Back when I was a starving musician and living more or less in the back of a van down by the river (some exaggeration, but not much), I couldn’t afford much in the way of food — “starving”, duh — and so I found myself eating an old boarding-school staple, a South African cereal named ProNutro. Here’s the scoop on it, in addition to what you can read at the link.
It looks like sawdust, and tastes pretty much like slightly sweetened sawdust. However, its nutritional value is extraordinary: one bowl per day, and you will not starve. In fact, if you have a large bowl for breakfast on a normal day, you may find come dinnertime that you’re not very hungry and could possibly skip dinner altogether.
It’s best eaten cold, with either milk or half-and-half (the latter makes delicious porridge of it), with a little sugar to taste. However: if times are really tough, you can use water instead of milk. It doesn’t taste that great, of course, but it will keep body and soul together. (I once lived on ProNutro made thus for just over a month, stealing sugar sachets from restaurants.)
It is highly absorbent, and even when you think you’ve used enough milk / water, you’ll still have to add more before you’re done.
I’m actually eating a bowl of ProNutro as I write this, which is what prompted the post in the first place. Try it: you’ll either like it or hate it; but there’s no denying that it works as survival food. Ask me how I know — oh wait, I already told you that.
Note: I don’t get any bribes income from any product I recommend on this site.
I’d rather just cook up some grits…
In a SHTF scenario, “cooking” may not always be possible.
The chocolate flavour was nice The plain flavour one acceptable. The banana was vile.
Many a scout camp/hike started with pro-nutro and water. Come to think of it, several SA rat packs had pro-nutro in them.
One of the advantages was it stopped you up PDQ if you had the gippos
I was going to ask about it’s fiber properties… I guess Gunkers comment pretty much answers that question!!
Just looked at this cereal on Amazon and I choked on the $23 per 500 gram (1 lb.) box. Just wouldn’t go down easily no matter the health benefits.
That’s for a 2-pack, I think. But have you priced other SHTF foods recently?
Whole Foods usually has it at around $8/box. Add a tablespoon of freeze dried apple powder to each serving and it’s almost palatable. While I don’t really like it, I could see how it would be a solid addition to a SHTF pantry.
What size box?
I know a man who keeps a can of dog food in his car as emergency food. His idea is that if he’s really hungry, dog food will be appetizing, and there isn’t the temptation to eat it for less extreme conditions as might be the case with the food bars and such.
What size box? I found that if I move my ass down to any grocery store they have the olive oil mayonnaise for about one third the price on Amazon, and that’s WITH the free shipping charade.