by St. Funogas, Survival Blog:
(Continued from Part 2. This concludes the article.)
The Final Answer: How Reliable Are Freezer Bags For Storing Food?
The most important questions these experiments were trying to answer is how reliable freezer bags are as a food-storage method? Do they work for the short term? And how well will they work for the long term?
Thinner sandwich bags are definitely a bad way to go. Pests had chewed through the plastic in just a few months. Pantry moths in my cupboard also had no trouble chewing through the foil packets of hot chocolate or getting under the lid of a container of raisins.
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During these experiments, pests hadn’t chewed through the thick walls of any of the freezer bags over a six-month period. The bags will be checked again time a year after the packing date to see if they can keep pests out for a full year which would be the minimum time a JIT freezer-bag food-storage system would have to endure. That’s assuming a SHTF event occurred right after bagging beans and grains.
So, based on these experiments, the most-important question of whether or not pests can chew through the heavy-plastic walls of freezer bags still remained unanswered.
Heritage Seed Collection – My heritage seed collection finally settled the issue. When I harvest and store seeds, I write the harvest date in the form of “for 2025,” meaning they were harvested in the fall of 2024. If the seeds were freeze treated it’s written on the outside of the bag. I store seeds in freezer bags, sandwich bags, and DIY paper seed envelopes. Some of the original mylar bags of seeds I had purchased were unopened, some had been opened and then taped shut again.
There were some pests inside one of the totes, including a few adult pantry moths. A small amount (two tablespoons) of yard-long bean seeds were stored in a sandwich bag and were contaminated with frass, three dead larva, and pieces of adult parts such as legs and heads which were most likely weevils. The bag had been chewed through and was possible the original source of weevils in the tote. There were no live pests still inside the sandwich bag.
A mylar bag of wheat seeds had been opened, then taped shut with 2” clear packing tape. Two live larvae were underneath a small section of tape that had looped up when being applied but the rest of the tape was in full contact with the mylar, completely sealing the folded-over opening. No pests were inside the bag.
A quart freezer bag of Cherokee Trail of Tears black beans, as well as a quart freezer bag of Hog Brains cowpeas were “for 2023,” meaning they had been bagged 2½ years before this article was written. Both bags had been chewed through and had frass and live larvae inside. The Trail of Tears bag had nine holes, larva, cocoons, and a lot of frass.
So yes, with enough time, pests can chew through freezer bags. I also noticed in the heritage-seed totes that most of the seeds were pest-free. None of the flower or herb seeds had been freeze treated and only some of the cucurbits. The flower-seed tote had a strong spicy smell, mostly from a large bag of marigold seeds still in the heads, and perhaps this had an effect on keeping it pest free. All of the turnip and beet seeds were bought in bulk and left in their original paper packaging. All were pest free. Pests can be pretty choosy about their food sources but we know for certain that weevils, pantry moths, and flour beetles among others, love our most common food-storage items: corn, beans, wheat, and rice.
Food stored in freezer bags for JIT food-storage, and then freeze treated should remain pest free at least for the short term. Even weevil-infested corn from the feed store (the least expensive food we can buy for storing) can be stored in freezer bags if freeze treated. For those who don’t have the space to freeze treat 400 pounds of beans and grains (100 bags), or who cut their timing too close to the SHTF date when the grid will be lost and freezing is no longer an option, freezer bags can still be used under one condition. But most will find it disagreeable.
The Yuck Factor
There is a topic with many aspects so the details will be covered in more depth in a soon-forthcoming article entitled: “The Yuck Factor.”
In a post-SHTF world, food will be at a premium and we won’t have the option of being the picky eaters we are now. “Yuck” will need to become a quaint word of the past when it comes to many aspects of food consumption. As for the insect infestations discussed in this article, none of the “yuck” things are toxic: whole weevils and other insects and mites, live larva, cocoons, frass, insect parts, or webbing. All of these can be sifted out of our food before consumption. Since frass is a polite way to say insect feces, and since it can’t all be sifted out 100% no matter how hard we try, this may not appeal to some. Mold will be discussed in the next article.
Again, none of these particles of frass or insects are toxic or harmful if eaten. The corny old saying in this case is true: it’s just extra protein. Some online articles claim frass and insects are toxic, but it’s not the case. Frass and insects are yucky perhaps, but not toxic. Stay tuned, in the Yuck Factor article I’ll discuss the results of my experiments of adding frass, weevils, and other yummies to recipes, as well as eating teaspoons of raw frass, weevils, and larvae after sifting them out of infested food. The article also discusses other yucky things like garden produce which looks spoiled, etc.
Before modern food-processing, packing, and storage methods, our ancestors had no choice but to sift pests out from grains and other foodstuffs. We’ve become spoiled in modern times and if we’re blown back to the technology of 1850 after a SHTF event, we’ll have to learn to suck it up until weevils and pests become a normal part of daily life we no longer think twice about. At some point in a TEOTWAWKI world, all the oxygen absorbers, dry ice, mylar bags, freezer bags, and other commercially-bought preservation supplies preppers use will run out. Alternate methods will need to be looked at such as freeze-treating grains during the wintertime. Still, unless we have gasketed food-storage buckets, pests will get back into our food just as they did in the not-so-distant past with our ancestors.
