52 Week Food Storage Plan: Week #25 Part 2

For the 25th week, June (21-27)

Week # 25: 16 lbs powdered Fruit Drink
(If you can’t accomplish this in 1 week, don’t worry, just take your time and do it in baby steps.)

Storing powdered fruit drink can be a bit controversial here in our household, so you’ll have to decide for yourself what’s best for your family.

Personally, I don’t drink juice, flavored water or power drinks, I just drink water, and a lot of it. However, my husband drinks a ton of water but also loves juice and all kinds of drinks and therefore we will need to store powdered drink mix just for him.

Why Store Drink Mix?
As you all know there are several kinds of drink mixes and they just keep getting more creative as the years go by. You can get almost any drink in powder form these days. So, why would an ordinary water drinker need drink mixes? As my husband would say, “it’s simple,” water just doesn’t provide the nutrients and added carbs and calories needed when you’re under a lot of stress and physical activity. That’s why athletes can’t just drink water, they need all the other stuff to help keep them going. Juice or power drink mixes might also have things like, Sugar, Fructose, citric acid, sodium citrate (corn starch), corn syrup, artificial flavoring, etc… I would even go as far as recommending those breakfast drinks which you only need to add water to. These will definitely provide even more nutrients and could even supplement your need to eat breakfast, but it just depends on the actual product, so check with the product packaging for all of the nutritional information.

Then there is the “mix things up” reason too. Every now and then it’s fun to “mix things up” and so I’ll drink juice or other drinks just to have a new flavor of liquid, so the drink mixes could turn a stressful time into a bit more fun time. If you have kids, you know that they too will want a change.

But let’s be honest I’d drink plain water if I had to and possibly trade the drink mix for something else later on.

Storage Life:

As for storage life, use drink mixes by the expiration date on the container/packaging. Of course, store it in a cool dry place.

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Click on the images below to view all 52 weeks at once or the recipes to go with it, in a .jpg or download the 52 Week Food Purchasing Plan (PDF) or the Custom 52 Week Food Purchasing Plan (Excel file) and calculate exactly how much you’ll need for the size of your family.