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Mylar Bags for Food Storage

Hi it’s Jennifer from Preppertidbits here to talk about Mylar bags.

Mylar bags are used for long term food storage. We tell you how and why we use mylar bags in our prepper pantry.

Mylar bags are foil packets that are used for long-term food storage. So food preservation longer than a year and what they do is they help to protect against moisture from damaging your food, from bugs, from hatching and also from nutrient loss.

So the opacity of the bags helps prevent sunlight from coming in and destroying  Vitamins such as vitamin A and Vitamin C .There are several types of mylar bags, this is a one-gallon mylar bag that has a ziplock on it for if you open it up and you just want to store it on your shelf.

This is a 5-gallon mylar bag that does not have a ziplock. These are reusable once you use them .Once you open them up you can save the bags and then reseal them and i have several here that’s probably going to use again. These ones has the ziplock on them because i can’t iron over the ziplock.

I’ll probably just cut this part off and then I’ll seal right here and then as i continue to use these bags. I’ll cut the part off that I use and keep working my way down until it’s just impractical to use this bag anymore. When it comes to buying mylar bags it doesn’t matter what style you buy, but what is really important is the thickness of the bag.

I would not go with anything less than a five mil bags. The reason for that is because anything thinner than that means if you hold it up to the light you can see through it and that’s what’s going to cause your nutrient loss. S,o whatever style mylar bag you buy make sure you always get at least five mil .

Now mylar bags are used in conjunction in most cases with what’s called an oxygen absorber. These are thrown into the bag and they remove the oxygen.First of all moisture is caused by Oxygen which also causes bugs to hatch.By removing that oxygen you decrease your chance of bugs hatching, yes they can still hatch but it will definitely decrease your chances of bugs hatching.

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When it comes to bugs whether you like it or not all your food contains bugs.

Canned mushrooms have a certain percentage of maggots that they’re allowed per can. Your potato chips that you eat contain all kinds of bug parts that are allowed in each bag of potato chips and when it comes to things like flours and grains they are allowed a certain percentage of not only rat feces, mouse feces and bug parts but also eggs which can hatch.

Now typically these don’t really hatch within a year but given the right conditions it’s possible that can happen which is the reason why you want you use a mylar bag, removing the oxygen prevents them from hatching.

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Now there are other options if you don’t want to use mylar bags for protection against food. For short term bug protection you can throw some bay leaves into your food which helps deter bugs..Some people use diatomaceous earth by mixing it in their food which I do not do and for long-term bug protection some people freeze their food.

One option might be to put your food outside for three days when it’s freezing. You have to freeze the food for at least 3 days in order to kill most bugs. Then again there are some foods that you cannot use oxygen absorbers on, those would be such as your oily foods such as nuts and your sugars. If you put an oxygen absorber in with sugar it’ll turn it hard as a brick and it’ll give it a weird taste so if you’re storing sugar you can store it in the mylar bag but you cannot use the oxygen absorber for that.

Now oyxgen absorbers come in several different sizes this is a 2000cc and this is the 500cc. The size of your oxygen absorber is dependent on the size of your bag and what you’re storing so items that are maybe more dense like your grain would require less oxygen absorbers.

Items like your beans which have a lot of air because they’re not as dense would require more oxygen absorbers. There are a lot of charts online that will tell you what size oxygen absorber to use with what size bag and what type of product. The one that I use is US Emergency Supply it has a really good site that tells you what size oxygen absorber to use for what size bag and for what product.

Don’t want to store anything probably like chocolate coffee would be a good thing to store in these kinds of bags and they’re good for up to forty years. You don’t need to use mylar bags if you’re storing for under a year unless you’re really concerned about bugs or moisture or any kind of nutrient loss. Really, that’s not gonna be an issue in under a year, so if you guys wanted to know how to do it there you go.

You guys that currently use mylar bags and have any tips or tricks i’m not an expert on this stuff, this is just what i do you guys out there I’m sure a lot of you guys are the experts on the stuff feel free to leave a comment below if you have any tips or tricks on this kind of thing and if you have any questions or comments leave those below as well if I will have the answer.

I’m sure somebody else does if you like this kind of stuff subscribe to our newsletter