Calories and Recommended Food Storage Amounts

"Store what you eat, and eat what you store" sounds good and reasonable.  Unfortunately, it's not so practical unless you never eat out and plan on the grocery store always being there to meet your needs for your baked goods, dairy products, and convenience foods.  But it sounds good on paper.
As preppers, we take self-reliance seriously, sometimes to the extent that we aren't willing even to entertain thoughts from experts in their fields.  Well, sure, you might go and buy this device because so-and-so recommended it, or learn that skill because it will always be in demand, and buy a zillion widgets so you have them for barter.  However, when it comes to food, for so many people good sense and reason fly right out the window.

For over a hundred years, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have counseled their members to prepare for difficult times, whether personal or community- or nationwide, by having on hand at least a year's supply of food.  For those who wonder, only about 3-5% of Church members actually do this, and in my observation, I think that number is very generous.  I've posted before about the recommended amounts, but for quick review, here they are:

• Grains, 400 lbs; 
• Sugars, 60 lbs; 
• Legumes, 60 lbs; 
• Oils, 20 lbs; 
• Milk, 15 lbs; 
• Salt, 10 lbs.  

This is for one person for one year and provides a minimal number of calories.  Using this as a guideline for your storage, you will be hungry most of the time.  There is no allowance for waste if you burned dinner, or for being able to throw the flour away if you got bugs in it.  Or for throwing the milk away because you didn't store it properly and now it tastes bad.

So here you have very accomplished, well-educated individuals, many of whom are very well-versed in the amounts and kinds of food needed to sustain life.  Yes, the Church does have food for sale, so perhaps they have an agenda in wanting people to buy more.  Except that the food they sell in the Home Storage Centers costs far less than what is sold in grocery stores, so there's no profit motive for them.  They just want people to be prepared.  The storage amounts are already pretty low, and yet so many decide they know better than the experts and decide to store less.

And to be fair, while they are the experts on food storage in general, you are the expert on you.  And that needs to be considered as well.   Allergies and sensitivities to certain foods must be considered, as well as likes and dislikes.  If you've lived your life on convenience foods and garbage, the transition to whole wheat and beans may be a little rough.  Which is why the Church counsels their members to also have a three-month supply of foods they normally eat.

So even among those who claim to be prepared, there are very many who refuse to store what's needed. "We'll never eat that much (fill in the blank)." And they're right, as long as society holds together and we have grocery stores and restaurants, they never will.  If they are asked how often they buy salt or sugar or oil, they won't be able to answer because it's so infrequent.  Most families can make a salt container last a year or more.  They don't make cookies from scratch or deep fry any foods, so the sugar and oil last a long time, too.

But after TEOTWAWKI hits, it's going to be an entirely different affair.  Here's why:

• Baking and cooking from scratch.  A lot of salt is used in making bread and in cooking beans.  Bread also uses quite a bit of oil, and oil is used to saute otherwise unpalatable foods into something tasty.  Sugar will also be used a whole lot more.  Bear in mind that Americans today consume well over 100 pounds of sugar per year.  Subtracting 40 pounds per year is subtracting a lot of calories.  TEOTWAWKI is not the time to plan on losing weight.  That's going to happen regardless of what we do.
• And just what, exactly, is the big deal about these surplus calories?  Well, for one, calories are needed to maintain body temperature.  As was noted in the post on the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, the volunteers needed extra blankets, even in the summer, to keep warm.  The needs will be substantially greater in winter.
• During TEOTWAWKI, if we're just going to be lounging about all day, perhaps not so many calories will be needed.  Lounging around has a nice ring to it, but it's probably best to plan on becoming much more active.  Can you imagine asking a teenage boy to spend the day in heavy labor and then tell him he's going to have only 2,000 calories for the day?  That's not going to go over very well.
• Without adequate calories, our ability to work well with others is drastically diminished.  The Minnesota Starvation Experiment volunteers thought only about food all the time.  Even the most extroverted of them became introverts who lacked the patience to work well with others.  Some had to drop out of college because they could no longer think clearly.  And these were people who could have dropped out of the experiment at any time and ended the suffering.  I've got a wedding coming up in two months and feel the need to shed 10-15 pounds.  It should be quite doable.  And yet I am irritable with my family at a time when they and I know I can end it at any time and grab something to eat.  How significantly worse will it be when people do not know where their next meal is coming from?  That will be bad.

Now back to not listening to the experts in food storage.  Those amounts are calculated to provide for basic nutritional and health needs.  So what happens when the more enlightened individuals decide they just won't eat that much sugar?  Have they calculated how many calories are in sugar?  How many buckets of wheat and beans it will take to compensate for the calories lost in storing less sugar?  With sugar, you're really only compensating for the loss in calories.  But what about oil?  Yes, there are a lot of calories in oil, but oil also provides the fat necessary for our bodies to function properly.  Cut back too much on the fat and you're in for some serious mental and physical problems.

And as for salt, well, people had better stick with the recommended minimums for that as well.  Iodized salt prevents mental retardation in children and prevents diminished mental capacity in adults as well.  Our bodies need iodine.  Our bodies also need sodium. Without adequate levels, we are going to have problems.

Links to related posts:
Minnesota Starvation Experiment
Where Do I Begin? What Exactly Do I Store? 

Basic Food Storage--Oils

Oil.  It's another component of basic food storage that people don’t get particularly excited about.  It’s not like you actually eat oil.  Most people don’t store enough, because they say they never use that much.  It’s true.  It’s like salt.  When most of your food comes out of boxes or bags or cans, you don’t use much oil.  The manufacturers already put the salt and oil in for you.

But it’s an entirely different story when you start making everything from scratch, or when you’re having to supplement your food stores with plants scavenged from the yard or woods.  An awful lot of wild plants are rather unpalatable raw, but become pretty tasty when sautéed in a little oil.  (At my husband's Christmas work party last year, Brussels sprouts sauteed in bacon grease and with bacon bits was served as one of the appetizers.  I have never been one to get excited about Brussels sprouts.  After going back for thirds, I was too embarrassed to go back for fourths.  So I asked my husband to get me some more.  They were so, so good.  I might even try to grow them in the garden this year.)

Because many people don't give much thought to the importance of oil in their food supplies, I'm including an excerpt of an article written by F. Enzio Busche over forty years ago about his experiences regarding food during and immediately after World War II.  I posted more of the article last week, but this paragraph about oil bears repeating:

"As for what we needed, the food item we relied on most was vegetable oil. With a bottle of vegetable oil, one could acquire nearly every other desirable item. It had such value that with a quart of vegetable oil one could probably trade for three bushels of apples or three hundred pounds of potatoes. Vegetable oil has a high calorie content, is easy to transport, and in cooking can give a tasty flavor to all kinds of food items that one would not normally consider as food—wild flowers, wild plants, and roots from shrubs and trees. For me and my family, a high-quality vegetable oil has the highest priority in our food storage, both in times of daily use and for emergency usage. When vegetable oil is well-packed and stored appropriately, it has a long storage life without the necessity of refrigeration. We found ours to be in very good condition after twenty years of storage, but circumstances may vary in different countries and with different supplies."1

The minimum amount recommended for one person for one year is 20 pounds, or 20 pints, or 10 quarts.  In light of Enzio Busche's comments, you might wish to store a whole lot more.  Some oils have a longer shelf life than others.  And some oils, especially vegetable oil, have preservatives added.  Oils stored in glass or metal (as shortening was before cardboard containers came into use) and vacuum sealed have a much longer shelf life than oils stored in plastic.

So let’s talk about some specific oils and why you might wish to store them.

Vegetable (soybean) oil.  Around 100% of the soybeans grown in this country are “Roundup Ready,” GMO.  The only soybean oil I have here is ten years old, and is waiting to be used in oil lamps.

Peanut oil.  It’s what I use for most of my baking and cooking and making mayonnaise.  It is not GM, so far anyway.  I buy it in large containers at Sam's or restaurant supply stores and then pour it into half-gallon and gallon canning jars and vacuum seal.  

Olive oil. It has a long shelf-life, but it's a bit more expensive so I don't have as much.  A lot of it is sold in glass bottles, so that's a plus. 

Butter.  Buy it when it's on sale and store it in the freezer if you have the space.  Butter eventually becomes freezer-burned if not stored in freezer bags.  If the power goes out, it will still be fine in the short-term.  If the power is going to stay off for months, try to keep it as cool as possible.  While freezer-burned butter won't work for buttering your toast, it's still fine for baking chocolate chip cookies.

Shortening.  It's not my favorite oil to store.  We don't use a lot of it here, but it is essential for making buttercream frosting for cookies and cakes.  If you are storing much of it, you might wish to consider melting it and pouring it into glass jars and vacuum sealing for longer-term storage.

Lard.  All lard is rendered from the fat of pigs.  The commercially-prepared stuff has preservatives added.  It's used for frying and makes the best biscuits and pie crust.  Do not try substituting lard for shortening in frosting recipes, unless you hate yourself or the people you are feeding.

Coconut oil.  I don't know if I'm saving the best for last, but coconut oil is definitely one of my favorites, and that is because it is an excellent substitute for butter.  And I mean excellent.  It works great in cornbread and chocolate chip cookies.  Where it doesn't work perfectly is in buttering your toast or popcorn, because it doesn't have that butter flavor.  However, if you're putting any jam or honey on your toast, you probably won't notice the absence of the butter flavor. 

Dehydrated butter powder.  This is pretty pricey stuff, and it doesn't reconstitute quite well in my opinion.  It definitely doesn't look like butter when you mix it up.  And for us, it is far too expensive to store for use in baking, especially when coconut oil will do the job so admirably.  But if you really need butter for your bread or popcorn, this is what you do:  Instead of using water as directed on the dehydrated butter can, use coconut oil (melting point is 76 degrees, so it shouldn't be difficult to work with).  Coconut oil will provide the perfect butter consistency and texture, and the butter powder will provide the butter flavor. 

Life is good again.

1.https://www.lds.org/ensign/1982/06/how-beautiful-to-live-in-these-times-and-be-prepared?lang=eng

23 may 2021