Both of my parents are in their mid 70's and are fortunate to have been retired for about 20 years. They have been living a modest life style during retirement and don't have a lot of extra income.

While I was visiting, my Dad showed me their food storage room. This room is filled with 100's of cans of freeze dried food storage $hit. Not the cheap homemade stuff, but the high priced stuff that someone is making a fortune in profits on. They have enough to feed a small army AND this stuff according to my Dad, will last 30-50 years. Hell, the food will outlive them.

My parents have 10-20 years left in life. They are slowly running out of money. I do not want nor do I need a dime from them however, they are barely making ends meet. They pay tithing and FO every month on the hard earned money they ALREADY paid tithing on years before. My Dad gives so much of his prime time to the church. He used to be a PAID custodian now he does the SAME thing but for free since they eliminated his job.

NOW some a$$holes are peddling overpriced food storage Shit on my poor parents. They are being robbed by these Shitheads and I am PISSED. Just wanted to vent.

Cheers...

Adam

My parents are dead now, but their story is similar.

Cheryl Wrote:
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> My parents are dead now, but their story is
> similar.

Sorry your parents are gone.

I really want them to enjoy the few remaining years they have left but they are giving every spare dollar to these yahoo's in UT (some food company) in the name of "following the profit".

The door led to two rooms full of shelving all stacked with food. They ate some of the stuff in the first room which had super market canned goods. In the other room they ate nothing because those items could last forever compared to their remaining time alive. I think my brother fed most of it to his goats because his kids hated it.

I know there are at least two other people here with similar issues, on involving an older couple losing their home to a fraudulent (LDS) investment, and having to move their stash of expired year's supply from their old home. All kinds of people of that generation bought into that whole end of the world food storage program. Shoot, the old Improvement Era magazines used to carry all kinds of paid advertising by food storage companies, Mormons bilking Mormons.

Fortunately my Dad is smart enough, at least he has been in the past, to not go too far. Unfortunately this is just robbing them of their fun money. If I was still Mormon I could confront them and they would listen. However, now as an Exmo I have no credibility.

...all they need now is a visit from some RM's selling Vivint alarm systems. At least you can eat food. The Vivint sales tactics are truly over the top.........they use Ward lists, and mainly target Seniors. Brutal and abusive pressure on the elderly; dredging up old tear-jerking Missionary stories of days gone by.....the worst.

Unfortunately for your parents, when you let someone else do the thinking, you will get ripped off.

The Church of Jesus Smith depends on people who can't (or won't) think for themselves.

My parents had so much of that crap, too, but from the 60's and 70's. The cans started to bulge and we threw it all out when they died. It made me sick to see how much money they had spent on the stuff. Yes, fear does strange things to people.

My MIL recently passed away. She was a nevermo, but a hoarder. No matter how much we tried to help her, she was drowning in stuff. Her inability to keep her house clean definitely hastened her demise. Her son has really been struggling to come to terms with the fact that she was an adult who chose her lifestyle. No matter how unpleasant and ill-advised, he simply couldn't fix her problem. Whether its LDS or QVC, there is sadly always someone ready to prey on vulnerable seniors.

They sound positively Ancient Egyptian. Maybe they could pay someone to leave daily food storage offerings at their graves?

Not to be rude but my parents are in their 80s and I wish this was their only Mormon problem that bugged me. I wouldn't mind if they got ripped off in something that other people could use when they die because they probably are anyway with some new live forever scheme. They live in Utah.

Two words: Sam Andy

On the subject of Food Storage,

I helped my 92 y/o TBM Mother with the storage overload in her Garage. We pulled everything out and put back only what was needed. Most went into the trash or DI.

On the bottom shelf, in the back, were these old red tin buckets. They were about 8 gallons in size. I new from my youth, they held the family food storage. I pulled one out and opened the lid. Sitting on top was a 4 inch thick layer of discarded larvae jackets. I brushed the top layer aside to view the top of the Wheat. To my surprise, the wheat looked okay but occasionally I saw movement. I saw small larvae about the size of a kernel of wheat wriggling about.

In my disgust I began to throw it out. My Mother was intent on keeping the wheat since wheat lasts forever in her mind. I asked her to look in the can. I asked her, "will you want to eat this?" she said, "If there is nothing else to eat, yes."

I finally convinced her we need to throw it out. I thought it would be easy when she saw the larvae infested food storage.

I was able to get my mother to throw out her food supply that had been roasting in her hot/humid garage for twenty years, all except for her Tang. She had some crazy idea that it would be good forever. She thinks anything canned is good FOREVER! When she moved out of her home I opened the container of Tang and the stuff was rock solid hard. If she'd had enough of it we could have built the foundation of a small building with the stuff. She doesn't ever ask about it but if she does I'll just tell her it's in my basement (fusing to the foundation)!

Pooped Wrote:
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> She doesn't ever ask about it but if she
> does I'll just tell her it's in my basement
> (fusing to the foundation)!

How firm a foundation it is!

We had 3 or 4 giant size cans of Tang in our storeroom. They were at eye level and I saw them every time I was sent to the basement store room. I think my mother bought them in the 60's. Some of the stuff still had purple ink price stamping on. She too thought if it was canned and not bulging it was fine to eat.

We did not clean out the storeroom until we put the house up for sale and mom was in assisted living. I was sick to see all that unusable food and waste.

My parents didn't like to go down there in their last years. I think they realized that the last days were not coming. That is hard to put your head around when your whole life has been getting prepared for JESUS to come.

They would have been better off to have remodeled their home and put a bedroom on the main floor than to invest in all that crap.

Funny thing, no one wanted the Tang. I did take an old hand turn wheat grinder...for memories I guess. Someone in the stake made a lot of money off electric wheat grinders back in the 70's but we were poor enough not to need one.

I have told this before. A friend of mine worked a Utah County dump. Every year people would throw canisters of wheat, oats, what ever they had in food storage that went bad. He would collect it up, feed it to his chickens and pigs. He had the best fed livestock in the valley.

I hear you. My father's been the same with the goddammed food hoarding. And it was all overpriced crap from Salt Lake City. At one time I had to share a garage with the storage food for my living quarters. I enjoyed Thanksgiving this year with just my wife and son, two for whom I am grateful.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/30/2015 05:00PM by donbagley.

Although I am a hoarder - born that way with many generations for hundreds of years - I never fell for the food supply hoarding. My collections tend to reach a certain level and I stop, reaching satiation. Perhaps on should have a can or two of seeds. But I, for one, was not even given powdered milk when I was young as we ate fresh.

I had a client once who hoarded food. He had food going back dozens of years. His house was so full that he could not walk into room and could not even get to the bathroom. Had another who actually could not answer the phone because a stack of papers fell down which immobilized him. TSCC is one of the few organizations which actually encouraged forms of hoarding. Some have gone from food hoarding to gun and ammunition hoarding. TSCC: a religion based on hoarding from multiple wives to everything else.

I understand your anger adamisfree,.

I am 63. As a young 18 year old bride and new mum 18mths later, I remember how much I sacrificed to buy that food. It makes me SO angry to think of that.

While I am grateful I never had to use it (Pollyanna still lives here!!) what a waste of badly needed money for all of us in my family, and all those who gathered all that wheat and milk etc.

Incidentally, if I had the wheat now and needed to use it, it would be useless. I have developed a sensitivity to wheat, so it would be a case of not eating it or spending the whole time ummmmmmm in the loo!!

I understand your frustration, Adam. The Mormon church finds any number of ways to bleed its members dry. You would think this would keep the church leadership awake at night, but apparently they are beyond shame.

This really illustrates what happens when you make decisions based on fear and blind obedience rather than thoughtful planning. A well-stocked pantry can be a fantastic way to save time and money. You can take advantage of bulk prices, cook from scratch rather than relying on prepared meals, and avoid impulse buys and frequent trips to the store while being prepared for the real emergencies one might experience, such as being snowed in.

Hoarding for the apocalypse because a magic man told you to, buying expensive food that you don't actually eat in quantities that wouldn't work even if you were in a bunker (I always wondered what people were going to do with all that dried stuff when the water ran out) is just tragic.

Pista Wrote:
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> This really illustrates what happens when you make
> decisions based on fear and blind obedience rather
> than thoughtful planning. A well-stocked pantry
> can be a fantastic way to save time and money. You
> can take advantage of bulk prices, cook from
> scratch rather than relying on prepared meals...

We are trying to go the planning route with our storage. I want to use what I have instead of doing what my parents did to me - make me sleep on a dirty mattress slung over cans of wheat.

Was it only Mormons, or was the society in general afraid we were going to be nuked by Commies during the 60's?

We used to have air raid drills in my grade school Morridor class in Idaho, to bend under our desks, to basically kiss our butts goodbye when the nukes started falling (like kneeling under our desks was going to save us, really?!)

But the panic wasn't only LDS driven from what I recall. It was widespread.

If you weren't part of the Cultural Revolution, you were reacting as some over conformists did such as LDS back then. Including those who were drafted and sent off to Nam. The draft dodgers were the codgy ones, and the liberals aka flower children.

The conservatives were the ones being sent off to fight, unless of course their pappys were in the House or the Senate - we know none of their children served in the Vietnamese war.

My TBM pediatrician had a multi-layer basement built beneath his house to protect from nuclear fallout. It was 3-4 stories deep.

Never needed it, thankfully. But that was descriptive of the Cold War mentality we lived with in the 1960's.

Though honestly, what on earth would food storage have done any good in a nuclear holocaust?

Like when Hurricane Katrina hit, all the planning and preparation were fruitless when faced with sudden calamity. There was no rhyme or reason and all common sense had gone out the door. Much like I suspect if there was an all out war or pandemonium broke out during an economic collapse.

During Katrina people couldn't even access cash at their ATM machines, the wells had gone dry even if they had money in their accounts - it was INACCESSIBLE. So was being able to buy simple gas at the pump. So many things we take for granted, like their food storage if they had any - floated away with their homes and everything else they possessed.

When life throws curve balls, all the planning in the world doesn't prepare us for the unexpected when faced with cold, hard reality.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/01/2015 05:24PM by amyjo.

We just cleaned out my parents' food storage.

Threw out hundreds upon hundreds of pounds of wheat (still looked good but wouldn't sprout), honey, molasses, dehydrated potatoes, and several flavors of TVP ("ham", "chicken", "beef" = basically all chemicals in 10 lb tin cans packaged by a company that sounded like "Liahona Industries"). Didn't bother trying to eat any because it's all at least 35 years old and didn't want to get sick.

Depressed me to think of all the money that was spent on this, when we were not well-off. Wasted coin. I'm sure somebody made good money off the chumps.

Also made me think about what this generation of "preppers" will leave behind for their kids.

People without critical thinking ability will fall for one scam or another.

We recently had a wind storm and widespread power outage. We escaped to town and the only lights on were the local casino. Went in there and watched all the old folks throwing away their SS money.

And quite frankly, over 80% of what most of us have is unneeded and a scam. Someone convinced us we can't live without big house, nice cars, cell phones, computers, fine furniture, nice clothes, etc, etc.

Christmas gets me thinking about all the garbage the retailers try so hard to make us think we need. The advertising is outrageous. I now look at the stuff and think, "How did the pioneers live without all that junk? Quite nicely I think."

Christmas seems to be a competition between online retail vs. brick and mortar stores for sales. What happened to Bing Crosby style Christmas specials that were all about hymns and family and, oh yeah, Jesus. It's now about grabbing a Chia pet just in case someone gives you a gift you weren't expecting or outdoing the rest of the family by giving your wife a car for Christmas.

I'm with you Free Man.

I remember being told that we would have food and "be able to lay claim to the blessings of obedience" if our food hoard washed away.....while neighbors and friends selfishly bought cabins and boats and fun family trips... We had a huge tent- never ever used!! And water purifier gizmo and a crap ton of weird 1980s 1990s food storage- special essential oils and books and classes on prepper crap! A busted water heater ruined cases of old boxes and rusted bulgy cans! 2 trips to the dump was the tip of the iceberg. Growing up with conspiracy theory lovers is sooooo fun!!