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Letter Re: Save Money, Get Prepared, and Eat Healthier with Intermediate Term Food Storage
Jim,
Thanks for posting Travis A.'s letter regarding food storage. He makes some
good points but I'd like to chime in with some thoughts of my own.
I see an emergency food storage program as having two conflicting goals: The
first is to allow you to eat "normally" after a disaster, because "different" food
will just add to the stress of the situation. The second is to provide basic
food that will merely keep you alive but will store long-term. I believe a
hybrid storage plan that meets both goals is best, at least for my lifestyle.
To meet the first goal of eating normally, Travis' plan works. Store the foods
you eat and rotate them. For the storage solutions available to most people,
that means rotating through everything every 4-6 months or so. Brown rice goes
funky. Beans left in open air become too dry to re-hydrate. Pasta gets stale
and acquires off tastes. Other foods like those Lipton pasta and rice pouches
go funky even faster - they're good for a couple months before they start tasting "off".
That 7 lb. container of garlic might store for two years, but not if it's opened
- and how are you going to rotate it without opening it and constantly using
it?
So buy what you like and rotate it - but other than canned food, there is little
you can buy that will still be particularly tasty after a year unless you go
through the hassle of sealing it up, canning it, or whatever - in portion sizes
that you can use up before it goes stale.
For long-term, "get you through two winters food," nothing beats
properly stored staples like wheat, white rice, beans, powdered milk, dehydrated
vegetables and potatoes. This is the stuff that will keep you alive while the
fallout decays in the grain belt, or scientists figure out how to prevent the
new blight that destroyed a year's worth of crops. These are buy-and-forget,
emergency-only, keep-you-alive staples - cheap sources of carbs and protein.
Add some oil and vitamins and you're set with something that will keep you
alive. The inconvenience of using this food will virtually guarantee you won't
use it unless you have to. It's like carrying a pouch of dog food in your backpack
to eat in an emergency. Ask Ethiopians who survived the 1970s and 1980s if
it's a good idea.
The LDS church
is arguably the authority on long-term storage of staples. After a recent study
at Brigham Young University (BYU) concluded that properly stored #10 cans
of most foods are good for at least thirty years, the church revised its recommendations
and now suggests that long-term storage foods not be rotated.
Why? Because nobody wants to grind wheat. It's easier to buy a bag-o-beans
at the grocery
store than it is to tap into your #10 cans and then have to replace them. If
you're worried about adjusting, then start working whole grains into your diet,
but don't do it by tapping into your storage supplies - go buy 5 lb. bags whole
wheat flour or better, buy some wheat and practice using your grain mill.
The biggest advantage to this is that with the exception of freeze-dried food,
long-term storage food is dirt cheap. A one year supply of staples for a small
family can be had for less than a couple thousand dollars. Amortized over the
thirty-year shelf life and it's like paying $5 per month for complete food
security.
Watch Craig's List and
similar sites! Last fall I was able to buy an electric tin can sealer worth
$1,350 plus $700 worth of cans in various sizes for just
$250. I actually found it first in Google's cache listed for $500 and was crestfallen
when my e-mail to their Craig's List address was rejected because the listing
had expired. I watched Craig's List for the next month and sure enough, they
re-listed at $250 because it didn't sell the first time. I'd have gladly given
them the $500! Now I have the ability to can anything wet or dry, including
Travis' 7 lbs. of garlic powder!
A final note on canned food (food that contains liquid): It lasts virtually
forever, expiration dates notwithstanding. As long as the can isn't bulged,
dented on a seam, leaking or spurts when opened, then it is probably safe to
eat. The fact is that bacteria don't "work their way into" a can
over time. They were either there when it was canned or they weren't. If they
were there,
they will do their damage long before the expiration date. Botulism contamination
is virtually unheard of in modern American [commercially] canned food. So while
taste and nutritional
value
may suffer over time, safety doesn't unless the can has a defect or is damaged.
The bottom line: Buy and rotate the foods you like. Buy and store food that
will keep you alive.- Matt R.
JWR Replies: Here at the Rawles
Ranch, we use a lot of our stored
wheat. We keep a Country
Living grain mill set up through about nine months
of the year.
(Our
summer
schedule is often too busy for bread
making.) I am actually a big proponent of eating what
you store.This has multiple benefits:
- You'll eat less expensively. (Buying in bulk can save up to 80%, versus
packaged foods from the grocery store.)
- Your diet will be more healthy. (Processed foods are generally less healthy
than bulk grains, rice, and legumes.)
- You'll continuously rotate your food stocks. (FIFO!)
- You'll more closely monitor the condition and age of all of your storage
food.
- You'll gain experience in preparing the same food that you store--with
the opportunity to develop some tasty recipes.
- You'll accustom your digestive system to a diet that is heavy on storage
food.
I must also point out that while many bulk storage foods retain remarkable
nutritive value for as much as 30 years, that at least beans lose palatability.
After about seven or eight years of storage, beans become so hard that they
will refuse to plump
up
and
soften,
even after days of soaking or simmering. Yes, you can either grind
them or cook them in a pressure cooker, but it is far easier to simply rotate
your stored beans continuously (on a FIFO basis), and use them up
when they are still less than five years old!
I often mention the book The
Encyclopedia of Country Living 
by
Carla Emery, but two other books that are important to have on your bookshelf
are Making
the Best of Basics
by
James Talmage
Stevens, and Cookin'
with Home Storage
by
Vicki Tate. Learning how to cook with stored food takes time and practice!
Living in a Schumeresque world
will be stressful. But it will be even more stressful if you needlessly take
on additional stresses,
in getting your digestive system used to storage food, and by having to learn
how to cook with storage food. If your storage food is presently just
sitting on the shelf un-used and un-tested, then you've made a mistake.
Get cooking!
