouch material is called Metallyte, and it is produced by ExxonMobil. The material has four ultra-thin layers, including a vacuum-deposited aluminum exterior, a transparent multilayer polypropylene core, and non-sealable internal layer, and a treated surface layer. The layers serve as barriers to light, oxygen, and moisture.
The six-serving packages are also sealed in BPA-free polyethylene buckets. All Legacy Food buckets weigh less than 40 pounds and come with built-in handles. They are capable of preventing most damage associated with water, rodents, and insects. Moreover, the plastic totes make it easy to store and transport large collections of emergency food.
The Manufacturing Process
As we review their revolutionary manufacturing process, we see - as mentioned above - that they've partnered with Honeyville Grain, a company that's been in the food business since the early 1950s.
The manufacturing process is designed to remove as much oxygen from their food as possible. The products are freeze-dried and double flushed with nitrogen to ensure they can endure the test of time and scrutiny of even the most refined taste buds. Legacy’s MREs are also expertly packaged in the light, moisture, and heat-resistant mylar pouches that we mentioned earlier, each of which contains an additional oxygen absorber.
Legacy Food Storage Cost and Subscription Service
Click the image to check out the 720 Serving Package!
Legacy Foods Storage has one of the lowest per-pound emergency food costs on the market. Their most affordable offerings are their bulk meal packages, most of which end up costing $12 or less per pound or $15 or less per 2,000 calories.
It’s worth noting that Legacy also has a subscription service called Subscribe & Save. It enables regular patrons to purchase most of their products at a 20% discount with free shipping.
The subscription service renews automatically each month. However, it is noncontractual and can be canceled anytime. It enables serious preppers to save money while slowly building up their emergency food supplies.
Legacy Food Storage is also known to send out occasional coupons. Moreover, they allow customers to finance their purchases through Affirm.
Legacy Food vs The Competition
Legacy Food Storage offers some of the best-valued survival food on the market.
For example, Legacy’s 720-serving MRE package costs $1,889 and includes 184.5 pounds of food. That breaks out to 267,260 total calories or 134 days consisting of three 399-calorie meals. In the end, this has you spending $13.39 per day or $15 for every 2,000 calories.
Meanwhile, Readywise, one of Legacy’s main competitors, offers a strikingly similar 720-serving emergency survival food set for $1,699.99. At first glance, Readywise’s price makes it an apparent winner. However, with just 135 pounds of food and 155,280 total calories, the Readywise kit pales in comparison to Legacy.
Another close competitor that falls short of Legacy Food Storage is Ready Store. Their most comparable product is their EasyPrep three-month food supply. The kit includes 789 food servings consisting of 139,580 calories or 135 pounds of food. The kit costs $1,839.99 or $13.63 per pound of food and is designed to feed one adult for approximately 70 days.
As such, it is presumably more expensive and less nutritious than Legacy’s package. On top of this, it lacks the impressive packaging and storage offered by Legacy, Readywise, and most other emergency food manufacturers such as the widely known Mountain House and Augason Farms brands.
Legacy Food Pros and Cons
Let's Begin with the PROS:
Diverse Product Line: Legacy is a one-stop-shop for all your prepping needs. Their online shop makes it easy for customers to bundle emergency food, water filters, packaged fuel, and other survival products.
Excellent Flavor and Variety: It’s no secret that dehydrated MREs aren’t typically favored for their palatability. Yet, Legacy manages to offer a wide range of practical and delicious food options. Take their 720-serving survival package for example. It contains four different breakfasts, 12 unique entrees, and a nine-grain cereal mix. They’ve also got lines of freeze-dried meats, fruits, vegetables, dairy products, grains, and specialty items. As if that’s not enough, they also offer carefully curated vegetarian and gluten-free offerings.
Legacy is so confident in the flavor of their emergency foods they urge prospective customers to buy samples before committing to more substantial purchases. You can sample just about any entree and snack just by purchasing one of the company's sample packs. Take the 16-serving family entree sample pack for an example. It costs just $44 and includes Legacy’s pasta alfredo, enchilada, beans and rice, stroganoff, and classic chili mix pouches.
We mulled through Legacy’s online reviews for comments about the taste and consistency of their emergency food products. Many of the customers assumed it best to save their purchases for emergencies. However, those that opt to test out their purchases were seemingly impressed by the food's quality.
One reviewer said, “the flavor of the pasta primavera was very good." Another verified buyer chose to speak directly to prospective customers. “You’ll love the taste," he said with the utmost confidence. We also came across a good amount of taste testers on YouTube. We watched reviewers test out everything from beef stroganoff to rice and beans. Most reviewers agreed that the food packets were more flavorful and satiating than they ever imagined.
Check out the video review just below... the article continues below the video!
Reliable Shipping and Handling: Most customers also seem to have a positive opinion regarding Legacy’s shipping and handling process. First off, all Legacy orders within the contiguous United States are automatically shipped free of charge. Most customers also reported that their purchases arrived on or before their estimated delivery times, which in most cases was within just two business days of purchase.
Ease of Preparation: Legacy Premium’s emergency food is incredibly easy to prepare.
You simply boil the recommended amount of water, open the pouch, remove the internal oxygen absorber, and cook for the recommended amount of time.
(Hint Hint: Why not try this out using a Kelly Kettle Camp Cooking Kit as you may notice at left!)
As you can see in the video below by "The Urban Prepper," the foods look spectacular after they’ve been hydrated. The individual ingredients, such as noodles, vegetables, meats, and sauces, look as though they have been traditionally prepared. According to most reviewers, the food tastes just as good as standard fare.
Keep in mind that you would need some sort of heating source, pan, utensils, and water to prepare your food. (This might be a good time to remind you that we have an article about today's modern Solar Cookers here!)
In Fairness, Let's Consider the CONS:
While we and most other reviewers had positive experiences with Legacy Food Storage products, we thought it necessary to share a few minor complaints.
No International Shipping: According to Legacy's homepage, the company does not ship its emergency food products outside of the United States. Nevertheless, the company claims several international dealers. It’s unclear where these vendors are located and how their products are sold. However, Legacy does welcome international shoppers to reach out to their customer service team with questions.
Since even products shipped outside of the contiguous United States are subject to additional shipping and handling fees, we’re not overly confident in Legacy’s ability to reach international patrons.
Returns are Inconvenient: Since all three of Legacy’s product categories are sourced from different affiliate manufacturers, their food, water, and fuel sales each fall under unique return policy umbrellas. Further complicating the company’s return process is their $10 or 5% restocking fees which are reportedly tacked on to all canceled and returned items.
Legacy Food - The Bottom Line
hether you’re prepping for a zombie apocalypse or just want to have a week or two of food on hand for the upcoming hurricane season, Legacy Food Storage is one of your best emergency food options.
Legacy’s selections are equal parts practical and delicious. Their proprietary food preservation techniques do wonders to enhance the life, taste, and nutrition of their freeze-dried emergency food products. They also happen to offer some of the most affordable food products on the market, with most of their per-pound food prices sinking well below that of the competition.
Legacy’s survival food kits are also expertly packaged and highly portable. Thanks to emergency food like this, you can be sure that even if the sh*t does hit the fan, you and your loved ones will still be able to enjoy some of your favorite meals, snacks, and beverages.
