Thread: Food Planning?

I'm curious about what parameters people are using to plan/evaluate their food storage needs. I've been using primarily servings and calorie/serving to determine how many days my food will last.



I think my calorie count method is "ok", but assumes that I'll only consume X amount of calories each day. In practice, the serving sizes for each food or my preferences may not line-up nicely with those assumptions.

I have a decent variety of things, but I haven't really done any "meal planning". For example, I have no idea if I'll run out of breakfast items quickly or not. I also don't have a good handle on balancing protein/vitamins/etc for my diet. I've tried to buy things that I've eaten before (Mountain House) but there are some things that I'm not sure how much I'd like to eat for multiple days (MREs, SOS bars, even the buckets of rice/beans).

Lastly, I'm not really planning for any definitive time horizon. I'm in the "more is better" mode of planning. I don't really intend to have a year's worth of food on hand, but I'd like to have more - how much more is a question. Food takes up a lot of space & I'm running out of (good) places to store it.

There's also a bunch of little things that I'm probably missing from my stockpiled food - seasonings, baking goods, etc. I generally have these in the house, but they're really not part of my formal stockpile of food. I generally don't count on the food I have in the house in my planning - I probably have a couple of weeks worth at any given time, but that's variable and who's to say how fast it'll go without refrigeration.

So, how about the rest of you?

1) How do account for the amount of food you are storing? By servings? By calories? Some other method?
2) What's your time horizon for stockpiling? Certain number of days? Number of meals?
3) What other factors are you considering in your planning? Variety? Food preference? Longevity? Protein/Carb balance? Something else?

One other anecdote: we live on a medium-sized cul-de-sac and get along well with most of our neighbors. I recently ordered several buckets of food - rice, beans, etc. My wife and I were thinking this might be useful for helping out neighbors. Doing the math - there's probably 35 houses on my street & maybe three people per house. If we were to share these buckets of food with them, and they ate a 2400 calorie diet, I could feed them all for exactly... one day. Food for thought on how quickly your supplies could get consumed.

Nevermind.

Originally Posted by Sun195

So, how about the rest of you?

1) How do account for the amount of food you are storing? By servings? By calories? Some other method?
2) What's your time horizon for stockpiling? Certain number of days? Number of meals?
3) What other factors are you considering in your planning? Variety? Food preference? Longevity? Protein/Carb balance? Something else?

1: Amount is according to how much we can store in the allotted areas without going to waste.

2: Time horizon is what I figure we will need in order to make it to/through a complete growing season (when restocking will be done via our own garden and local producers).

3) Factors are nutritional value, carb/protein ratio, variety, and taste. All are important. For days when "taste" is lacking I will increase the tequila ration

For anyone with property (even modern neighborhood dwellers) I strongly recommend establishing an herb garden. They are easy, attractive, don't require much work, and don't take up much space. People tend to forget herbs and spices in their preps, and those that do stock some often do not have nearly enough.

Watch the documentary "A Film Unfinished" (not for younguns) to learn more about the methods that will be used against the populce of the USAand keep in mind that the images are images of real PPL

Don't forget significant water storage. 5 or 20 gallon drums or containers. Straight tap water will work for a year. A Purodene or other additive for 5 year storage. Water will be every bit as critical as food.
I know people with lots of freeze dried food and little water. A mistake.

I storing water is not possible, say you live in an apt, get a high quality water purifier that will strain out pathogens. Then if you have to get your drinking water out of a pond or river you can do it.

Originally Posted by Noisycow

Don't forget significant water storage.

That's a good point. We have 30 gallons of water stored in 5-gallon containers. In addition, we have a stream that runs through our property & I recently purchased a Katadyn drip filter to treat it.