The 4th in the Rule of 3’s is the amount of time someone can survive without food – three week period.
Candidly, I didn’t consider three weeks without the possibility to resupply to even be a possibility. Seeing what happened to Puerto Rico taught me that maybe I just haven’t been creative enough in contemplating disasters. I quickly built up my food preps.
Merman’s One Month Box
In my case, my preps have to be self-contained and out of the way. I started with a $12.00, 99 liter, Sterlite plastic tub with a “locking” lid from Wal-Mart.
The next decision I needed to make was what to stockpile. Most preppers recommend a bunch of base ingredients along the lines of rice, beans, flour, milk, sugar and stuff like that. My problem is that I wouldn’t know what to do with a bag of flower nor a bag of beans. Until I develop those particular cooking skills, I bought some of the things my family already eat that have a long shelf life – flavored rice dishes, mac & cheese, potato mixes, canned meats like tuna, canned soups (meal in a can type things), canned fruit for tasty treats, and a variety of spices.
Below is my unplanned and ill prepared box-o-food. I am now officially designating it my One Month Box.
This box above is a 99 liter (26+ gallons). It is just a random assortment of food accumulated over time. I thought I would take inventory to guestimate how long it would last.
The serving size marked on the boxes/cans is 420+ servings. A serving size is ridiculously small as far as I am concerned. As an example, a 5 ounce can of tuna reads 2 servings. I eat a can of tuna for lunch, and I don’t consider that over eating.
Judging by the way my family currently eats, I counted the box as containing 190 servings. There are 3 people in my family. I want us to be able to have 2 servings of food per person per day. That means I consider this box as containing about 30 days of food for my family, plus some staples such as flour, sugar and milk. In case you are wondering, it probably weighs about 80 pounds.
Freeze Dried Food – The Bullet I Dodged
I’ve been hearing commercials for food storage. Then, early one morning, a religious show was on TV and it looked like an advertisement for another prepackaged food company. I looked it up online, $80 for a one month food supply in a convenient little bucket sounded pretty great to me. $240 for a three month supply of food and the peace of mind it would buy me – done! But my spidey sense put me on alert. I had to do some research.
What is the unit of comparison?
Let’s compare my One Month Box to the popular freeze dried food marketing companies’.
The companies I researched sell SERVINGS. In the case above, each bucket-o-food contains 120 servings.
How long will the food last? Let’s take a look at the graphic below.
So far, this sounds pretty darn good. However, there are other considerations – serving size and nutrition information. I am going to omit an analysis of nutrition information because I had determined I didn’t trust the bucket-o-food manufacturers for the reason I will show below.
Know Before You Need
The buckets shown above are probably 4 gallon food pails approximately equivalent in volume to my One Month Box (26+ gallons a/k/a 99 liters). The difference is that they are advertising 720 servings of food. Compare that to my box which I represent contains 190 servings plus some base ingredients a/k/a staples. To compare servings to servings, my One Month Box will serve one person for three months (I have a family of three, so it is my One Month Box). The mass marketed thing indicates it would last one person for a year. Hummm.
This kind of disparity concerned me. I know a 5 oz can of tuna is enough for one person – not two. A small box of mac & cheese can feed two people – not four. A large (18 oz) can of soup can feed two people – not 3.5 as the can reads. I personally selected and handled my food. I know this can of soup is two comfortable servings. This is all food I have personally prepared and eaten. I know my calculations are reasonable.
Beware of 144 sq. inch “Bath Towels”
I am not at all comfortable relying on the calculations of companies advertising prepackaged long term food storage for the reasons illustrated above. I like the convenience of clicking a button, paying a fee and calling myself “prepared.” The reality is I don’t believe the servings advertised.
Prepping relieves stress for me. KNOWING I have what I need for a particular situation gives me PEACE and confidence. Personally speaking, I trust my calculations for items I am familiar with more than the marketing materials of the bucket-o-freeze-dried-food processors.
Just in case you are wondering, my One Month Box probably cost under $100. It might even be less than that, but I can’t tell you the COMFORT I feel knowing that I KNOW we are prepared in this aspect.
Serving sizes are all over the place and not a good yardstick to measure against…calories are a more effective means of measuring how much someone will need to store. Of course you need to make sure the ingredient list doesn’t start with sugar, since that can raise the calorie count without increasing nutrition. But all other things being similar, the package with more calories will be more filling. Your situation is best – knowing from experience how far a can of this or box of that goes with your family is the best way to figure out how much to store.
I try not to buy food kits, but I do purchase FD #10 cans of both pre-made meals and ingredients to make my own dinner post event. But these are for when I’ve gone through my short term and mid-term foods.
I have about a 3-6 month supply of what I call mid-term preps – canned soups, raviolis, canned meats, etc. Anything with a shelf life of 3-5 years I lump in this category. These are the quickest meals in a disaster, since most of them just need to be heated to be eaten (or eaten cold in a pinch.)
Definitely agree with storing what you eat regularly…it helps avoid another shock to the system when you’re already stressed by an event. Very important for the very young and very old alike.
Oh, one last thing…for wet packed emergency food, make sure you can use up a can at one time since a lot of events will mean no refrigeration for leftovers. Dry food will last as long as it stays dry, but wet food needs to be eaten all at once or risk spoilage.
I like your approach. It’s simple and makes sense. I haven’t gotten to counting calories yet, but I will. After listening to Salty and Spice talk about sodium, I realized that could be a problem for me and I am starting to watch that.
I don’t mind admitting I am having a tough time with my long term food preps. My plan is to address that with a later article. The reality is that I am still working through it myself. Stocking a year of food seemed doable. Then I have to multiply it by three. Holy cow that’s a lot of food, and I have to hide it. I think food will be by far my most expensive prep that doesn’t involve real estate. It is going to take me some time to stock up.
I might just do what and stock up on a bunch of single serving per can meals because of the ease.
Food is my most expensive prep, although the standby generator was a close second…but I use the food all the time so it’s not a waste even if nothing happens. To make sure I don’t waste canned food I bought a can rotation rack from ThriveLife, although for those on a budget there are plenty of plans online for building your own rotation system.
Here’s the flow of canned food in my home:
New purchases get put in rotation rack
Lunches, dinner ingredients, veggie cans are grabbed from kitchen pantry
Kitchen pantry is refilled from rotation rack
I went with a rotation rack after my second purge of VERY expired food…as much as I tried to keep things in date order on regular shelves, it was all too easy to lose track and not use up the oldest cans first without an automated system. Super-organized folks may be able to get away without a rotation rack, but I couldn’t.
My long term supplies are just stored away on shelves or stacked up off the floor since #10 cans have a shelf-life of 25+ years in most cases which probably exceeds my shelf-life. 😛 Rice, pasta, wheat berries and dry beans are stored in 1 gallon mylar bags with desiccant packs and oxygen absorbers. I use ziplock top mylar bags so I can reseal them without electricity. Bags are stored in 5 gallon buckets with regular lids, although I do keep a lot of gamma lids to make it easier to reseal the open buckets. Note: gamma lids don’t stack well, so using regular lids for stacking is best, and use the gamma lids for buckets on top only or your open supply.
Ok, I’ll admit I store sugar, sugary drinks and candy too. Gotta have some treats to pick up your spirits in an event too. Sugar is just stored as is in the bags and buckets. Drink mixes I just used dessicants in the bags. Candy is limited to Sweet Tarts and Pez, so I also just used dessicants for their bags. Half the drink mixes are Tang so I can tell myself it’s also a medical prep for the vitamin C. 😛
Try not to get overwhelmed by everything I’ve done, this has taken me over 15 years to figure out a plan and flesh it out so I have about a 2 year supply of food without rationing. Building up your food supplies over time is the best way to not bust your budget. I tend to buy in spurts, waiting for sales to stock up – definitely a good way to stretch the budget dollars.