Eat what you store and store what you eat is unrealistic.

[230gr]

Eat what you store and store what you eat is unrealistic.

We have some normal canned goods stored to ease the “transition shock” into the longer storage food types. Additionally, we will need to supplement our diet with both garden and wild plants, possibly wild fish and small game. This means eating foods, using recipes and cooking methods that we are not used to. Most of our food stores are ingredients and components to make meals. This was done to give us a more adaptable meal planning that our various cooks (and student cooks) can exploit. When all the stored food is gone (9 to 12 months, I hope), we will be eating only what we can grow, forage or catch and I guarantee, this will be a radical change in diet and the quantity calorie.

In using foods that storage very well, we will, of necessity, need to consider various grains and grain products. Nutritionally, I would prefer it to be otherwise but we will need the supplied calories. A single 1 pound loaf of bread (or noodles, pasta etc) has over 1500 calories. We are not currently used to eating that much bread each day but in the past it was a standard part of most of the world’s people for many centuries and it maybe again under EOTWAWKI circumstances.   

Not wanting to eat certain foods because you do not like them will not acceptable under EOTWAWKI circumstances. If it has calories, vitamins and minerals or protein it is nourishes food. I have tried to eat things that I do not like or whose taste is unknown in the attempt to broaden my pallet. You need to remember the 15 x rule used in teaching children to try and learn to eat new foods. Some times it takes just tasting small amounts of a new food to learn to eat it. This also applies to long out of date foods. I have personally eaten them and while the loose flavor and texture (and probably nutrients) but where certainly eatable and retained calories. In a survival situation, being a picky eater is very dangerous to you. You may have to just eat the rat kabobs and bitter weeds if need be to stay alive.  It takes some discipline but I have confidence that real preppers can do it.
While I do not think that going to get food poisoning is, necessarily, a given, however, between eating foraged foods and the lack of refrigeration, it is a highly possible event. Have a good supply of Imodium, medicinal clays, activated charcoal, ipecac and other OTC meds.

Many long term storage plans supply 2000 calories per person per day which is woefully inadequate for doing anything besides meditation. Having 3,000 calories per person per day, the bare minimum for an adult in an active survival situation, is better. Hard physical labor, especially in cold weather, will requires 4,500 and even 5,000 calories per adult per day would be better for occasional very strenuous and prolonged bitter cold situations. 

[WolfBrother]

WB Edited to specific:

Eat what you store and store what you eat is unrealistic.

We have some normal canned goods stored to ease the “transition shock” into the longer storage food types. Additionally, we will need to supplement our diet with both garden and wild plants, possibly wild fish and small game. This means eating foods, using recipes and cooking methods that we are not used to. Most of our food stores are ingredients and components to make meals. This was done to give us a more adaptable meal planning that our various cooks (and student cooks) can exploit. When all the stored food is gone (9 to 12 months, I hope), we will be eating only what we can grow, forage or catch and I guarantee, this will be a radical change in diet and the quantity calorie.

In using foods that storage very well, we will, of necessity, need to consider various grains and grain products. Nutritionally, I would prefer it to be otherwise but we will need the supplied calories. A single 1 pound loaf of bread (or noodles, pasta etc) has over 1500 calories. We are not currently used to eating that much bread each day but in the past it was a standard part of most of the world’s people for many centuries and it maybe again under EOTWAWKI circumstances.   

Not wanting to eat certain foods because you do not like them will not acceptable under EOTWAWKI circumstances. If it has calories, vitamins and minerals or protein it is nourishes food. I have tried to eat things that I do not like or whose taste is unknown in the attempt to broaden my pallet. You need to remember the 15 x rule used in teaching children to try and learn to eat new foods. Some times it takes just tasting small amounts of a new food to learn to eat it. This also applies to long out of date foods. I have personally eaten them and while the loose flavor and texture (and probably nutrients) but where certainly eatable and retained calories. In a survival situation, being a picky eater is very dangerous to you. You may have to just eat the rat kabobs and bitter weeds if need be to stay alive.  It takes some discipline but I have confidence that real preppers can do it.
While I do not think that going to get food poisoning is, necessarily, a given, however, between eating foraged foods and the lack of refrigeration, it is a highly possible event. Have a good supply of Imodium, medicinal clays, activated charcoal, ipecac and other OTC meds.

Many long term storage plans supply 2000 calories per person per day which is woefully inadequate for doing anything besides meditation. Having 3,000 calories per person per day, the bare minimum for an adult in an active survival situation, is better. Hard physical labor, especially in cold weather, will requires 4,500 and even 5,000 calories per adult per day would be better for occasional very strenuous and prolonged bitter cold situations.

230gr.  Everything you wrote is valid.  I do think there is a kind of gray area overlap on that however.  I intend no offense by using your words to show the gray I see.

Eat what you store and store what you eat is unrealistic.
All 21 meals a week, 84 meals a month - yup. 
However, maybe 3 or so meals a week should be made from ingredients identical to those in your stores.   A dinner of Rice and Beans with cornbread, a breakfast of re-hydrated milk and some cereal grain cooked.   This gives everyone's systems the ability to be used to eating such routinely.  Part of my medic training included some aspects of nutrition.  An example of "Food Shock" was shown with some indigenous soldiers helping US (by US I mean Great Britain, Australia, and the U.S).  Some of the wounded were being treated in our facilities and were not keeping their food down or  in.  (Both vomiting and diarrhea).  Turns out they were being fed normal post surgical food.   ALL very mild, bland, and supposedly easy to digest.  And it was for US, however the folks from birth were used to eating highly spiced foods.  THAT's what their body was used to and expecting AND did not react well to this new stuff.

We have some normal canned goods stored to ease the “transition shock” into the longer storage food types.
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When all the stored food is gone (9 to 12 months, I hope), we will be eating only what we can grow, forage or catch and I guarantee, this will be a radical change in diet and the quantity calorie.
Yup on the need for transition and radical change.  Hence my gray area of eating what you store.

Not wanting to eat certain foods because you do not like them will not acceptable under EOTWAWKI circumstances.
Yup but I see folks reacting like Katy Scarlett O'Hara did in GWTWind.  In the middle of a plowed field eating a raw turnip because she was hungry and that's ALL that was available.

Many long term storage plans supply 2000 calories per person per day which is woefully inadequate for doing anything besides meditation. Having 3,000 calories per person per day, the bare minimum for an adult in an active survival situation, is better. Hard physical labor, especially in cold weather, will requires 4,500 and even 5,000 calories per adult per day would be better for occasional very strenuous and prolonged bitter cold situations.
Yup, on several forums I participate on, I put out a question of how many calories will be needed each day for folks to survive in a PAW world.  IIRC, you and Jerry D. both chimed in on this.  So not only are we going to have to eat different, we're going to have to eat more of the different.  So the  the “transition shock” is going to be significant.

230gr.  ALL of this is my  opinion ( with some of it being based on experience and prior training ) AND I used your words to illustrate how my opinion differs a little bit from yours. 
I wrote " maybe 3 or so meals a week should be made from ingredients identical to those in your stores. ".  I practice what I preach.  The hardest thing I've found about that is learning how to re-hydrate dehydrated food.  Like the tomatoes I have in my beans and rice - I finally just started adding more water and cooking them with the beans for the last hour or so.

[230gr]

ALL of this is my  opinion ( with some of it being based on experience and prior training ) AND I used your words to illustrate how my opinion differs a little bit from yours.

 


WolfBrother, I have always respected your opinion and, in fact, we need other opinions voiced. Anyone who thinks that they know all there is about anything is a fool.  Occasionally I try to provoke discussion it is healthy for a forum, IMO. Besides you are correct "maybe 3 or so meals a week should be made from ingredients identical to those in your stores." Although it would be difficult to replace any long term storage foods at this time, that would be ideal. My problem will be getting many of the group members to do it.  I can even wean some from habitual “Big Mack’s”. Though I love and respect them, “transition shock” is going to hit them like a truck I fear.

Several sets of grand kids have lived with us and my wife trained them correctly to eat from the garden and medium storage foods (dry beans, rice home canned foods). I am concerned about some of the others.     

[TWP]

230gr and Wolfbrother, you both make sense.  My own experience with making a transition in eating habits started after I left school.  I was a burger-holic and ate most of my meals from fast food (read that as "McDonalds" at that time).  I was also heavily into Coca Cola, with every meal.  Coffee was also a daily intake item.

After I no longer had the daily class schedule of college, I started noticing my diet and its effect on my daily activities.  I gained weight and got "coffee jitters" before the end of each day.  I was teaching Chem. and Physics classes and lived on coffee.

I tried cold turkey with the coffee and did not like the effect (basic withdrawal symptoms) so I cut back on coffee and cola and started doing more juices and plane water.  It took a few months, as I recall now (long time ago...), to stop caffeine totally.

I also found that I did not have time to go get fast food while working (shock to the system!).  So I started cooking at home, which meant stocking all sorts of food that I never had while in school.  You mentioned the physiological effects and I had them all for some weeks until my body got used to "real" food.

Fast forward to today.  We stock prepper foods and I do the cooking (power trip in action).  I've been dehydrating things like bell peppers and spices grown at home.  These are split with some going into long-term stores and some is eaten immediately.  No complaints from the other half of the household, so I must making changes slowly enough to avoid "food shock".

We have changed some of the basic foods which were part of our diet before we met.  Neither of us were big bread fans, but I now bake bread once a week, from "scratch" and it has replaced a lot of store-bought baked goods.  Both of us were eating out of cans for a big part of our diet and that has also changed.  We still stock and rotate canned goods, but they are now more basic (green beans, corn, carrots, mixed vegies) rather than pre-made soups (I still like canned Chili!).  Not only has this saved some money for prepper stuff, I think we are eating better (more "healthy") than previously.

Our prepper stocks do have the standards "beans, rice, flour, canned meats, etc.) which I now use for daily meals, so I don't expect too big of change if we were forced to live on our stockpile.  We might face a change when/if we used up our food stocks in a PAW scenario.  Hopefully there would be a transition period as we change to locally foraged/hunted food stocks.

I hope this helps some of the other members of the group as they look at their own food stocks.  We are certainly not anywhere near where I would like to be, in terms of prepping, but I do have a plan and we are moving our lifestyle closer to that plan.

[230gr]

I was a burger-holic and ate most of my meals from fast food (read that as "McDonalds" at that time).  I was also heavily into Coca Cola, with every meal.  Coffee was also a daily intake item.

Sounds like my college days too!

No complaints from the other half of the household, so I must making changes slowly enough to avoid "food shock".

Excellent! You well on your way that true prepping, which, I am convinced, will be a multi-year event.   

Most of our group are coffee drinkers and likely to be so when the balloon goes up. I have made some allowances in my preps for this including caffeine powder. It has lung stimulating properties which I find helpful. I will address storing coffee and Theobromine and Caffeine in separate posts.

[WolfBrother]

230gr.  Like I said - CRS - this is it.

[TWP]

Wolfbrother

?  I found 217 definitions for CRS, many not printable in this forum...

PM me?

[230gr]

CRS is an acronym for "can't remember shit". I've got CRS syndrome too at least occasionally! 

[230gr]

Ran across this.

A typical daily ration for a U.S. infantryman during the Great War consisted of up to 5,000 calories made up from a pound or more of meat (bacon or fresh meat, rather than canned, when possible), 20 ounces of potatoes, and 18 ounces of bread.

Protein, fat & carbohydrates .. but not much veggies!