Thoughts on Emergency Meal Plans

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To prep ahead an emergency meal plan, you need to understand a healthy diet, balanced with the nutrients your body needs. Understand those needs change and how to adapt to those changes.

In the world of dietitians there are special diets - restrictive ones like low sodium, low fat, low carb, etc.; weight loss ones; heart health ones; weight gain and so on. You may hear about the Mediterranean diet or the DASH diet or the south Beach diet. Then there's the regular diet.

All others start from the regular diet. It's the dietitian's or nutritionist's go to. It's the one we learned back in grade school and high school health class. The trick to eating well is to remember the regular diet and modify as needed. I'll say that again - As Needed. Regular diet is the base you return to, health permitting.

Look up the food guide pyramid (if you can find the old one with the stepped pyramid, it's easier to understand than the new one that fans out from the top, but the guidelines are the same) You'll notice that there's a range of servings, for instance, 6-11 servings of the "grains, cereal, rice, pasta group." Small grownup leading a sedentary life? - low end of the range. Athletic growing teen working a laborer's job? - high end. Note it's servings, not portions. A portion is however much you put on your plate. It may be half a serving of something you really don't like, or two, three, or even four servings. Most people's portions are larger than a serving. Plus some companies will label servings differently. One brand of freeze dried green beans may say their #10 can is filled with 32 servings while another says it has 18. You'd think the 32 is more, but you'd be wrong. Look at the listed serving size. Truth be known, the one touting 1/4 cup servings should have 40 and the one with half cup servings should list 20. A properly filled #10 can should hold 10 cups. Don't go by what the manufacturer says is a serving, go back to that food guide pyramid; a serving of a vegetable is 1/2 cup unless it's raw greens like in a salad, then it's a whole cup. Dehydrated foods are harder to figure out because they shrink quite a bit — some more than others. You need to know how much dried came from 1/2 cup before dying.
 

I could go on and on, but let's just boil it down to something you can use:
 

Think of a plate divided into quarters. Put a protein rich food, like meat or fish or egg or tofu, in one quarter. Put a starch aka carb food like potato or bread or rice in another. In the third quarter, add a green vegetable; in the fourth, another vegetable that's not green. That's dinner. Lunch should look the same except you can add an extra piece of bread if you like and a piece of fruit for dessert. For breakfast, you can swap the veggies for fruit and you get two starches — cereal or muffin or pancake. Don't forget the milk, it can be cheese on your broccoli, a glass of milk with breakfast or a cup of yogurt with your fruit.

Just get the right number of right size servings for your lifestyle. Need extra Calories on a high stress day filled with extra labor coping with a situation? That's when you add in some healthy, balanced snacks.

That's your basic regular diet. All the things on a plate could be mixed together in a bowl and called beef stew, or rolled into a tortilla, or baked in a casserole. Dried beans are interesting in that they can count as a veggie or a starch or a protein on your plate; just not more than one at a time! Eating like this, you're getting a proper balance of protein, fiber, vitamins, carbs and fat.

Oh fat! Yes, that's something you need, just like you need sugar. But, just like sugar, you don't need a lot. And, unlike sugar, it can be hard to get on a diet of emergency rations. Fat simply is harder to store long term. Don't go overboard on it, but understand you may have to keep an eye on your fat intake if you're subsisting on emergency rations to make sure you get enough.

Salt is another nutrient you need a small amount of. But, unlike fat, you might be getting too much on emergency rations. Canned goods and prepackaged instant meals can run high on salt. Try to balance them with meals you prepare yourself. Instant meals can run high on sugar too. Yes, in a high stress, high labor situation, you probably need more Calories, but they should be nutritious Calories, not empty ones. Too many prepackaged emergency rations are high on sugars and starches, low on protein and quite lacking on vegetables. They can be ok in moderation and are certainly better than nothing, but you shouldn't live long term on them. Stock ingredients and make your own meals that are balanced. You can even prepackage them. Research when to use O2 absorbers.

Speaking of long term, let's talk menu stress and menu fatigue.

Menu stress is when the food doesn't fit the situation. Let's look at a scenario. You and your family are stuck at home for the next few days for whatever reason - flood, ice storm, riots, whatever. Payday didn't come in time for you to make it to the grocery before you were cut off. Your long term supplies are in sealed buckets and you don't want to crack them open for such a short term situation, so you pull out your handy, prepackaged 72 hr meal Kits. The food is not what you're used to, the portions are small, over the course of three days you're eating the same six meals over and over and it's all rounded off each day with plain instant rice just to get that calorie count up. Oh well, it's just for a few days and you just have to make do, right? Well, you can, but do you really need the extra stress? The kind of stress that makes toddlers, teens and elderly say, "I'm not hungry?" No, you need comfort food. Your own comfort food that also provides not only the proper nutrients for a stressful time, but also interest.

Now think about if you were stuck with that same stressful 72 hr kit over and over for weeks. Nope. So you go to all the trouble of constructing a week's menu that your family likes, 21 meals that work together for nutrition. So let's just multiply that by 52 and you're all set for a year, no? No. This leads to menu fatigue. Studies have shown that you'll soon get tired of it week in and week out to the point that people simply stop eating. First, those toddlers, teens and elderly, then everyone. You need a three week menu. Any shorter, menu fatigue sets in, longer and people don't like not knowing what's next. You can keep the same three week menu all year - multiply it by 17 and add in two weeks of holiday foods. Even better, make minor seasonal changes -Third Thursdays may always be Mexican food, but for three months in summer it's tacos, in winter it's chili and in spring and fall it's tamale pie.

So when planing for an emergency, plan to eat healthy and take some of the stress off yourself.