What To Know About Costco's Food Bucket That Will Last You 25 Years

The prepper community has something to get excited about at Costco: The wholesaler is carrying an emergency food bucket from Readywise that's said to have a shelf life of 25 years. Packed away in a 5-gallon bucket are 150 servings of everything ranging from instant white rice to pasta alfredo and from crunchy granola to tomato basil soup. For anyone looking at natural disasters that occur around the country (and worldwide) and wondering if they shouldn't be a little more prepared, this emergency food bucket at Costco could be the one-stop shop you've been looking for. But before you pull out your credit card, it's worth looking a little deeper into what exactly you're buying.

Readywise is a rebrand of a company called Wise Foods, which serves a specific niche in the home preparedness community — food that won't spoil. There are plenty of pantry items that have a long shelf life, but food spoilage is a real problem if the potential event you're preparing for has an unknown arrival date. Stocking your pantry with canned goods is a pretty good option, but a shelf of canned beans and corn isn't terribly portable in an emergency.

One solution to this problem is to dehydrate the food, which is exactly what Readywise does. Using a combination of freeze-dried and dehydrated foods, the Readywise meals mimic similar food brands that provide dehydrated meals for backpackers who need a lightweight dinner that won't spoil.

It's worth noting that the rebranding effort to Readywise took place after backlash Wise Foods received from some members of its customer base about the quality and quantity of the food. There's even a common phrase in the prepper community that says, "friends don't let friends buy Wise Foods." When the brand was still known as Wise Foods, a single serving of food sold by the company was nutritionally well below what someone would actually need to survive. The company's reputation was damaged because of how misleading its marketing was in that regard.

The rebrand to Readywise happened alongside changes to its products, including more transparency around serving sizes, and the reputation of the company seems to be improving thanks to its efforts to address customers' concerns. But even if the product has been improved, there is still room for criticism. For starters, the sodium content is through the roof. A single serving of the bucket's teriyaki rice contains a mere 270 calories but a full 700 milligrams of sodium, which is 30% of your daily value. If you need, say, 1,500 calories in a day and all you ate was Readywise, you could end up ingesting way more than your recommended daily value of sodium.

Salt is a big component in almost all of these types of foods because it helps prolong shelf life, but as noted, there are consequences for this practice. Still, all things considered, Readywise is a perfectly good brand for this type of product and it stands out as a particularly affordable option relative to its competitors.