During a disaster what would you do for food?
Although clean drinking water is by far more important to sustaining life itself, significant emphasis is placed on emergency food supplies throughout the emergency preparedness community. This is perhaps due to a general “short term” view of emergency or disaster durations, even though extreme weather, natural and man-made technological disasters routinely last a week or longer. And let’s face it being hungry just plain sucks. In an effort to not “re-invent the wheel” there is much that can be learned from the Provident Living practices of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Whether you are preparing to sustain your family or workplace for 72-hours, a week, 3-months or a year, take action beginning now!
The concept of storing food for future consumption is familiar to many of us that grew up with, or even now maintain family or community gardens. Picking fresh fruits and vegetables and preserving them with stove top steamers in Ball® wide mouth canning jars is not a new concept to many. For those wanting to get more information on these practices Harris Publications has just launched a new magazine titled New Pioneer and there are several other similar magazines such as Mother Earth News. To order a copy of the premier issue of The New Pioneer, you can call 212-462-9536.
Instead of dashing out the day of the disaster (when nearly nothing is left on the grocery store shelves, or there are no grocery stores to dash to) each week just purchase a few additional non-perishable cans or jars of foods your family regularly eats and store them in a designated pantry area. This is a simple logical process that can be planned, budgeted and in several months a pretty effective way to build a sustaining emergency food supply. Remember, you’ll need to create a first in, first out rotation plan and by the way don’t forget the can opener! Since they can break and are fairly inexpensive, buy two!
In addition to the garden and grocery store options, there are several very good companies that manufacture foods to meet short and long duration emergency food needs. You can plan your menus by determining what you like to eat, accessibility to clean water (needed to make some types of meals), where the food will be stored (sensitivity to extreme temperatures), how many people you need to feed and available storage space.
Non thirst provoking food bars are nutritious, lightweight and provide 400 calories per serving and come in 1200 calorie and larger packages. This food technology provides basic sustenance with a good lemon cake taste. It is highly temperature stable, lightweight and small in size makes it easy to transport if necessary.
Dehydrated meals known throughout the outdoor backpacking community have come a long way in terms of taste, shelf-life, serving size and variety to include vegetarian selections. Under reasonable storage conditions shelf life ranges from about 5 years to 25 years, and the menu variety is large, and more importantly they taste great! Truth be known we’ve had better dehydrated food meals in the great outdoors, than we’ve had at some so called restaurants. We find these meals to be appealing to many as they replicate a normal meal under emergency conditions and companion flameless heating technology can even assure you of the meal being hot.
A collateral benefit of using dehydrated meals is that users get more water into their diet, but this is also a potential drawback if you don’t have ready access to quantities of clean drinking water. Water is life itself. Note that during Hurricane Katrina there was water, water everywhere, but none fit to drink! More about this in a future blog post on water and personal hydration.
The remaining categories of emergency meals are those that are similar to frozen TV dinners, except they are not frozen and taste pretty good! The manufacturer of these meals focused on convenience as some types include the entrée, side dish, seasonings, desert and drink. These meals and single serving entrees are made in shelf stable versions of one, three and five years. They use a flameless heater technology very similar to those used to heat dehydrated meals and military MRE’s, except that it’s pre-packaged with the needed water in the meal container, a very handy feature!
Speaking of Meals Ready to Eat (MRE’s) if they’re good enough to feed members of the US Armed Forces they are certainly a good choice for civilian emergency preparedness. These high calorie meals were developed as a successor to the old K and C-Rations meals to feed combat troops. They generally have a shelf life of about three years, are contained in a very thick sealed plastic bag. MRE’s or their commercial variants are also made to meet specialized religious requirements (e.g. Kosher/Halal). Take a look at this CNN report on the newest food developments for US Armed Forces.
There are of course other types of emergency meals or those marketed as emergency meals in the marketplace, but over the last several years of doing product research ICE PACK developers have found those described above to be the most notable for general emergency usage.
Now here’s an interesting twist on emergency meal planning, and a critical factor brought to our attention by a company staff member; that of food allergies. These are very real and dangerous to those affected members of the population. Adverse reactions to simple skin exposure and eating foods containing allergen ingredients can be life threatening under normal circumstances, and even more so during a disaster. The USDA mandates all food labels show the top 8 allergens. These include but are not limited to:
- Milk
- Eggs
- Peanuts
- Tree nuts (such as almonds, cashews, walnuts, etc.)
- Fish (such as bass, cod, flounder, etc)
- Shellfish (such as crab, lobster, shrimp, etc)
- Soy
- Wheat/Gluten
- Sesame Seeds
- Sulfites
If food allergies are an issue for you, your family or co-workers also check the ingredients labels of emergency meals to see if it was made on equipment, or is made in a facility that also manufactures any of the allergens. People concerned with food allergies need to know a thorough ingredients list, the potential for cross contamination (tainted during preparation) and even contact with items tainted with food allergens (hands, clothing, utensils, etc). More information on this important aspect of planning emergency meals can be found at the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) and the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN).
Lastly, research efforts involving one of our ICE PACK developers (when in the service of the US Government) found that our culture is used to having something sweet to complete a meal. Often without that “sweet” we feel that the meal is not complete. There is some sort of desert or candy in most of the military food rations, as well as some of the commercial meals that are subjects of this post. It might be a good idea to have candy on hand (Jolly Ranchers™ are one of our favorites!), to satisfy your sweet tooth, as a reward for kids (young and old) for working/helping during emergencies, and as a source of quick energy.
Remember as with all else when dealing with emergencies and disasters, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”.
FACTA NON VERBA…
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