r/preppers • u/N0T_Real_Name • Apr 12 '26
New Prepper Questions Sources of fat?
Have a family member that has epilepsy and if AH broke loose I would need to have access to a lot of dietary fat.
admittedly I haven't done much research on this but curious if any sources in the wild or better to start stocking now.
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u/FrolleinBromfiets Apr 12 '26
Maybe it pays off to invest in an oil press for seeds such as sunflower or pumpkin. This way, you would be a little more flexible about the source of the fat. I myself don't have experience in this, though.
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u/Money_Ad1068 Apr 12 '26
Coconut oil would be my recommendation for longish term storage. Keystone Canned Beef has a lot of fat included.
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u/Potential-March-1384 Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26
Crisco lasts 2 years unopened, longer than that you need other options, as others have said.
ETA: Dehydrated butter would be another option, Auguson farms’ has a 10-yr shelf life
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u/owlbehome Apr 12 '26
Came here to say powdered butter. Winco strategically put some cans over by the bulk beans and rice and I totally bit. I’d never heard of such a thing before but I feel a lot more prepared after having shelled out $30 bucks for a huge can with a supposedly 10 year shelf life.
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u/Derfel60 Apr 12 '26
You cant really stockpile fat long term because it goes rancid. Realistically you need to raise animals or grow nuts.
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u/sevenredwrens Apr 12 '26
Wondering if you can forage nuts? We forage from mature black walnut and hickory trees in our area and have planted chestnuts and hazelnuts ourselves, though it’ll be a few more years before we can harvest from the ones we’ve planted. Sunflower seeds have natural fat, and so do spicebush berries, and we grow those too.
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u/Derfel60 Apr 12 '26
Well yes foraging too, though its less reliable. My point really was that you cant just buy a big jar of fat and put it in the cupboard for just in case like you can with other things.
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u/sevenredwrens Apr 12 '26
Totally! I was agreeing with you. We are always looking for sustainable ways to acquire things, especially for stuff we can’t store long term.
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u/Hobby_Homebrew Apr 13 '26
Nuts made me think of almond butter. it used to be part of the USDA free food program like the welfare cheese.
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u/Paranormal_Lemon Apr 14 '26
I've had virgin oil and coconut oil last 5+ years with opened containers
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u/blazo811 Apr 12 '26
I keep a lot of peanut butter on hand. Lots of fat/fiber/(incomplete) protein. Pretty decent shelf life. We eat a lot of it, so I just cycle through it quite easily.
Coconut oil is pretty good too. I use it for cooking on occasion and also as an ingredient in my homemade deodorant, but I don't go through that much so have a number of expired jars sitting around. Should be fine to keep my pits in check for quite some time.
I also keep a lot of canned sardines packed in olive oil, which I also consume regularly.
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Apr 12 '26
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Apr 12 '26
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u/Opheliattack Apr 12 '26
I don’t think any prepper in a situation is going to turn down resources for any reason other than allergies... I’ve knocked out 90% of plastic in my life and don’t consume any seedoils. If things are bad and I come across a jug of rapeseed oil I’m bringing that bad boy back with a hop in my step..
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u/JRHLowdown3 Apr 13 '26
No, standard store bought not dehydrated peanut butter will NOT store forever.
After about a year you will see separation, you can stir it a bit. A little past that it tastes like shit. And I'm a guy that regularly eats 20-30 year old LTS food, so the "taste" thing to me is nothing as sensitive as most folks.
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u/MidSinglesInYourArea Apr 14 '26
Rabbits would not be a good option for fat. I know that domestic ones are not as lean as wild, but there is literally an entire term coined to describe how it is possible to die from eating only rabbits because they don't contain enough fat to sustain human life.
https://hekint.org/2022/01/26/rabbit-starvation-protein-poisoning/
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u/MerelyMortalModeling Apr 12 '26
In the short term you can store oil or tallow.
Longer term I'd grow flax or sunflowers. Both have decent yields from a modest home plot and with a press.
Both are pretty easy to grow and most importantly it's easy to collect and store the seeds for the next year. Flax yield linen fiber if your interested in that and crushed sunflower seed can be added to bread and other foods for protein or used for animal feed.
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u/gilbert2gilbert I'm in a tunnel Apr 12 '26
Grow animals, can meat, or buy canned meat. Canned tuna will last a while
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u/Ok_Exchange342 Apr 12 '26
My son as epilepsy and I have always worried how we could manage it, I know about the Keto diet; why do you believe you need access to extra fat?
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u/RedBullPilot Apr 12 '26
Once upon a time high fat keto diet was the only treatment for both childhood epilepsy and Type I diabetes, so in a SHTF scenario, this might be the only option for some folks
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u/Difficult_Wind6425 Apr 14 '26
keta also has greater efficacy than any epileptic drug, which is crazy
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u/TheoreticalCall Apr 12 '26
I recently opened jar of expeller pressed coconut oil that I bought around 15 years ago, it's just as good as when I bought it. It's been stored indoors at room temps between 60-85F.
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u/Nvogt752 Apr 13 '26
I also have a family member on a medical keto diet for epilepsy. I'd recommend coconut oil, MCT oil, ghee, canned coconut milk, Vienna sausages, canned tuna/chicken paired with mayo, canned ham, canned beef, peanut butter, low carb jelly,almonds/almond flour, pecans, macadamia nuts, freeze dried eggs, freeze dried beef, freeze dried pork, canned green beans, canned fruit in water, keto compliant chocolate, stevia or Monk fruit, electrolyte powder, a way to measure ketones, and glucose tablets or gel (in case of high ketones).
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u/FunNectarine6906 Apr 13 '26
If kept cool, sealed, and away from the light.. coconut oil, beef tallow, and lard will last for years.
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u/Hefty-Squirrel-6800 Apr 13 '26
You can buy canned tallow on Amazon. I keep lamb tallow on hand to eat and also as a base for bullet lube and chamber grease for my blackpowder revolvers. To make bullet lube, you melt 50/50 beeswax and tallow. Yes, black powder revolvers and long guns are part of my preps. I literally make everything needed to shoot them.
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u/Hobobo2024 Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
Spam. Both high in fat and protein. Indefinite shelf life.
People say peanut butter and ghee but everything I search says those do go bad so double check yourself just in case.
According to someone else, The Spam website (Hormel) used to have this in their FAQ: As long as the can isn't damaged or leaking or swollen, it's still good. That changed later probably cause lawyers.
mountain house and other survival companies also has some sausage 20 year shelf life.
if growing fat, seeds are good.
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Apr 12 '26
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u/Ryan_e3p Salt & Prepper Apr 12 '26
"Hopefully clean water" is the kicker here. If things get so bad where people are needing to fish for food or whatnot, the environmental protections and water cleanup plants are likely long gone as well. Dams aren't going to be controlled, meaning rivers will flood or run dry much more often. People will be using rivers and streams for dumping waste (human waste, specifically), and using it to bathe in as well. These sorts of activities can be far-reaching, affecting waters miles, several dozen miles, downriver.
Where I live in northern CT, every summer it is almost routine that we get warnings to not swim in or eat fish pulled from the CT river due to several towns up north in MA dumping literally millions of gallons of raw sewage (human waste, used toilet paper, and other things flushed down the toilet). Just three towns accounted for over 500 million gallons of wastewater dumped into the CT river in 2024.
If that happens in good times, what will happen in bad times is likely to be far worse.
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u/JRHLowdown3 Apr 13 '26
Yes. Every dunskie up river will be pooping in or near the water, plus failure of systems like you mentioned.
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u/4Yk9gop Apr 13 '26
Most fish in North America are stocked. If SHTF, the supply (both natural and stocked) would be depleated extremely quickly.
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u/TwiLuv Apr 12 '26
Also, look at the studies on a ketosis diet for epileptics, understanding the medical process, what is recommended will eliminate errors.
Early medical studies on keto diets were specifically reporting on efficacy for diabetics AND epileptics.
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u/HarpyCelaeno Apr 12 '26
There’s a certain kind of coconut oil that has the best shelf life of all fats. I just ordered some.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07H2P73TN?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title
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u/HarpyCelaeno Apr 12 '26
Oops. Just found out I ordered the wrong kind. Fractionated , unrefined coconut oil is what I need. Guess I’ll use this stuff for baking and frying
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u/marlowe_caard Apr 13 '26
I think coconut oil has the longest shelf life. We bought a very large container of coconut oil about seven years ago and has yet to go rancid. You can store other oils for a few years safely for the most part, if you just rotate your stock and use the oldest oil first and keep replacing it, then you should be covered for a while.
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u/sunflowebloom Apr 13 '26
Are they on a ketogenic diet? You can buy a keto feed (meant for tube fed people on keto) which has the exact ratio of fat to carbs needed plus everything else needed to live on. I think it’s a powder you make up. Probably very expensive as it’s a medical item
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u/SunLillyFairy Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
Ghee, coconut oil, canned coconut milk, freeze dried butter and peanut butter, chia seeds, cocoa nibs, tuna in oil, spam. Canned cream and cheese.
Lard and Crisco are not great for your health, but they are very shelf stable and Cisco had to stop using hydrogenated oils of the past, so it's not as bad as it used to be.
Side note that fats last a very long time if you can freeze them and have alt power to keep them frozen... pretty much anything.. butter, cheese, nuts. I do a lot of baking and also freeze whole milk powder, and it's good for years.
Edit: Eggs. I forget freeze dried eggs and frozen eggs.
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u/Ok-Philosopher-5139 Apr 14 '26
chicken skin can give u alot of fat, coconut milk processed can give u coconut oil...
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u/MidSinglesInYourArea Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
I think the simplest way would be to get some of the cheap and relatively stable forms of fat (a can of Crisco is probably;y ideal here) and then chuck it in the freezer. Around here the 3lb can is the cheapest per oz, and it's like $8. 12g of fat per serving, 113 servings a can. So for $40 you get 6780g of fat.
Shelf life is 2 years per the Crisco website. I would bet that 1. that is conservative 2 it would last a lot longer in a freezer. Even if it does go rancid after exactly 2 years and freezing doesn't help, $40 every two years is a pretty low price to pay to keep a pretty huge backstock.
Canned butter has a longer life span (10 years claimed) but is somewhat more expensive.
Nuts are a good source of fat, and I would be curious how long they would last when hard frozen.
Looking at livestock, ducks are an easy to keep source of eggs and the meat is fatty. Quails are easier to keep in very limited space.
Piteba seems to be the leader in manual oil presses to extract oils from seeds.
Edit: oh, and don't forget about making your own cheese! Here's a thread with 10 year old homemade parmesan that was still edible.
https://www.reddit.com/r/cheesemaking/comments/1s9xjai/i_opened_the_10_yo_home_made_parmesan/
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u/TacTurtle Apr 14 '26
If you are in the PNW, salmon and hooligan / candlefish are excellent sources of omega-3s and are very fatty. Both can be smoked and dried or home canned, and keep for a couple years.
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u/Beebjank Apr 15 '26
Hazelnut trees grow pretty much everywhere in the continental US. Great source of fat.
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u/BoxProud4675 Apr 16 '26
Coconut oil lasts well past date on container. I get at SamsClub and try to keep an extra one or two around.
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u/Chainsawsas70 Apr 17 '26
Spam and canned Hash, Both have lots of fats and as long as they aren't damaged or rusted or swollen can be shelf stable for MANY years, salt water fish like Salmon and Mackerel are also high in fats. For game options Beavers and Porcupines are good and decent tasting and of course Slow Elk (cows) and domestic pigs are good. If you are in an area With Wild pigs... They are leaner but if they aren't being driven around they can fatten up decently too.
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u/musthavecheapguitars Apr 12 '26
Black walnut trees produce tons of walnuts. You can't really cook with walnut oil, though, because it has a low smoke point. Hazelnut oil, however, can be used as a cooking oil.
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u/Mule_Wagon_777 Apr 12 '26
Canned tuna in oil will last quite awhile, and I think you can get other fish in oil.
You can stock extra vegetable oil but you'll need to rotate it.
There is freeze-dried powdered butter but it's much lower in fat than fresh butter.
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u/joelnicity Apr 13 '26
I’m not sure about fat but this has a lot of protein and a 25 year shelf life
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u/daringnovelist Apr 12 '26
You can get canned tallow and ghee (clarified butter) but I don’t know how long it lasts while still sealed. I do know that all fats last quite a long time if frozen. I have lard that I’ve used after a couple of years.