Tag: Food

The Basics: Food

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How can food be controversial as a necessity for survival? Well, it isn’t that we need food. Everyone agrees that we need food. The controversy comes in with its importance.

Many survival guides let you know that most emergency situations last less than three days and that the average human (absent a serious medical condition) can last far longer than three days without food. I don’t disagree. However, I don’t go shopping for an electric company every time I want to turn on a light switch. I want the electricity to be there when I need it. It is an imperfect metaphor, but there it is. When we are talking about personal readiness for an emergency situation, it seems somewhat foolish to concentrate only on the best case scenario. If we were to do that, we could skip preparedness all together.

The reason that food is discussed as the second ‘basic’ is primarily due to the expense and time related to food preparations. If you have unlimited funds, do what you will. For the rest of us, properly preparing for long term food storage is a significant expense and mistakes can represent an enormous waste of resources.

Cooking

The first thing you should work on – concurrently with building supplies – is learning to cook. If you don’t know how to take raw ingredients and turn them into a meal, your food preparedness journey will be somewhat longer and more costly. If you do know how, you’re better off and can either learn more or use your time to prepare for other eventualities.

Purchasing ingredients that can be stored so that you can make multiple types of meals will inject more variety into your meal plans and have a psychologically benefit effect. Generally ingredients are also less expensive and store longer than prepackaged foods and are more nutritious. Since the goal of food preparedness is less about have enough to eat and more about nourishing your body, a higher nutrient content will also lower the overall cost of food stocks.

Of course to cook you will need to have the ability to apply heat to food – and in a variety of methods (frying, backing, roasting, etc.).  If you have modern conveniences, this should be as easy as using a microwave or a kitchen stove/oven. If you want to be truly prepared, alternative cooking methods should also be explored such as open fire, Dutch oven, solar oven, smoking and grilling. These methods may be covered in more detail in future posts. In the meantime, consider taking a cooking class, or research basic cooking online and start developing or improving that skill.

Storing Food

Food storage has three main enemies: oxygen, temperature and time. If you regulate the first two, time becomes less important, but will always remain a factor.

Similar to cooking above, knowing how to preserve food on your own can dramatically reduce the expense of food preparations. Canning, curing, smoking, dehydrating and freezing are all viable methods to extent the storage time of food from (in some cases) hours to years. Similar to cooking, each of these skills deserve their own post (or series of posts), but they can be researched online or courses can be sought out – and are highly encouraged.

FEMA presents the following advice in their Food and Water in an Emergency pamphlet (https://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/f%26web.pdf) and should serve as a baseline in your storage / usage routine:

  • Keep food in a dry, cool spot—a dark area if possible.
  • Open food boxes and other resealable containers carefully so that you can close them tightly after each use.
  • Wrap perishable foods, such as cookies and crackers, in plastic bags and keep them in sealed containers.
  • Empty open packages of sugar, dried fruits, and nuts into screw-top jars or air-tight canisters for protection from pests.
  • Inspect all food for signs of spoilage before use.
  • Throw out canned goods that become swollen, dented, or corroded.
  • Use foods before they go bad, and replace them with fresh supplies, dated with ink or marker.
  • Place new items at the back of the storage area and older ones in front.

How Much to Store?

That is really the question, right? How much should be stored.

Unfortunately, that question isn’t as straight forward as it sounds. As is the answer to most thing, the answer is, ‘it depends’. It depends on the number of people your preparing for, any special dietary needs, the amount of time you are preparing for, whether you want to assist your community, whether you have children or elderly, and a host of other considerations. For these reasons, we’ll work from a baseline but caution you to remember that each person or group’s situation is unique, so customize your preparedness to your needs.

WEBMD provides the following estimated calorie requirement based on gender, age and activity level.  (https://www.webmd.com/diet/features/estimated-calorie-requirement) Let it serve as a guide for your optimal preparations:

GenderAge (years)SedentaryModerately ActiveActive
Child2-31,0001,000-1,4001,000-1,400
Female4-81,2001,400-1,6001,400-2,200
 9-131,6001,600-2,0001,800-2,200
 14-181,8002,0002,400
 19-302,0002,0002,400
 31-502,0002,0002,200
 51+1,8001,8002,000-2,200
Male4-81,4001,400-1,6001,600-2,000
 9-131,8001,800-2,2002,000-2,600
 14-182,2002,400-2,8002,800-3,200
 19-302,4002,400-2,6003,000
 31-502,2002,400-2,6002,800-3,000
 51+2,0002,200-2,4002,400-2,800
Estimated Caloric Requirements

Use the nutrition labels to determine calories per serving and add up the calories needed for your family or group.

Assuming a four-person family with the mother and father who work office jobs in their 30’s-40’s with late teen son and daughter who are in athletics, you would have the following caloric needs:

  • Father: 2,200
  • Mother: 2,000
  • Son: 2,600 (the mid range of moderately active – attending school reduces his overall activity level)
  • Daughter: 2,000 (moderately active – attending school reduces her overall activity level as well)

The family needs 8,800 calories per day under normal circumstances. In an emergency situation where they may have to be cutting trees, helping neighbors dig out of debris, walking long distances to collect water, etc. The caloric requirements go up almost 20% to 10,700 in order to maintain health and vigor. See the Tools page to help determine the caloric requirements for your group.

Now that you know your ideal daily consumption, begin developing a reserve that will accommodate that caloric level. Multiple the calories by as many days as you want to prepare for (three days is a good beginning goal and you can work up from there).

Strategic Consumption

You may have to come to grips that you just didn’t get moving quickly enough. If you have a situation where it looks like you will need to make your food last longer than you had anticipated, you will have to ration it. This means that you have to accept that you will be at less than peak performance in order to extend your overall survivability. In such a situation, have at least one full meal per day. Drink plenty of water to stay hydrated, and prioritize those who are required to perform strenuous labor for any additional calories.

In the event that you have food stored in a variety of methods, first consume perishable food from your refrigerator or perishable goods in your pantry. If you have a garden and items are ready to be picked, consume these as well before moving to the next stage.

Next consume items in the freezer. Try not to get into the freezer needlessly so that items stay as cold as possible for as long as possible – especially if electricity goes out.

Finally, consume your shelf stable items. The goal is to make the most food possible last for as long as possible.

Keeping Stocks

Find the foods you already eat, buy ‘extra’ as you grocery shop. This could be an extra meal per shopping trip or even just one package of something that you can put back if you are on a very tight budget. Whatever it is you do to generate extra (gardening and canning? extra shopping? hunting?), be sure to keep it as extra and not to consume it as part of your normal usage.

Keeping extra is best if you establish a minimum stock level – such as you’ll always keep three cans of corn on reserve. Then rotate through it. Buy that fourth can and place it at the back of the shelf and use the oldest can you have. This keeps your reserves stocked while making sure that you have the longest shelf life possible.

Since this is the basics, we won’t discuss macronutrients or micronutrients, though these should be understood if you are developing a strategy for longer than a couple of weeks. Go ahead and add a multivitamin and some electrolyte drink mixes to your stocks.

At this point, we also caution against purchasing Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) or prepackaged survival foods. Since this is a post on the basics, we won’t go into a lot of details, but generally speaking though they are convenient, they are expensive, may not last as long as one would suspect, and may have questionable nutritional trade offs. Stick with store bought, rotated supplies for at-home use and you will be able to quickly accumulate more food for less money.

How Do I Stock Up?

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Getting Started

I was asked a variant of this question the other day, but it can take on many forms:

  • How do I start getting my pantry ready for uncertain times?
  • What food do I need to get?
  • What should I put aside?

They are all similar questions and the answer boils down to ‘it depends’. So let’s discuss some of the things it depends upon.

Considerations for Stocking Up

As in most things, your two top considerations are time and resources.

It is much easier to stock up if you start well before a period of uncertainty starts. The more time you give yourself, the more options you will have.

For instance, if you can grow a garden and can preserve the rewards of your harvest, you can stock up relatively inexpensively, but it is at a great cost in time.

On the other hand, if you’ve waited until the hard times begin, then you’ve given yourself no time to find good deals or alternative sources for necessary products or food. This will almost certainly mean that anything you can find will be higher priced and you may face an issue of limited to no availability – take the Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even outside of international disasters, the more time you have to prepare the better your options will be. For instance, investing in a savings account – with compounding interest – when you’re young is much better than trying to squirrel away all you can save beginning five years before your retire.

So What do I Need?

It is difficult to tell you specifically what you need. What I can tell you is that you already know and you have a pretty good idea of how much you need.

You know what you and your family like to eat – and what you don’t like. So it would be useless for me to tell you to get 4 (or 400) cans of corn. If your family can’t stand corn that would be more wasteful than buying junk food or candy – because if you followed that advice, you wouldn’t have the resources for what you truly need.

The first step in determining what you need is to look at what you currently use.

If you eat canned corn, get canned corn. If you don’t know how to cook and normally buy frozen dinners, get frozen dinners (then learn to cook and start eating real food). If you need a good starting place, check out the Tools page on this site for exactly that kind of guidance.

Where you may run afoul is with protein. In the modern Western world, we eat a lot of protein – usually in the form of meat. If a meal just isn’t a meal without a chunk of animal on your plate (such as is the case for me), then stocking up on animal protein may be a little outside the norm.

Having meat in store-bought products (such as canned stews or chili) is one way to go about it, as is purchasing canned meat such as SPAM, corned beef, canned chicken and canned fish. Another avenue for those with the skills, or who are willing to learn the skills, is to home can meat. Purchasing meat from the grocer or butcher and taking it home to can means you do not need a freezer.

Where Do I Put it All?

Freezer space brings up another question, where do you store your food? Again, it depends on what you have.

Cool, dark places are best. Even canned food last longer in cool places than in warm or unregulated places.  If you have a basement, that is probably a good place to consider. For those without basements, a dedicated pantry would be nice, but is may already be filled with your daily-use items. So consider under the bed, on closet floors, or in dedicated storage cabinets specifically for your stored food.

Wherever you decide, make sure that it is accessible. You want to ensure that you can get to what you need and you also need to ensure that you can view it for inventory purposes so you know when you need to restock – or so that you don’t forget you already have twenty cans of pickled herrings and don’t need to get any more.

Let’s Look at Your Window

Once you know what you need and where you’re going to put it, and assuming you have time, with what you know and build.

Determine your window so you can determine your stock level. Your window is the amount of time that you want to accommodate. If you’re unsure – and especially if you are on a tight budget – start with a relatively small window – such as one week. That may seem very short, but the most recent study I could find (from 2012) related that approximately 53% of Americans do not have three-days worth of food in their homes. In other countries, where smaller refrigerators and daily trips to the local grocers are more the norm, it is likely even less. So for many people, a full week supply could be considered aspirational. If you already have a week, great for you, choose another time frame such as a month or three months. Build toward that goal as resources allow.

When you go to the grocery, get a little extra. It may be that you get the five-pound bag a shredded cheese and split it into smaller bags that you store in the freezer. Perhaps you get three cans of vegetables rather than just two – then set the extra to the side. Try to find the ‘extra’ items when they are on sale or have coupons so that you have more resources to continue your plans.

The trick is that the ‘extra’ you bought should not be consumed as a part of your regular diet. Remember you decided on a stock level, right? These extras go into stock. If you eat your two cans, go get two more cans (or three, if it supports your stock level) until you have reached your stock level. Then begin rotating.

What’s This with Rotating?

Rotating stock is the best way to make sure your pantry has the best, freshest food available at any given time. When you purchase items for stock, add them to the back of your shelves (/freezer/pantry). Use from the front, but replenish from the back.

When you use something from stock (which means you’ve already used your daily-use items), you replenish to get back to the stock level you determine earlier.

For example, let’s go back to that canned corn. Let’s say you keep two in your pantry have a stock level of six. Since you have two in daily-use, you will have four in storage. You use one from the pantry. You add that one can of corn to the grocery list and replenish. That new can goes to the back of storage and the one on the front of the shelf in storage goes to the back of the shelf in the pantry.

You’ve just successfully rotated your stock.

Is there More to It?

There is always more to it, but that doesn’t it has to be difficult. Food is just one item. What about your hygiene products (toothpaste, shampoo, paper towels, soap and yes, toilet paper)?

Are you on dietary restrictions? If so, make sure that what you are stocking accommodates those restrictions.

Do you take prescription medications? Try to find a way to develop a safe supply that you can fall back on if needed – always rotate prescriptions to ensure are taking the freshest possible medications.

Do you have fuel stored? I once lived in a small town where the single long-distance internet cable coming into town was damaged. Gas stations no longer had the ability to take payments and had to shut down. Having an extra 5 gallon can in the storage shed in the backyard, or making sure you never drop below a half tank (which is a variation on the stock level / rotation strategy) can make sure you’re able to get to work, or gat out of town if needed.

Wrapping it Up

In the end, it is more important to do something than nothing, as long as that ‘something’ is not a waste of resources (remembering that time is a resource). So whatever you choose to do is a good first step. Just keep taking those steps and you’ll soon find yourself well down the path to preparedness.