The purpose of The Holistic Survival Show is to help you protect the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. A very important aspect of this protection includes human consumption and nourishment. More specifically, food is and was and will continue to be an integral part of human life. Steve Shenk, director of eFoodsDirect, provider of technologically advanced foods that create top level nutrition for over 25 years, joins us on this episode to inform us on the importance of proper food storage. Visit https://holisticsurvival.com/podcast-with-holistic-survival.php. Steve is on a mission to help people rediscover the spirit of rugged self-reliance that made America strong. With his quick wit and Minnesota, country-boy attitude, Steve will leave believing that there’s real hope for the future even in the midst of tough times. Tune in to this episode as Jason and Steve discuss the first step in becoming fearless of the scary, but very real, possibility of worldwide famine. Don’t miss how you can use a bulk food supply as a great inflation hedge and feed a family tomorrow at today’s prices.
Narrator: Welcome to the Holistic Survival Show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The Holistic Survival Show is your family’s insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently, how to understand threats, and how to create the ultimate action plan. Sudden change or worst case scenario, you’ll be ready. Welcome to Holistic Survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places, and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host, Jason Hartman.
Jason Hartman: Welcome to the Holistic Survival Show, episode #16. I’m your host, Jason Hartman. Thanks for joining me. Today we are going to talk about food supplies, food storage, emergency food supplies. But we are not going to talk about it like we have on prior shows where we talk about what you can do to assemble your own supply of emergency food and water. We had on this show a vendor, and I just want you to know this show is not a commercial. Of course, we were not paid or anything like that to broadcast the show, but I just kind of liked what this vendor offered, so I decided to have them on the show. They did, and you’ll hear it right on the show, offer me a free sampler pack of their food which I have not received yet, but I can’t wait to get it and try it out. But I just kind of like their approach because it seems like, and I do not know this for sure yet, they’ve got a real nice quality product here and prices are very reasonable. And we talk about first the problem with food supply and food storage and then secondly what you can do about it. So again, this is just a short, quick interview, but the show of course is about the three pillars of holistic survival, protecting the people, places, and profits you care about. So again, this show, like the last one, focuses on the people. If you’re concerned about the profit or money aspect, be sure you’re listening to my various shows on the money topic, the Creating Wealth show being the biggest one, 136 episodes so far, and the Creating Wealth video show with about 45 episodes, and the Speed of Money show with 10 episodes up. So those are all free. You can find them on the web at JasonHartman.com or on ITunes. Just type “Jason Hartman” and search my name and you’ll find the different shows. We’re also launching a new show very soon called The Jetsetter Travel Show and you’ll see that one appear as well very soon.
Alright, let’s talk about food. It’s one of those necessities obviously. And here’s an interview with an interesting food storage company and emergency food company. Here we go. It’s my pleasure to welcome Steve Shenk to the show. He is the director of eFoodsDirect, and they make some very interesting products that can help you prepare for emergencies and make sure you are eating well and getting the proper nutrition in this kind of event. Steve, thanks for joining us today.
Steve Shenk: Hey, it’s great to be with you, Jason.
Jason Hartman: Well, tell us a little bit about the potential problem and how you provide solutions and security for that problem.
Steve Shenk: Well very simply, a lot of folks here in America don’t realize it, but we’re in the fourth year of a worldwide famine. And we also have circumstances and events with our economy and regard to our political positioning worldwide that are causing some real serious issues. Right now we’re importing about 30% to 40% of our food in a country which back in 1959 was capable of producing the entire food supply for the world five times over.
Jason Hartman: Wow.
Steve Shenk: And we’ve got a situation where back a couple of years ago, a couple of Springs ago now, the beekeepers opened up their hives, and they had lost 70% to 80% of the bees which are responsible for the vast majority of all of our food that’s grown. And we’ve had circumstances politically here where a lot of the farmers, everybody is familiar with the bank bailout, and unfortunately when the banks got all that money, they started shutting down loans to grocery stores, farmers, and grocery chains, and pretty much a lot of the farmers were unable to get loans to harvest their crops, and now this coming Spring they’re going to have difficulty implanting the crops because the loans that takes to buy the seed, to buy the fuel to run the tractors and all, are being restricted. The other thing that occurred, everyone’s familiar with the cap and trade that went through and created circumstances with trying to shut down some of the electrical plants that are coal fired with this silliness on the global warming which is being proven pretty much every day to be more and more of a fiasco.
Jason Hartman: Gotta say, I couldn’t agree more with you by the way. That’s such a fantasy to just control us, to tax us, to inhibit progress frankly. And I just gotta have this little tangent for a second, we’ve had the coldest month on record last month in the country. We have a very cool last decade, yet it’s because of global warming somehow or another. I don’t know where this logic comes from, but it’s just crazy.
Steve Shenk: Well, it’s even more insane. You and your folks there on your show are concerned with health, nutrition, and anybody with half a rock for a brain realizes that CO2 is extremely important because plants breathe CO2 to generate their exhale of oxygen which we desperately need. And the planet, in the last 3 or 4 hundred years has dropped its percentage of oxygen content significantly as the great forests and things like that have been diminishing. And we don’t want to get into the rainforest issue, but the fact is that food is a very important issue, and it takes oxygen for us to metabolize it. And in order for us to get the oxygen, we have to have CO2 and now that’s a poisonous gas. Talk to me about how insane that is, Jason.
Jason Hartman: It makes no sense to me whatsoever. I’m not a scientist, but then again, neither is Al Gore or any of those people in Copenhagen probably. I can’t speak for all of them, but most of them are politicians, okay, and we all know that. It’s just a political issue. But yeah, what these global warming people seem to be saying is that we need to get rid of people. I mean that’s really what they’re saying. People [00:06:47] CO2, so we need to reduce the population now. 50 years ago, 60 years ago, they would have started talking about Hitler and genocide if someone said that. And this is just a veiled way to say that in my opinion.
Steve Shenk: Well, I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but George Noory yesterday evening on his show went through the fact that probably, I don’t remember the man’s name but he’s the most prominent scientist predicting hurricanes in the country, the air force and the government agencies that are less political and more concerned with issues rely on him, and he came right out and said if the worldwide conspiracy to justify this fiasco called global warming which is the exact opposite of what what’s literally happening in the normal cycle of the planet. But you put all this together and Mr. Obama made the statement prior to his election that he was going to make sure that it was going to be unprofitable for anybody to try and run a coal fired electrical plant.
Jason Hartman: I remember that. He basically said I will bankrupt them, I will put them out of business.
Steve Shenk: That’s correct. And in that same speech, most people don’t remember this, but since I’m involved with food, I do, because it raised all sorts of interesting red flags to me. Here’s what he said. He said “And farmers with their tractors and all are creating more greenhouse gas than the entire transportation industry combined.”
Jason Hartman: That’s impossible.
Steve Shenk: And we have also had registration and proposed legislation that wants to go and tax farmers. Now from here on in, Jason, the conversation is going to be about our ability as Americans to actually even get food, because we’ve had legislation proposed where farmers would be taxed on the gassiest emissions of cattle, $87 for a milk cow and somewhat less for a beef cow because as they consume their food and the normal digestive process comes about they met methane gas which ultimately becomes greenhouse gas, and so the farmers are going to have to pay a carbon tax to raise the cattle that you use for meat.
Jason Hartman: But let me guess Steve. They can buy carbon credits from one of Al Gore’s companies, right?
Steve Shenk: Uh huh.
Jason Hartman: I’m sure. How convenient.
Steve Shenk: Yeah. Let me put it this way. Every civilization, when they went totalitarian, the means by which they controlled the population was with, guess what, the only necessity that people absolutely have to have.
Jason Hartman: Food.
Steve Shenk: And that’s food.
Jason Hartman: Yeah.
Steve Shenk: Most of the Christians right now are avidly reading the book of revelations where it talks about the mark that people will be required to have and they will not be able to buy or sell without that mark. Now if you think about it Jason, what is it that you would desperately need to buy or sell so badly that you are willing to take that identification mark in order to get it and go against your own religious beliefs which say woe unto those who take the mark. You think about it, the only thing that qualifies for that, the only thing that you would want to buy or have to buy that would require you to subject yourself to total domination would be food. So that’s basically what we’re about. We’ve been involved in creating food supplies for families, we’ve called them food savings accounts where people can put in basic foods. All of the things that we put out, we’ll store for 15-20 years. They are food stuffs that are dried, they’re dehydrated. We desperately avoid freeze dried because they have so many additives and things that’ll make you glow in the dark, walk sideways, and one eye travel to the other side of your head.
Jason Hartman: Now let me ask you a question though. The distinction between…A lot of people say get MREs, Meals Ready to Eat like the military uses? Are those freeze dried? Are you saying that’s bad? Freeze-dried are not good?
Steve Shenk: Well, MREs are not dried at all.
Jason Hartman: Okay.
Steve Shenk: They’re actually canned goods in a pouch. And I’m sure that your listeners and I’m sure that your staff is fully aware that if you go buy a can of canned corn or peas or beans or whatever you want to buy canned that it has lost 35 to 30% of your nutrition just in the process of being overcooked in order to kill all the enzymes. And most of the vitamins and minerals are pretty much indestructible. But very simply, the MREs are canned good in a pouch, they put together these recipes, they are heavily laced with many of the things, the hydrogenated oil, MSG, and now genetically altered foods and things like that. And on top of it…Now I had a marine core colonel that had done, this is some time ago, three tours in Vietnam. And he called up, and he was kind of a brash character, and he said “Are you Steve Shenk?” and I said “Yeah.” “Do you run eFoodsDirect?” “Yeah.” “You ship food out to people, then they’re trying to store it and get prepared for when they can’t get food?” “Yeah.” And he said “You got any MREs?” And I said “Oh gee, no, I’m sorry. We don’t carry them because we…” and he stopped me right there and says “Good.” And I said okay, there’s gotta be a story behind that one. And he said yeah, when we went out on long range patrols, we were out for a couple of weeks. And when they came back in, they didn’t drop us off at the barracks, they took us right to the infirmary and proceeded to clean out our plumbing for about three days so that we can start to function again because the food that they were feeding had digestive retardants in them so that we didn’t leave evidence of having been where we were. And so one of the things that we’ve had is a lot of the people that are being deployed will often times contact us and have us ship some of our newer products, which are these seven day responders. It’s a whole week worth of three good solid meals a day in a little box that’s one foot square and four inches deep. That’s one third of a cubic foot has all the food, more food than the average person can eat in a 7 day period, three meals a day plus snacks and everything.
Jason Hartman: Okay. Now I’ve looked at your products on the website. I looked with a fair amount of depth. I saw the different packages. Just so we’re clear, I want to make sure we know what is the difference from your foods and why are they better than MREs or any other type of food for example? Because they’re fresh? What’s the secret, what’s the uniqueness of the way you’re packing them or preserving them?
Steve Shenk: Well first of all, they’re all dried. They have a 12 to 15 to 20 year shelf life depending on which ones you’re talking about. And we specifically made these recipes with the intent of having food that is not going to hurt people. There is no MSG in this stuff. Now you find me either commercially made food or any of these food storage companies that can make that claim. They aren’t even addressing the issue. Now the other thing that should be extremely important to you and your listeners is this genetically modified organism thing, GMO, where the foods literally are being modified from what they were and they aren’t even recognizable often times by the body as food. If you have a chance, I suggest to any of your listeners that you look up hydrogenated oil and what it does to the body. And a lot of people are sensitive to MSG and they ask us about that and they’re elated with the fact that we don’t have any in the foods that we produce. But the fact is is that hydrogenated oil makes MSG look like child’s play compared to what it does.
Jason Hartman: Okay.
Steve Shenk: And we were able, in all of these prepared foods, to eliminate hydrogenated oil in any of them, MSG, GMO, and on top of it you add to that the fact that most of the companies right now that are hopping on the bandwagon are providing food for people to store away in case of emergencies, some of them call it food insurance or whatever, are telling people that one cup of food is a serving, but they also call that a meal? There’s an outfit out there. There are several outfits out there that tell people that they can have a year’s supply of food and they’re charging them astronomical amounts for a year’s supply of food. And that year’s supply of food consists of 365 cups of food. In other words, an adult is supposed to live on one cup of food a day and they call that a year’s supply. I mean there’s so much shysterism right now, Jason, because people are afraid. We’ve got huge percentages of our population back in September, I believe September was roughly…For those people who are following the true unemployment rates as opposed to the ones that are put out as propaganda, I believe that mid-September was when we surpassed the unemployment rate of the Great Depression.
Jason Hartman: Well, yeah. You’re talking about it’s really the real rate when you include discouraged workers, people dropping off the rolls, and of course the underemployed, it’s about 26% or so probably, right? Yeah.
Steve Shenk: Yeah. Yeah, I mean this 10% thing is absolutely absurd.
Jason Hartman: Of course it is.
Steve Shenk: Because they eliminate people who have been looking for work so long they actually gave up. They’re not unemployed anymore because they’re not trying to get work. So the whole objective of the food that eFoodsDirect puts out is very simply that people have food that is plenty adequate. In other words, we put in one of these 7 day responders more food per day than the average person can eat. Now you get somebody that’s 6 foot 7 and 300 pounds and eats 5000 calories a meal, yep, he’s going to need two of them. But people have got to use some sense.
Jason Hartman: But he shouldn’t have two anyway. He should be on three.
Steve Shenk: And the quantity of food, one of these outfits is claiming that 3 meals a day for a child is 3 half cups of food. That’s absolutely absurd. But let’s get back to why we do what we do. The reason we do this, we’ve been involved with putting in supplies of food for about coming up on 28 years now. And the whole importance of food is the fact that if you have something to eat, no matter what happens, you can pretty much handle it. If these people that are unemployed had a food savings account just before they lost their jobs that they had a year’s supply or two year’s supply of food in, they very simply could handle pretty much all of the other problems and not be terribly distressed. The reason that we have people that are having such great difficulty with the economics of the times is now we can’t even afford groceries. With the inflation rate on food as a result of the worldwide circumstances where other countries are coming in and buying their food from us because American dollars over there are very cheap and they can buy our food away from us, they can bid our food away from us, more and more American families are finding themselves in a situation where they literally can’t afford to buy food. 35% of the population in this country has basically food anxiety, in other words they are having difficulty affording food. And the other fact that the US news came out with just the other day, Jason, is that in 6 people in the United States of America have what they call food anxiety. In other words, they are destitute enough so that every single day they are concerned about what they’re going to eat that day. They’re not worried about where they’re going to stay. They’re not worried about whether they have enough money to go to the movie. They are worried about whether they can get enough food for that day. 1 in 6 people in the United States of America, you’ve got to ask yourself what is wrong with that picture, Jason?
Jason Hartman: It is changing here so quickly. And I think it’s just like you put the frog in the lukewarm water and turn up the heat slowly, and that’s what the government is doing to us. And that’s what just the general confluence of these forces going on around the world is doing to us. And things are changing fast and it amazes me how many people, Steve, are so unaware and just consumed with stupid, pop culture garbage rather than focusing on what is really going on out there. I mean folks, you’re listening to the show so you’re paying attention, but you’ve got to tell other people to pay attention too because if the crisis really hits the fan, those other people are going to be coming to you for your food. And you don’t want that. You want everybody to be prepared. So the more we spread the word about this type of holistic survival thinking, the better off we will all be. But you’re absolutely right, couldn’t agree more.
Steve Shenk: Well the interesting thing that we’re dealing with, Jason, is that now if folks would get up on the eFoodDirect website, they’ll have a lot of information, they’ll be able to see what is possible. But the important thing is this is food, now with these new recipes, it used to be that storable food, you know, like wheat, beans, rice, that type of thing, was pretty basic, and you had to be one dickens of a scratch cook in order to make it work. Now with these new traversal foods that we have developed, they don’t’ have any of the bad stuff in them. In fact, we have testimonials all over the place. We had a little gal that was absolutely allergic to genetically modified organisms in the food. And she heard about us. She ordered out a couple of these 7 day responders, and they lived on them for a week and they had absolutely no reaction. Now she literally has come in and bought a couple of year’s supply of it and put it away. It turns out to be significantly less expensive than groceries. You’re talking about people…Right now we’ve got a special with our holiday pack and it turns out that people can put in a week’s worth of food with that for 34 dollars. I mean that’s absolutely absurd.
Jason Hartman: That’s fantastic. You have an interesting section on your website called Security for Fun and I’m not sure what you mean by that. Do you mean just both things or are you suggesting that when people order this they eat it or eat it after a certain amount of time to just sort of rotate stock? Just wondering what you’re getting to there.
Steve Shenk: Well, that particular page, actually we’re modifying that a little bit. We remodeled our website completely and that didn’t come out quite the way we wanted it to. It was supposed to be security was one issue of food and fun is the other issue, but essentially what we do encourage people or what we’re finding people that are encouraging us to say is that this food is not only economical, it’s not only easy to store, also not only takes very little space, but the fact is that grocery wise the families that can’t even afford groceries at the store can afford this and they’ve gotten better quality food than they can possibly get at the store. And at the same time, the formulations that we’ve put together, these recipes we’ve put together, Jason, I’m going to send you on a 7 day just for you to mess around with it and cook it, because when you taste this food, you cannot find a soup or you cannot find an entre in the finest restaurant in this country that has the flavor, that has the quality of food, and yet we’re able to put it out at a price that the average family or families that are really challenged financially can afford, and they’re eating better than people that have a lot of money to spend on their food. And it’s also storable, so take your pick. What a lot of families are doing is they literally are putting in twice as much as this. They eat half of it and they store back half of it because can you imagine what it feels like to have a stack of these little responders in your garage or in your basement that represents 6 months’ worth of food? You have something happen where you literally couldn’t leave your home. Now they’re talking about this pandemic. The patriot act indicates that if you’re unable to take care of yourself, then you’ll be required in a quarantine situation, if you don’t have enough food and water to be able to take care of yourself, then you’ll be required to go to a gathering center, which is very similar to what happened in Katrina. You get a whole bunch of people together in an epidemic and guess what happens? Everybody gets sick.
So the fact is can you imagine if something happened where you had to stay in your home for a month or maybe two months, didn’t dare go out because of this pandemic that they’re trying to create around the universe? If you had food that’s better than you can possibly get at any restaurant, look at the psychological and security factor for families, wives, and children and husbands that can sit around their table and have a good meal in the center of…The 23rd Psalm says “Thou has placed the table for me in the presence of my enemies.” What would that feel like to have the security of a family sitting down to the best meal that they’d ever had and yet it was in a stupid little box that was all dried up and looked like it wasn’t really food at all?
Jason Hartman: Right, right. Now let me ask you also, in terms of preparation, does this require cooking? You said cooking. What about the preparation level? Are there varying levels in the products you sell?
Steve Shenk: Well, the neat thing about all the new traversal products and this is the 7 day packages and those is that they’re all designed in such a way that the nutrition level is extremely high. They start out dry. The only thing that you do for preparation is you add water, you follow the directions, add water, simmer them for on average about 20 minutes and you’re good to go. You’ve got a gourmet meal that you’d be proud of to serve and claim that you made it yourself.
Jason Hartman: Uh huh. Okay, good, good. Well that’s good to know. Well Steve, thank you so much. I can’t wait to try this 7 day responder pack that you’re going to send out. So thank you for that. And you know what, I might be the best testimonial you have as a bachelor. I basically don’t cook. So this may be the way I eat all the time from now on.
Steve Shenk: Jason, we are going to save your life.
Jason Hartman: Okay, sounds good to me. I appreciate it. What else would you like to say, in final here, to just kind of wrap up this whole subject?
Steve Shenk: Well, you know, a lot of people look at people like us and they say well they’re kind of goofy. And it was kind of like Noah and the ark. They used to think that he was kind of goofy, but he hammered and built and he kept on doing his thing, and the way you make decisions like this, whether your people decide to get up on eFoodsDirect and look at what we’re doing or they can also call some of our little gals that’ll answer the phone there and give them some information that 800-409-5633, that they get up on the website and take a look at it, make some decision as to whether this is for them, the one thing I’d say to them, Jason, is you make those decisions based on can you afford to be wrong?
Jason Hartman: Right, right.
Steve Shenk: If you put in a supply of food, nothing happens, the only thing you’ve done is bought groceries ahead of time. If you put in supply of food and something happens, then you’ll be gratified to be prepared for whatever happens and you can handle whatever the emergency is. If you choose to look at people like you and like me and say, gee, these guys are a little bit dumb, I’m going to bet that nothing’s going to happen, can you afford to be wrong? If you’re wrong on that situation you could be dead wrong.
Jason Hartman: Yeah. Well, that’s a great point. You could be dead wrong. So don’t be dead wrong, folks. eFoodsDirect.com is the website. Steve Shenk, thank you so much for sharing this stuff with us today. We really appreciate it.
Steve Shenk: Hey, it’s been great, Jason.
Male: Hey, [00:26:51] here. You know, with all the financial uncertainty, now is the time more than ever to be in touch with Jason Hartman. They have what’s coming up we call The Master’s Weekend. Now, they’re going to learn about the tried and true conservative investments that work in real life. For example, how to get the taxes back that you paid over the last five years, imagine that, how to make up to 40% or more even in today’s climate. It’ll be of The Master’s Weekend in Costa Mesa. How do you reserve? How do you find that information? Simple. Go online to JasonHartman.com. Also, get your free educational podcasts. Do not miss The Master’s Weekend.
Narrator: Thank you for joining us today for the Holistic Survival Show, protecting the people, places, and profits you care about in uncertain times. Be sure to listen to our Creating Wealth show which focuses on exploiting the financial and wealth creation opportunities in today’s economy. Learn more at www.JasonHartman.com or search Jason Hartman on ITunes. This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company, offering very general guidelines and information. Opinions of guests are their own and none of the content should be considered individual advice. If you require personalized advice, please consult an appropriate professional, information deemed reliable, but not guaranteed. (Top image: Flickr | matt 2906)
The Holistic Survival Team
Transcribed by Ralph