Think you have enough food to survive a food emergency? How long do you think you could go? A week? Two weeks? A month? Longer? And just how well would you actually be eating if you could make it a month or longer?
Such questions are important, and they often aren’t asked by enough until it is too late. Outlasting a food emergency is more than just about having a lot of food stocked, it’s also about what types of food you have stocked, how long that food will last, as well as having the ability to turn that food into consumable products.
Longevity
So, you think you’re stocked up with food and ready to outlast a food emergency. That’s great. But what if a food emergency doesn’t hit for another month – another four months – another year? How much of your food supply will be stale, rotten, or otherwise unusable?
It’s critical to the readiness of your emergency food supply that you look for foods that have a relatively long shelf life. Often items like pasta, rice, canned goods, cereals, crackers, dried meats, nuts, dried fruits, and similar items will have longer expiration dates than many other food products, especially those that must be refrigerated or have dairy, meat or fruit products in them.
Rotation
Even when many of your food supplies have longer shelf lives, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are immune to expiration dates. Therefore, it can be a good idea to rotate the items in your emergency food supply. Going through your supplies on a periodic basic and rotating older items for newer ones can ensure that your foods are fresh and ready to go when an emergency strikes. Rotating your supplies is also a good way to take inventory of your stock as well as avoid wasting the older supplies you have on hand.
Amounts
The amount of food you keep on hand will likely depend on several factors. These factors can include how much space you have available for storage, how many people you plan to feed and for how long. It can be important to bear in mind however, that while the more food you have on hand in your emergency supply the longer you can last during an emergency, the more you also must rotate and work to keep that food from going bad. This is why it can be so critical to have foods with longer expiration dates, especially if stocking larger amounts.
Not Just Food But Water
While having a stock of food can be important to your well-being during a food emergency, you must also consider your supply of drinking water. Clean water during a food emergency can be critical not only to your survival since you will need water to drink, but you might also need water to cook. While many of the foods you might stock could have an extended shelf life, things like pastas, rice, dried beans, etc., they likely won’t do you much good without water in which to cook them.
Having a good supply of clean bottled water available can make outlasting a food emergency much easier and much safer. While your water consumption needs may vary based upon a number of factors, you might want to have one to two gallons per day, per person, available for cooking and drinking needs.
Cooking Needs
In a food emergency, it’s important to consider the fact that if you can’t get food, you may not have access to other aspects of your average daily life. This means that the electricity or natural gas consumption needed for cooking on a stove top or range might not be available. And unless you’re planning to make a fire pit outside, you’ll likely need a source upon which to cook much of your food.
A small cook stove and extra fuel can be handy items to have on hand for just such a food emergency. A cook stove might be packed away or kept with your camping supplies during normal occasions, but can pulled out during a food emergency as a source for cooking food upon.
Special Needs
As a final note, certain special needs might have to be considered in your emergency food planning. Whether you have a diabetic in your household or a person with food allergies, you may need to be aware of certain special needs when stocking your food supplies. This isn’t to say that you must cater to every gourmet taste among those in your household since during a food emergency they should be happy to be eating at all, but when it comes to life and death situations, it can be critical that you’ve stocked certain items for those with special food needs.
Disclaimer:
This article is for informational purposes only. Any action taken by the reader due to the information provided in this article is solely at the reader’s discretion.