Best Emergency Food Bars | Taste-Tested & Reviewed
Good emergency bars give us tons of calories in a small package. The top emergency food bars do this while tasting great and giving us a variety of flavors. Sure, you could eat sawdust and sugar (or forage for dandelions) to survive, but if you want to get the job done best, you’re going to need ration bars or survival food bars.
I’ve been testing emergency food bars for our reviews since 2021, but have eaten them long before that while in the military. They are designed to give us dense, palatable calories- so that is what I test for. For this review, I taste-tested, checked the texture, tried them in cold and hot environments, and weighed them all.
My top recommendation is for Millennium Bars, which have great calorie density, packaging, and variety.
If you want something that lasts even longer on a shelf, Survival Tabs last a whopping 25 years, although they cost a bit more for equivalent calories.
I also suggest picks for widely available EDC options, and share the best traditional ration bar.
Contents (Jump to a Section)
Our latest update adds more testing data and updates prices. When you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. Disclosure»
Best Emergency Food Bars
Millennium Bars
Extreme Shelf Life, Calorie Packed, with Variety
A huge variety with lots of calories, shelf life, and great taste makes this energy bar stand well above the rest.
*Price at time of publishing; check for price changes or sales.
Millennium Bars come in at the top spot with a huge variety of flavor options and plenty of calories in individual packages.
Specifications
- Package: 6 individually wrapped bars
- Calories: 410 each (2,460 total)
- Variety: 6 flavors out of 9 options
- Shelf Life: 5 years
- Weight: 3.4 ounces each (20.4 ounces total)
When compared to all of the other long-term options, these things are delicious. Since I first reviewed these a few years back, I’ve transitioned most of our kits to have these in them. The main drawback is that it is a true energy bar- prioritizing calories over nutrition. You’ll need to plan on using them to power through a short period due to their lack of protein and other nutrients.
Taste & Texture
The flavors manufactured include apricot, blueberry, cherry, coconut, lemon, orange, raspberry, tropical fruit, and vanilla. If you get larger assortments, you’ll likely get the entire variety of flavors. I’ve tried all of the flavors and like the lemon the best and the apricot the least.
The texture is like a compressed graham cracker, and slightly more crumbly than other ration bars. It tastes slightly oily in your mouth but doesn’t leave any residue on your fingers- crumbling apart instead. The bars don’t break easily, though- you do sink your teeth into them when you bite rather than having them snap off.
These bars are great for stashing in bug out bags, get home bags, and any mobile survival kit. They withstand extreme temperatures and are US Coast Guard-approved, in case you find yourself on a boat. The shelf life is a minimum of 5 years (usually far exceeds this with room temperature storage). They are non-thirst-provoking.
Grab a pack of Millennium Bars for your kits and you won’t regret it.
Best Ration Bars
SOS Ration Bar
Cheap, Calorie-Dense, and Effective
The reliably cheap ration bar in that signature blocky package is not just for boats.
*Price at time of publishing; check for price changes or sales.
The best of the traditional ration bars is the SOS Emergency Food Rations. They are the cheap, block-shaped ration bars you recognize. There are a few brands that make ‘boat rations’, but the SOS is the best bang for the buck and doesn’t taste bad to boot.
Specifications
- Package: 9 bars in one foil pouch
- Calories: 3,690
- Variety: 1 flavor: coconut
- Shelf Life: 5 years
- Weight: 26.3 ounces
It is 3,690 calories packed into 1.6 pounds of dense ration bar, and (of course) it’s US Coast Guard approved. The internal packaging doesn’t preserve the bars, but lets them be distributed evenly to keep track of calories, at 410 calories each.
Taste & Texture
While the SOS ration bar is called coconut flavor, I could hardly tell, and might have missed that flavor if it wasn’t labeled. The flavor overall isn’t as strong as the Millennium bars, but that’s on par with all the ration bars we taste-tested. My wife agrees that it has a shortbread taste and is similar to a dense vanilla wafer.
The texture is not consistent through the bar- it is crumbly in the middle and tougher on the outside. This gives it a satisfying bite that is less crumbly until you sink your teeth further in.
One of the main advantages of these bars is that they are ‘non-thirst-provoking’, meaning they aren’t dry and won’t make you exceptionally thirsty. This makes them an excellent choice as a stand-alone food source when supplies – and especially water – are limited. They are high in sugar and low in nutrients, though, so they are meant to be a very short-term solution to keep you alive.
For all these reasons, the SOS Emergency Food Rations make a great choice for car kits and, conditionally, for bug out bags and get home bags.
Best Shelf Life
Survival Tabs
Convenient, Portable, and Huge Shelf Life
The best portable, long-lasting, emergency food solution for any situation.
*Price at time of publishing; check for price changes or sales.
The Survival Tabs are just so darn convenient that we couldn’t leave them out of this list. It’s true- they don’t pack quite the calories per dollar that our other picks do, but they are way easier to eat on the move. This four-pack contains 960 calories at a total of half a pound, so you aren’t giving up much for a much more convenient tab. The versatility makes them excel when you are trying to get stuff done in an emergency, but need to keep your calories up.
Specifications
- Package: 24 tabs in a resealable mylar pouch
- Calories: 20 each (480 total)
- Variety: 4 flavor options
- Shelf Life: 25 years
- Weight: 3.5 ounces (pouch)
Each tab is 20 calories, so it makes the math easy. The tabs are easy to pop on the move and share quickly- no splitting apart messy blocks or arguing over rations. The different flavors give us some tasty variety, which is always nice. These go great in bug out bags, get home bags, and anywhere you want to stash some mobile food rations.
Taste & Texture
The different flavor survival tabs have a more subtle taste, closer to ration bars than energy bars. I prefer the chocolate over the rest of the flavors, but the others are not bad, so my preference is subjective.
The texture of the tabs is crunchy and slightly chalky. They aren’t quite as chalky as Tums, but they can leave your mouth a bit dry after eating an entire handful. This is a downside to the tabs, since I found myself needing a drink after eating a lot of them.
If you are looking for the most portable survival calorie solution, grab a Survival Tabs Pouch for your go bag.
Best EDC Energy Bar
Clif Bars
Convenient, Portable, and Tasty
The best widely available energy bar for survival, if you don’t need a long shelf life.
*Price at time of publishing; check for price changes or sales.
Also available to buy at Walmart.
Most people are familiar with Clif Bars, since they are so widely available, but they do the trick just fine if you need energy bars in your EDC kit.
Specifications
- Package: 15 wrapped bars in a carton
- Calories: 250 each (3,750 total)
- Variety: 8 flavors
- Shelf Life: 6 months
- Weight: 2.5 ounces each (37.5 total)
I’ve seen the Clif Minis suggested, but they simply aren’t a good enough value to swap the smaller portion size in for the real deal Clif Bars. I still keep Minis stocked in my pantry so my kids won’t raid the regular-sized Clif Bars. The 150-calorie difference between the two is huge, so the regular bars are better for emergencies.
Taste & Texture
Cliff bars have the best taste and texture out of all of the options. There are many flavors to pick from, and while my favorite is the chocolate brownie, I stock the chocolate chip because my kids like the taste of that one, and it holds up marginally better to heat.
Because it is so widely available and affordable, I keep Clif Bars on me most of the time as part of my EDC kit. They are easily replaceable, so I don’t feel bad about eating one whenever I need a snack.
If you are looking for an emergency food bar to cycle out on the go, get a box of original Clif Bars.
Comparison Table
| Emergency Food Bar | Recommendation | Price* | Type | Calories | Shelf Life | Serving Weight | Protein | Carbs | Fat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Millennium Bar | Best Overall | $20 | Energy bar | 2.460 | 5 years | 84g | 6.0% | 64.3% | 23.8% |
| SOS Ration Bar | Best Ration Bar | $17 | Ration bar | 3,690 | 5 years | 84g | 9.5% | 63.1% | 21.4% |
| Survival Tabs | Best Shelf Life | $10 | Survival tab | 480 | 25 years | 48g | 8.3% | 62.5% | 25.0% |
| Cliff Bar | Best for EDC | $17 | Energy bar | 3,750 | 6 months | 68g | 14.7% | 63.2% | 8.8% |
| UST Ration Bar | $10 | Ration bar | 2,400 | 5 years | 85g | 8.2% | 60.0% | 22.4% | |
| PowerPuck | $10 | Protein bar | 1,000 | 2 years | 130g | 26.9% | 0% | 69.2% | |
| Pocket PowerPucks | $12 | Protein tab | 1,000 | 2 years | 26g | 26.9% | 0% | 69.2% | |
| Clif Bar Minis | $15 | Energy bar | 2,000 | 6 months | 28g | 14.3% | 64.3% | 8.9% | |
| Datrex 3600 Food Bar | $19 | Ration bar | 3,600 | 5 years | 40g | 7.5% | 65.0% | 22.5% | |
| First Strike Energy Bars | $20 | Energy bar | 1,500 | 5 years | 65g | 4.6% | 72.3% | 13.8% | |
| Mayday Food Bar | $20 | Ration bar | 2,400 | 5 years | 85g | 8.2% | 60.0% | 22.4% | |
| Clif Builders Bars | $20 | Protein bar | 3,480 | 6 months | 68g | 29.4% | 45.6% | 13.2% | |
| Grizzly Gear Food Rations | $20 | Ration bar | 3,600 | 5 years | 84g | 7.1% | 54.8% | 25.0% | |
| 4Patriots Food Bar | $20 | Ration bar | 3,600 | 5 years | 76g | 3.9% | 52.6% | 32.9% | |
| Mainstay Food Rations | $20 | Ration bar | 3,600 | 5 years | 76g | 3.9% | 60.5% | 30.3% | |
| Survival Mode Ration Bars | $25 | Energy bar | 2,460 | 5 years | 83g | 4.8% | 66.3% | 22.9% | |
| Probars | $27 | Protein bar | 3,240 | 1 year | 70g | 28.6% | 47.1% | 10.0% |
How I Tested
Most of my testing was taste-testing, where I bought and tried a huge variety of emergency food bars. I shared them with my wife and kids for their opinions on taste and to see what their preferred flavors were.
Here is everything I tested for this review:
- Taste Testing – I ate each bar and flavor to evaluate them for taste and texture. I have been eating several for years now to determine the impact of flavor variety on whether the bars’ flavor gets old.
- Bar Weight – I weighed the individual bars on a kitchen scale (data used to calculate caloric density).
- Trunk Test – I put batches of bars in my trunk for two weeks in the North Carolina summer to determine how well they held up to heat (trunk got up to 120°F).
- Freeze Test – I put batches of bars in my freezer to determine if they were still edible at 5°F.
I also collated a lot of nutrition data to be able to compare calories so that I could analyze value, nutrition, and caloric density.
Why Trust TruePrepper
Emergency bars are an easy way to cover your food needs while prepping, but they come in a wide range of calories, nutrients, shelf lives, and taste profiles. I’m Sean Gold, and I’ve been taste-testing emergency food bars along with other emergency food options for almost 10 years now.
I’ve had energy bars before, but I first had a First Strike bar as part of an MRE while I was in the military over 15 years ago. It wasn’t bad, and I haven’t shied away from energy, rations, and protein bars since then. I keep emergency food bars in all of my survival kits and eat them regularly as part of my EDC loadout.
While I have a lot of experience testing emergency food supplies, I took this review beyond practical taste-testing by combining nutritional data and my measurements to have impartial points of comparison.
Analysis & Test Results
The best emergency food bars have several important features to look for:
- Value
- Calories
- Shelf Life
- Taste & Texture
- Nutrition
When you get the right blend of these, you can find an unmatched ration bar that will help you tackle almost any obstacle during an emergency or disaster. Below, we break down what each of these features means for great portable survival food.
What is the Best Value?
The amount of money you can spend on emergency food bars really shouldn’t be that high. Survival food bars, by design, are meant to sustain you on the move. Hopefully, in an emergency, your movement is temporary and you plan to end up at a location with long-term food storage or sustainable food sources.
You never want to spend too much money on one resource, especially something like portable food rations. Luckily, most ration bars are cheap. Using your money to get the most functionality and versatility out of your survival kit is the smart way to go. There is a sweet spot where you get high value out of the best features with not too high a price, which is where our top pick sits.
*Price at the time of the latest update.
While Clif Bars and the SOS Ration Bars are the best value solely considering calorie count, you’ll want to consider density, taste, shelf life, and nutrition as well.
Calories
Calories give you energy, and in a survival situation, you want as much energy as possible. For longer emergencies and disasters, you’ll want to consider a more complete solution like an MRE for reasons we’ll get into below.
Caloric Density
The weight, shape (volume), and calorie count are all considerations when considering packing food rations away for an emergency. Our top pick packs a good amount of calories for its size, needing just six bars to pass my favorite MRE, the chili mac.
Shelf Life
Shelf life is the big difference maker between many types of food bars and survival food bars. Having your typical protein bar, energy bar, or candy bar not keep its end of the bargain can be annoying at best. They spoil quickly, melt easily, and don’t have packaging you can rely on. While we taste-tested some traditional bars to benchmark our other picks, they don’t have a place in a survival kit or bug out bag.
Because of this, all of our picks have a shelf life of at least 5 years and can last in a wider range of temperatures for shorter times. Some of the picks that have been produced for a while have shown an actual shelf life of close to 50 years when they are stored at room temperature (Survival Tabs).
Taste & Texture
You can’t underestimate the importance of texture and taste for your survival food. I’ve had a wide range of not just ration bars, but MREs, long-term food storage, and dehydrated foods, and taste can be extremely important for your mental state.
You don’t want to have a stressful day dealing with a disaster just to choke down some food that you can hardly stomach. All of our picks have great tastes (okay, our budget pick might be just okay), but they are not revolting like some other survival ‘food’ I’ve had the pleasure of trying.
I enjoy the Millennium bars, and the SOS bar is pretty good too. The drawback, taste-wise, for the SOS is that it only comes in one flavor that you’re stuck with. I do enjoy the taste of pretty much any energy or protein bar (even the fiber ones), so I’m not too picky.
Don’t go stocking up on a single food bar flavor unless you are sure you have tried and enjoyed the taste and texture of the bar. Even then, variety is the spice of life- so don’t forget that a little variety never hurts.
Nutrition
Calories alone won’t get it done when you are in a survival situation- you need nutrients as well.
A good blend of protein, carbs, vitamins, and minerals is needed to keep you cruising through a disaster. You don’t want your organs shutting down from starvation. You can survive longer than you think without food or proper nutrients, but you will feel the effects quickly, even if your diet becomes poor.
Most ration bars are just full of enough nutrients to get you from point A to point B, so you’ll need to pair these with a sustainable food plan or long-term food storage solution.
How to Store Food Bars
Like most emergency food, you want to store your emergency food bars in a cool, dark, dry place. Unfortunately, that’s often out of our control if we are using the bars on the move, which is what they are typically designed for.
Hot Temperatures
Although it can cut into shelf life, you can store most of my suggested bars (and Survival Tabs) in hotter locations, like your car. Curious as to how this would affect texture, most of the traditional ration bars did just fine when I tested, leaving them in the trunk of my car through mid-July for two weeks in hot, humid North Carolina.
The high-protein bars did not; they melted and got messy inside their packaging. Those included most of the Clif Bar varieties, the ProBar, and the PowerPucks. I wouldn’t recommend exposing any of those to heat. Even the chocolate chip flavor Clif Bar, which didn’t melt excessively, had a much more stale taste after two weeks in the heat.
The Pocket PowerPucks even melted at room temperature, performing the worst of the bunch.
Cold Temperatures
On the other hand, in my freezer test, all of those same bars froze solid (except the Pocket PowerPucks, which could still be bitten into). The Millennium Bars and other ration bars retained their texture and could be chewed even after coming out of the freezer.
I wouldn’t recommend storing them in the freezer because their long shelf life makes it unnecessary. However, my testing showed that they are still quickly edible even when stored at 5°F.
Sources & References
All of our experience and the testing done to determine the best survival food bars are useless without listing our research sources and references. We leaned on these for the book knowledge that we paired with our hands-on testing and practical military and prepping experience:
Jones, P., et al. (1993). Adequacy of food rations in soldiers during an arctic exercise measured by doubly labeled water. Journal of Applied Physiology. Volume 75. Issue 4. (Source).
Carruth, A. (2009). War Rations and the Food Politics of Late Modernism. Johns Hopkins University Press. Volume 16. Issue 4. Pages 767 – 794. (Source).
Rollinson, G. (2012). Alternative Disaster Feeding Ration. Defense Technical Information Center. (Source).
Conclusion
Food rations have shaped our world- it is well documented that wars have been won or lost depending on how food supplies were handled for soldiers. Food is just as important during emergencies, and there are plenty of ways for you to be prepared.
Emergency food bars let you be prepared and mobile at the same time and are an important part of mobile survival kits. Here are some other reads our subscribers have found helpful:
- 5 Best Emergency Food Supply Companies
- The Best Food to Dehydrate for Long Term Survival Storage
- Survival Food List | Pantry Stockpile Plan and Checklist
See more of our expert-written guides, resources, and reviews in your search results – add TruePrepper as a preferred source.
Prepping Your Way
No judgement and no imperatives. Prepare the way you want to with the trusted source millions of modern preppers have relied on.Our newsletter fires out every Monday where you can expect:
- Practical prepping guides and tips
- Thorough survival gear reviews
- Noticeably absent spam and popups
- < 0.4% of people unsubscribe
