Food Storage

Food Storage can be one of those very overwhelming preparedness concepts, financially and spacely. But it is one of the 2 most important as it extends your survival length, and extends to other circumstances outside of the normal disaster defination. Just remember these basic rules.

—       Store what you eat but store extra of what you’re are kids willingly to eat – your going to be under extra stress already so try to avoid family meal time distress

—       Make sure you have adequate water for ALL your needs – toilet, washing, drinking, and cooking needs (mountain house meals = increase in water needs)

—       Avoid high sugar and junk foods – they are addictive and the withdrawals are not worth it

—       Remember special needs, allergies and food sensitizes

—       Include vitamins (and fluoride if in the northwest) in your food storage

—       Use your food storage as your regular diet. I recommend creating a llist of 10-12 meals for dinner, 5-6 for lunch, and 5-6 for breakfast that you can rotate through on a regular basis. This helps with planning your food storage, rotations, and the what to make for dinner stress. You will quickly learn how much you need for each meal, how many times you'll have that meal in a month or year, and thus what your goal inventory is. There are also some important preparedness principles happening this way.

·        It gets your family familiar with the food – especially important with picky or sensitive eaters

·        In an emergency is the last place to introduce new foods, so do so now!

·        You get to practice cooking with your food storage which means better tasting food (now is the time to burn stuff not then)

·       It prepares the body for a new diet. Some foods can make you sick if you aren’t used to eating them regularly like beans and whole wheat. Even if you don’t make it regularly, buy it and eat it regularly. Sickness or stomach upset is not what you want to be dealing with in a disaster.

—       Plant a garden and harvest it together – if you can get chickens and animals (this also teaches the work skills and responsibility that they will need to help with recovery efforts)