Few things are as challenging for preppers as creating a storable food plan. Many of us are accustomed to eating a regular diet of fresh perishable items (meats, dairy products and produce). Stocking up on a closet full of canned goods doesn’t appeal to most Americans.
The good news is that we now have numerous long term food storage options available to us. In addition to traditional canned goods and commonly used dehydrated foods such as pastas, beans and fruits, we also have freeze dried food choices as well. Before you begin purchasing food for long term storage, it’s important to understand the fundamentals of a food storage plan.
Nutrition
Regardless of what strategy you utilize – from assembling your own plan to buying a pre-packaged “year’s worth of food” from the various preparedness vendors – at the end of the day, food storage planning is nothing more than a series of arithmetic problems.
A few years ago, I purchased a “30 Day Food Supply” suitable for one person from a large preparedness vendor. When the food arrived, my stepdaughter and I calculated the total number of calories and protein contained in the entire shipment. Using the standard adult diet of 2,000 calories and 50 grams of protein, this “30 Day Food Supply” would have lasted an adult only 14 days. It is imperative that you determine how many calories and nutrients you and your family need for an extended period of time.
In a grid down environment, most of us will be burning more calories on a daily basis due to stress and additional physical activities around the house (such as clearing debris, gathering water, checking on others.) It’s a good idea to add a multiplier into your daily caloric needs to ensure that you’re eating enough food to fuel you for the various tasks at hand. (At my house, we add 25% to every person’s usual daily caloric burn to ensure that there’s enough calories at the end of the day to sustain us.)
Once you figure out what that daily caloric number is for your family, you’ll then need to determine the other nutrient requirements the family will have on a daily basis. How much protein should you be consuming? How many vitamins and minerals? How much fat? Carbohydrates? A stressful grid down situation is not the time to realize you aren’t getting sufficient nutrients to perform at peak performance. Your food plan should not only meet the caloric needs of your family; it should also meet their other nutritional needs as well.
I highly recommend the “Crisis Preparedness Handbook” by Jack Spigarelli. His work in the area of long term food planning is required reading for those who are wanting to create a robust storage plan.
In addition to your family members, those who are prepared should plan on friends, neighbors and family members needing help feeding themselves. Count on it. It may seem frustrating to some to have to plan for others who fail to do so, but at the end of the day, are you really willing to turn them away empty handed? If not, you should plan on adding extra food supplies so that you can be of assistance to others. I would submit charity in times of crisis is a hallmark of good citizenship and a demonstration of faith of many religions.
Dehydrated or Freeze Dried?
Most of us eat dehydrated foods on a regular basis. Our local grocery stores sell them – dried beans, instant macaroni and cheese, dehydrated banana chips – you and your kids have consumed these over the years. Cost wise, they are less expensive than freeze dried foods, although they do retain less of their nutritional value than freeze dried foods. They also require a bit more effort in making a meal out of them as these are usually staple products, as opposed to a meal that allows you to simply add boiling water and stir.
So why not just store up freeze dried foods if they are more nutritionally dense and easier to prepare? Most preppers find the cost of freeze dried foods to be a limiting factor. A cost conscious family preparing for a long term emergency can buy more food (and more importantly, more nutrition – protein, calories, vitamins and minerals) in dehydrated form than in freeze dried form.
Make no mistake: freeze dried foods offer a tremendous amount of convenience and flavor. Many of today’s freeze dried foods taste good (okay, it’s still not as good as eating out at your favorite restaurant, but when the infrastructure around us isn’t working and those restaurants and grocery stores we like aren’t open, it will taste pretty good).
Getting Started in Food Planning
It’s a daunting task, without a doubt. Before you go to your favorite discount warehouse and stock up on huge containers of pasta and quinoa or buy that year’s supply of freeze dried disaster food, let me make a few suggestions:
Having some food set aside for emergencies will give you tremendous piece of mind. Knowing that a regional emergency or even a job loss won’t keep your family from going hungry can help you mentally prepare for the unexpected.
The good news is that we now have numerous long term food storage options available to us. In addition to traditional canned goods and commonly used dehydrated foods such as pastas, beans and fruits, we also have freeze dried food choices as well. Before you begin purchasing food for long term storage, it’s important to understand the fundamentals of a food storage plan.
Nutrition
Regardless of what strategy you utilize – from assembling your own plan to buying a pre-packaged “year’s worth of food” from the various preparedness vendors – at the end of the day, food storage planning is nothing more than a series of arithmetic problems.
A few years ago, I purchased a “30 Day Food Supply” suitable for one person from a large preparedness vendor. When the food arrived, my stepdaughter and I calculated the total number of calories and protein contained in the entire shipment. Using the standard adult diet of 2,000 calories and 50 grams of protein, this “30 Day Food Supply” would have lasted an adult only 14 days. It is imperative that you determine how many calories and nutrients you and your family need for an extended period of time.
In a grid down environment, most of us will be burning more calories on a daily basis due to stress and additional physical activities around the house (such as clearing debris, gathering water, checking on others.) It’s a good idea to add a multiplier into your daily caloric needs to ensure that you’re eating enough food to fuel you for the various tasks at hand. (At my house, we add 25% to every person’s usual daily caloric burn to ensure that there’s enough calories at the end of the day to sustain us.)
Once you figure out what that daily caloric number is for your family, you’ll then need to determine the other nutrient requirements the family will have on a daily basis. How much protein should you be consuming? How many vitamins and minerals? How much fat? Carbohydrates? A stressful grid down situation is not the time to realize you aren’t getting sufficient nutrients to perform at peak performance. Your food plan should not only meet the caloric needs of your family; it should also meet their other nutritional needs as well.
I highly recommend the “Crisis Preparedness Handbook” by Jack Spigarelli. His work in the area of long term food planning is required reading for those who are wanting to create a robust storage plan.
In addition to your family members, those who are prepared should plan on friends, neighbors and family members needing help feeding themselves. Count on it. It may seem frustrating to some to have to plan for others who fail to do so, but at the end of the day, are you really willing to turn them away empty handed? If not, you should plan on adding extra food supplies so that you can be of assistance to others. I would submit charity in times of crisis is a hallmark of good citizenship and a demonstration of faith of many religions.
Dehydrated or Freeze Dried?
Most of us eat dehydrated foods on a regular basis. Our local grocery stores sell them – dried beans, instant macaroni and cheese, dehydrated banana chips – you and your kids have consumed these over the years. Cost wise, they are less expensive than freeze dried foods, although they do retain less of their nutritional value than freeze dried foods. They also require a bit more effort in making a meal out of them as these are usually staple products, as opposed to a meal that allows you to simply add boiling water and stir.
So why not just store up freeze dried foods if they are more nutritionally dense and easier to prepare? Most preppers find the cost of freeze dried foods to be a limiting factor. A cost conscious family preparing for a long term emergency can buy more food (and more importantly, more nutrition – protein, calories, vitamins and minerals) in dehydrated form than in freeze dried form.
Make no mistake: freeze dried foods offer a tremendous amount of convenience and flavor. Many of today’s freeze dried foods taste good (okay, it’s still not as good as eating out at your favorite restaurant, but when the infrastructure around us isn’t working and those restaurants and grocery stores we like aren’t open, it will taste pretty good).
Getting Started in Food Planning
It’s a daunting task, without a doubt. Before you go to your favorite discount warehouse and stock up on huge containers of pasta and quinoa or buy that year’s supply of freeze dried disaster food, let me make a few suggestions:
- Buy a few samples of the various foods you’re considering for bulk purchase. Buying a dozen cans of freeze dried chicken chow mien may sound like a good idea, but if your family hates the taste of it, you now have a dozen cans of food your family would rather not eat. (You’ll quickly surmise that the foods you give away to others will be the ones your family likes the least.) Buy a few samples from various vendors and try them out before investing a sizeable sum of money in a particular type of product.
- Protein is by far the most expensive nutrient to acquire. Consider less expensive forms of protein (lentils, quinoa and peanut butter come to mind) in your purchasing decisions.
- Be realistic in your food planning. My wife is quite talented in the kitchen, and so handing her some pasta, beans, tomato and cheese powder will not present a challenge for her culinary skills. But if your idea of cooking is running the microwave on high for 45 seconds, you’ll either a) need to rely more on freeze dried foods or b) learn to cook with dehydrated and canned products.
- Speaking of cooking, after a disaster there’s a significant likelihood that your cooking will be done on a propane burner or in a solar oven. Spending time now practicing with such cooking methods will help you greatly during an emergency.
- When you’ve done the math to determine your family’s nutritional needs and have identified storable foods your crew will actually eat, it’s time to start making purchases. Buying in bulk can greatly reduce the costs, and if you purchase these items from preparedness vendors, they can be prepackaged for long term storage. I use Emergency Essentials for most of my storable food needs. They have a plan that will allow you to set a monthly budget, and then every month they will send you storable foods that meet your requirements.
- Storing your food supply presents additional challenges. Food is sensitive to temperature and humidity. Ideally, you’ll be storing these items in a climate controlled environment. I would suggest you determine where you’re going to put these items before you start acquiring them. Space underneath beds and in closets can be at a premium in most homes, but they make for great places for your food stores.
- It sounds like overkill, but I find a spreadsheet is a great way to track on my food storage to ensure that I have enough nutrients on hand at all times. Here’s an example of what I’ve used recently <link to pdf of food spreadsheet>.
- Don’t get paralysis by analysis. Do something. Take action. If you know your family will eat pasta, peanut butter and black beans, then make that your first purchase. Having some long term storable foods is better than none. As you build your plan and identify your needs, future purchasing decisions will come easier.
Having some food set aside for emergencies will give you tremendous piece of mind. Knowing that a regional emergency or even a job loss won’t keep your family from going hungry can help you mentally prepare for the unexpected.