4 Criteria For A Successful Survival Food Supply
January 29, 2012
Variety is the spice of life
When building your food storage supply, DO NOT put all your eggs in one basket. By that I mean don’t simply go out and buy bags of beans and rice and call it good. Although many good emergency food supplies contain a healthy proportion of foods like beans and rice, it is somewhat difficult and requires a good bit of thought to ensure that you include lots of variety. Think of all the food groups. Pay special attention to spices and the things you add to food to make them taste better. Don’t forget the deserts, sweets, and drink mixes, as these are ‘happy’ foods which could ease hard times during disaster.
Healthy foods maintain peak energy and immunity
You shouldn’t count solely on cases of Ramen getting you through a period of disaster, the same as you shouldn’t count on jars of peanut butter getting you through. Sure, they’re loaded with calories but the overall nutritional value isn’t there to stand on its own. The healthy food concept sort of goes hand in hand with having a variety of foods, to balance out your nutritional needs. Consider keeping enough vegetables. Canned, dehydrated, and freeze-dried are all acceptable and easy ways to maintain storage of nutritional foods. Keep a supply of multivitamins too. Keeping your body healthy and your immune system charged is essential during times of disaster and stress.
Foods you like are foods you eat
While considering your variety of emergency food, it’s probably best not to procure foods that you don’t like to eat… because… you won’t eat them or rotate them! Stick with foods that you normally eat, and more importantly, ROTATE your food storage. In other words, don’t just buy your extra food and store it away. Instead, eat it and replace it. Rotate so that you’re eating the oldest first, which will optimize your food storage.
Having enough not worry
How much food do you need to have stashed on your shelves so that you no longer feel you’re vulnerable to the system? What is your comfort zone? This will vary widely depending on your interpretation of the risks in today’s world, but even so, it is easy to build up long term food storage and it is great life insurance to have. Personally I believe that a 3-month supply is totally doable while at the same time it is within reach of most everyone to easily procure a 1-year supply. It’s not terribly expensive when compared to other ‘luxuries’ that we spend on ourselves, luxuries that would be useless during disaster. Don’t stop at a few weeks or a month’s worth. Keep going until you feel good about it.
Be Prepared. If you enjoyed this, or topics of current events risk awareness and survival preparedness, click here to check out our current homepage articles…
Similar Articles You Might Enjoy:
Sell-by, Use-by, Dates
January 23, 2012
Most canned food products have a “for best quality use by” date stamped on the top or bottom of the can. “Expiration” dates are rarely found on canned food.
The general rule of thumb is that as long as the can is intact, not rusty and not bulging, the food is probably OK. In general, many say that canned food has a shelf life of at least two years from the date of processing.
However, canned food retains its safety and nutritional value well beyond two years, but it may have some variation in quality, such as a change of color and texture. Canning is a high-heat process that renders the food commercially sterile. Food safety is not an issue in products kept on the shelf or in the pantry for long periods of time. In fact, canned food has an almost indefinite shelf life at moderate temperatures (75° F and below). Canned food as old as 100 years has been found in sunken ships and it is still micro-biologically safe! No one will recommend keeping canned food for 100 years, but if the can is intact, not dented or bulging, it is edible.
“Sell by” date. The labeling “sell by” tells the store how long to display the product for sale. This is basically a guide for the retailer, so the store knows when to pull the item. The issue is quality of the item (freshness, taste, and consistency) rather than whether it is on the verge of spoiling. “Sell by” date is the last day the item is at its highest level of quality, but it will still be edible for some time after.
“Use by” date. This refers strictly to quality, not safety. This date is recommended for best flavor or quality. It is not a purchase or safety date. This is the last date recommended for the use of the product while at peak quality, the last day a product will maintain its optimum freshness, flavor, and texture. The date has been determined by the manufacturer of the product. Beyond this date, the product begins to deteriorate although it is still edible.
Be Prepared. If you enjoyed this, or topics of current events risk awareness and survival preparedness, click here to check out our current homepage articles…
Similar Articles You Might Enjoy:
How Many Calories Do I Need?
November 8, 2011
Knowing how many calories you burn in a day will give you an idea of how many calories you should be eating, or should be storing for emergency use later. Your body burns calories in three different ways… metabolism, physical activity, and digestion.
Metabolism – Your body needs energy every day to survive — even when you are sleeping. Your heart is constantly pumping, your body is working at maintaining a normal body temperature, your brain is always ‘on’, damage is being repaired, all systems are requiring fuel. Roughly 60% to 70% of the calories you burn every day is from keeping all of your body’s systems working!
Physical Activity – Your body burns calories through any sort of physical activity, ranging from just walking around, to formal exercise, or any type of movement. The amount of calories you burn from physical activity can be anywhere from 25% to 40% of the total amount of calories you burn in a day.
Digesting Food – Your body also uses up energy to digest the food you eat, although it only accounts for about 5% to 10% of calories burned.
For those who wish to lose some weight, if you eat less calories than your body burns, you will create a ‘calorie deficit’ — and your body will burn your excess body fat to make up the difference.
For those who wish to be sure they have enough survival preparedness food storage, either at home, or in a kit of some sort, knowing your daily caloric requirement is essential.
There are variations to everything, but the following two examples should give you an idea. Note that during an emergency or disaster situation, you may be burning more calories than you normally would be, due to a probable increase in your physical activity.
A 200 pound, 6’2″ man 40 years of age who is ‘lightly active’ during a typical day will require 2,700 calories to maintain body systems function without gaining or losing weight. That same person will require 3,400 calories that day if he is ‘very active’ and 3,800 calories if ‘extremely active’.
A 140 pound, 5’7″ woman 40 years of age who is ‘lightly active during a typical day will require 1,900 calories, but if ‘very active’ will require 2,400 calories, and if ‘extremely active’ will require 2,600 calories to maintain body systems function without gaining or losing weight.
Check your own stats and search for ‘calorie deficit calculator’ or ‘weight loss calculator’ to determine what your body normally consumes in a day. Then, if you are overweight and want to trim down a bit (to be in better shape for a SHTF scenario?) these calculators should help you determine a reduced calorie intake. Or, you may simply want to determine if your storage food plan will provide enough calories per day for your needs (I have a feeling that some folks underestimate the calories that they will actually need each day to survive).
Yes, there’s more to it… exercise, proper nutrition, etc. – but let’s start with the calories.
Daily Calorie Requirements
Male, 5’11″, 190 pounds, lightly active
20-year-old: 2,800 calories
30-year-old: 2,700 calories
40-year-old: 2,600 calories
50-year-old: 2,500 calories
60-year-old: 2,400 calories
70-year-old: 2,300 calories
Daily Calorie Requirements
Female, 5’5″, 150 pounds, lightly active
20-year-old: 2,100 calories
30-year-old: 2,000 calories
40-year-old: 1,900 calories
50-year-old: 1,900 calories
60-year-old: 1,800 calories
70-year-old: 1,800 calories
If you enjoyed this, or topics of current events risk awareness or survival preparedness,
click here to check out our current homepage articles…
Similar Articles You Might Enjoy:
Organize and Rotate your Food Supplies
November 3, 2011
Until recently, I thought we were organized with our food storage and rotation. I discovered that there is room for improvement!
We’ve been going through and packing all of our ‘stuff’ during the past month as we get ready to move to another area. We’re not on a schedule so we have been going through all of our accumulated stuff in a methodical way rather than throwing everything in boxes and shoving off.
We’ve managed to weed out alot of items that we really don’t use or need anymore and have donated or sold some of it. The big surprise though (other than the realization of how much we all accumulate over time) was finding stashes of food that we had forgotten about, which was well beyond expiration.
Many years ago we had slowly started to accumulate some extra food, because we live in earthquake country (although not for much longer…). We happen to live very near one of the big faults that they expect to let-loose… they keep on saying that the ‘big one’ will happen within 30 years, the same thing that they were saying when we moved here 14 years ago. One thing I know is, the clock is ticking.
Anyway, as beginners years ago, we bought lots of various foods and started storing them in various places. Some in bins, boxes, and shelves in the shed, some on shelves in the pantry, etc. One of the problems we discovered while recently packing is that we lost track of all that we had, and where it all was stored. We came across several bins and boxes of old food. Oops…
While we looked through the old foods, we discovered that the foods we bought those years ago were not the smartest purchases. We didn’t necessarily buy the foods that we normally eat. Not only that, but we bought too many of some items and we should’ve known that we wouldn’t eat that much of this or that. Nowadays we know the saying, “Store what you eat, and eat what you store”. As a general rule, you shouldn’t buy food that you don’t normally eat (there are exceptions).
I do believe that if all your food storage is visible, it will be a much less wasteful system than having foods stored in boxes and bins that you lose track of. Some people are better disciplined than others with maintaining lists, and may be perfectly fine with having foods tucked away here and there, but I’ll bet that most folks aren’t that disciplined, and need to ‘see’ what they have.
If you see what you have on the shelves, then you are less likely to buy too much of this or that, and are more likely to be able to rotate your foods such that you eat the oldest first and keep it going in order so nothing spoils over time.
So, hopefully some of you will learn from our own mistakes. Try not to hide away storage foods such that you may forget about it or forget exactly what you have and when you stored it or when it will expire (there are exceptions).
If you enjoyed this, or topics of current events risk awareness or survival preparedness,
click here to check out our current homepage articles…
Similar Articles You Might Enjoy:
Four Factors That Effect Food Storage
September 22, 2011
Food Storage Life Factor:
Temperature
It is remarkable the difference in food storage life depending upon the temperature of the environment it is stored in. This has a huge impact. The USDA states, “Each 5.6°C (10°F) drop in temperature doubles the storage life…”! You could also say that each 5.6°C (10°F) rise in temperature halves the storage life.
An example of the relationship of food storage with temperature:
(this does not represent any particular food)
50°F (30 years)
60°F (20 years)
70°F (10 years)
80°F (5 years)
90°F (2.5 years)
100°F (1.25 years)
The ideal place for most people is to store your food in your basement, where average temperatures are often around 60°F.
Food Storage Life Factor:
Product Moisture Content
For long term storage, grains should have a moisture content of 10% or less. Commercially dried foods easily achieve these levels. Typical home dehydrated foods are not this dry however, and will not last as long. Dried foods with 10% or less moisture will snap easily and are very brittle.
Regarding other stored dry foods (rice, beans, grains, etc.) the food itself should not be subject to the elements for long (such as leaving them in their original bag, etc.) but instead moved to sealed containers.
Food Storage Life Factor:
Product Atmosphere
Oxygen oxidizes many of the compounds in food. Bacteria, one of several agents which make food go rancid also needs oxygen to grow. Foods should be stored in an oxygen free environment.
Air contains about 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. O2 (oxygen) absorbers dropped into a sealed container or a sealed Mylar bag are a common solution. If the oxygen within the sealed container is absorbed, what remains is 99% pure nitrogen in a partial vacuum. It is important that the container you are using must be able to hold an air-tight seal.
Food Storage Life Factor:
Container
To get the best storage life, the product must have a hermetic (air tight) seal. Common solutions are ‘cans’, sealable food storage buckets, and sealable Mylar bags.
If using plastic buckets or barrels, be sure that they are rated ‘food grade’. Remember that just because a bucket is HDPE #2 does not mean that it is food grade. Safe Plastics for Food and Drink
(some information sourced from LDS Preparedness)
If you enjoyed this, or topics of current events risk awareness or survival preparedness,
check out our current homepage articles…
Similar Articles You Might Enjoy:
Food and Water Survival Storage
August 19, 2011
Once you have acquired extra survival preparedness items, where is a good location to keep these things? More specifically, with regards to food and water, what are some ideas for storage locations?
Food Items Storage Locations
When it comes to food storage, it is very important to find locations that are ‘cool’.
High temperature is the worst enemy of food storage and will drastically reduce the shelf life expectancy. If you have a basement, and unless it is excessively damp, it will be an ideal place to store your extra food while keeping away from excessive heat. Excessive basement dampness though will rust your cans and will ruin foods that are not sealed, so, if necessary, one solution is to use a dehumidifier or find another location.
Find locations where the foods are not in the Sun’s rays at all during the day. Avoid attic spaces because they often get quite hot during summer months.
If space is hard to find, consider unconventional storage locations for your food items. One simple solution is to purchase plastic storage bins that are sized such that they will fit underneath a bed. You can fit a lot of canned food items (or other) that are in storage containers under your bed!
The variability in sizes of plastic storage containers will allow you to efficiently and neatly store foods in places like closets, under a table, corners, shelves, or inconspicuously stacked and perhaps covered or hidden with something decorative.
Another consideration is, ‘convenience’. Since successful food storage requires effective food rotation, keeping some or all of your food storage within easy access will help to maintain that practice. Food rotation shelving systems like those offered from Shelf Reliance.com, are a big help to a successful setup.
Water Storage Locations
Depending on where you live, and your risk of losing your drinking water supply for a time, you should consider storing some amount of drinking water. It’s simple to do. You can clean and use plastic ‘soda’ bottles, you could buy purpose-built water storage containers (they’re usually colored blue), or you could use food-grade buckets such as 5-gallon pails (Avoid using ‘used’ 5-gallon pails in this case).
Where should or could you store these water containers? Again, keep them away from heat sources. Soda bottles are perfect for shelves, but won’t hold a lot of water (they are convenient though).
I like stackable containers. Personally, I like to use 5-gallon pails (with the screw-top lids) because it’s about the maximum weight that one can handle when filled, and they can be stacked, and 5 gallons is a decent amount of water. You may consider water treatment first.
Keeping 50 gallons of drinking water for example, is very doable – stack two 5-gallon pails, five along a wall, and it will only take up about 5 feet of wall space by 2.5 feet tall. You could cover it with a decorative or non-descriptive blanket and it will fit right in to the room. You could even place a finished board across the top to hold other items.
Water storage locations could include the bottom of a closet, in the corner of a spare room, in the basement (ideal since it is cool there), or hidden in plain site.
The point is, if your living space is limited, by being creative you can still find ways to store extra food and water.
If you enjoyed this, or topics of current events risk awareness or survival preparedness,
check out our current homepage articles…
Similar Articles You Might Enjoy:
Shelf Reliance Harvest-72 Review
June 20, 2011
Shelf Reliance, a quality company that makes ‘Food Rotation Systems‘ offer wonderful solutions to organizing and managing quantities of canned foods.
At home, once you cross a threshold of filling your normal nooks and cupboards with a bit of extra food storage, you will begin to store your excess foods in all sorts of places – from bins, to bags, boxes, stacks, here-and-there… anywhere you can.
Unless you are very organized, quickly you will lose track of exactly what you have, where it is, and which items are older than others. There are a number of solutions to this problem, and no one solution is exactly the ‘right one’. However, the recommendation is to find a solution which will allow you to see what you have, store foods efficiently, and rotate foods from oldest-to-newest.
A great solution for organizing canned food storage is from Shelf Reliance, ‘the-Harvest‘.
ShelfReliance.com has been a valued sponsor of ModernSurvivalBlog.com, and we have been happy to have them here – offering survival-preparedness products to the community. I have just finished a product assembly and review of their ‘Harvest 72′ food rotation system, a unique heavy duty shelving system that automatically rotates canned foods.
I created the following video review of the Harvest-72, which I recommend that you watch if at all interested in an excellent method of storing canned foods.
The number-one takeaway from experiencing this product is this… ‘You get what you pay for’.
Your common sense tells you this, which you know to be true in most instances. When you pay a little for something, there is often a reason why it is so cheap. When you pay more for something, it is usually ‘better’. Sure, there are some exceptions, but usually this is true.
This shelving system is not cheap. However, it will last you a lifetime. No doubt.
The convenience of storing 350 – 400 cans of food in one place, and the efficiency of a first-in first-out system, will bring you to the next level when it comes to implementing the philosophy of ‘storing what you eat, and eating what you store’, a message I first heard a few years ago from Jack Spirko during one of his podcasts. If you abide by this simple rule, you will not waste your food storage supplies, while they simply sit and wait for a sufficient disaster…
What I like about the Shelf Reliance, Harvest-72
Heavy Duty framework and cross-member supports – will last a lifetime
Can-tracks which feed from top to bottom
Availability of various size can-tracks from #10 to smaller sizes
Adjustable width of can-tracks for various height cans
Having so many food cans in one place to see what you have
It encourages you to consume and rotate your food storage
Criticism
They recommend ‘no wheels’ on units taller than 42 inches, for safety (although they have not said so, it may be entirely due to the litigious nature of our society today). This unfortunately eliminates the ability to shift or move the unit once it becomes filled with cans, unless you improvise your own solution. Plan ahead for its final location. Be sure to plan and configure the can-track spacings first, while away from the wall and before you move it to its final location – this will allow you to attach the rear can-track straps before moving it against a wall.
Rating
I give this system an overall score of 4.5 of 5 stars, only because there is not an included method of moving the unit once it becomes filled with canned goods. I entirely endorse and recommend the product if it is something that suits your needs.
UPDATE: Although their installation manual includes a statement of no wheels on FRS units over 42″ tall, Shelf Reliance has just assured me that their current solution, Harvest Casters, is fine for the Harvest-72. They clarified that this solution is valid up to a 78″ height. Looks like they need an update for their installation manual 
UPDATE: from Shelf Reliance,
The warning about not putting wheels on our shelving systems is outdated and is being removed from the instructions. It was written back when we sold individual wheels that attached to each of the four corners of the system. the Harvest Casters are one, solid unit that attaches to the bottom of the system and they are much more stable. They are approved for use on our 72″ models.
UPDATE: Given the new information regarding the caster solution, I know rate this unit 5 stars!
If you enjoyed this, or topics of preparedness or current events risk awareness, consider our survival blog RSS feed, new posts by E-mail, or bookmark us at Modern Survival Blog
Similar Articles You Might Enjoy:
