Food - Basic
This section assumes you have looked at the preceding Food - Minimal section.
For a Basic level of foodstock, we recommend that you buy quantities sufficient for 1 month. In addition, you will probably want to purchase a heating source and fuel for that amount of time, and storage containers to keep everything safe and portable.
If you wonder why you should go to the trouble of planning for one month, or why we are calling this a Basic amount of food to have on hand, please read about the aftermath of Katrina. And that was when the rest of the country was essentially unaffected.
This amount of food may be sufficient to tide you over until the government is able to mount a response to your area. Or at least gives you some time to find other food sources. To be more secure, you might want to consider the quantities suggested in the next section, Food - Comfortable.
As mentioned in Minimal, there are two types of food you can get. You can stock regular food from the grocery store. Or you can go the survival food route and buy premade Emergency Food Packs from a well-established company such as Nitro-Pak.
Differences from Minimal
Planning for a month worth's of food is a little different than planning for three days. You will want to be more certain of meeting the nutritional requirements of your body under stressful conditions. As discussed in the previous section, you can 'make do' for three days. Incomplete food, lacking in sufficient nutrition, is not really an option if you want to maintain your strength and health at good levels for a month.
Do you know how much PROTEIN you Need? Find out with our Free Protein Calculator at Bodybuilding.com!
Definitely set 3,000 calories per day per person... or more... as your goal. A large male doing heavy work can use as many as 8,000 calories in five hours. Also, as time extends, there is more chance for something to go amiss with your food stores. Do some over-buying to make up for any losses that may occur. There could be damage to your foodstocks from building collapse, rain, wind, fire, theft, wild animals, tsunami, insects, flooding or any number of other reasons. After all, the unexpected is part of any emergency or disaster situation.
It would not be unreasonable to over-buy by 50% more than what you think you need for the time period.
Again, Emergency Food Packs can take care of most of your needs without your having to plan from scratch. For the Basic level, most people would do well to have at least one or two weeks of pre-packaged emergency food, if not for the entire month. If the packs have less than 3,000 calories a day, you might consider buying a little more to bring your daily total up to that level.
If you go the grocery store route, try to get as wide a variety of foods as is practical. Not only will it be more pleasant, but you will have a wider spectrum of foods to meet your nutrition requirements and sustain health.
I think it would be optimal to have a mix of the two types of food. But if you are not into doing the calculations and planning to get the right kinds of grocery foods, you should go with Emergency Food Packs for the entire time. It is far better to have a little bit of food boredom but have good nutrition, rather than run the risk of having food that will not sustain you during a crisis.
On the other hand, Nitro-Pack's Ultimate Family Preparedness Pak
Foods to Include in Your Basic Food Supply
You should add these foods to your emergency stores whether you choose the Emergency Food Pack or grocery food. It would give you a cushion if you did not include their calories in your total for the month.
Uncooked Honey, at least one pound. Two or three pounds would be better. It's fantastic food, full of good carbs, and much, much more. Look in the Medic! section to find out why it is so important to have some on hand. Be sure you get 'uncooked' or 'raw' honey. Make certain it is not cut with water or corn sweetener, as some cheap, supposedly organic honey is currently marketed with one or both of those additives without putting them on the label. The 'cut' ones seem 'thin' when you tilt the container. Best is honey that has been harvested in your area, or as close to your area as possible, from a reputable source. Again, see Medic!
As with every food suggestion on this site, you must be sure you are not allergic to a food before taking even the slightest taste of it. Some sources recommend not giving honey to young children. I have no idea whether that is good advice or not. If you are concerned, I suggest you research it and ask your doctor before doing so.
Rice. Get at least one 20 pound bag for backup. Even if you don't particularly like rice, you will love it if you are hungry enough. A 20 pound bag of rice has 35,800 calories in it, which could give one person about 1,200 calories a day for one month. And it has a potful of B vitamins, some good protein and a bunch of other neat stuff. Rice has four times the food energy as the same amount of pasta. One cup of uncooked rice contains 700 calories.
It is not necessary to cook rice, although it certainly tastes better to me that way. You can simply soak the rice for a few hours until it's soft enough to chew, and then eat it. Make sure you drink the water it sat in, or use the water for a soup base. A lot of nutrition goes into the water. Of course the water must be safe, clean water, because you are not boiling it. If you do cook it, you can use two cups of rice, 5 cups of water, and simmer in a covered pot without stirring for about 10-20 minutes. For brown rice, its somewhere around 40-50 minutes. That's it.
You might want to consider getting a large container of soy sauce, if you use salt on your food. I use an organic soy sauce, because it is made with sea salt. Much more about salt in Electrolytes, below.
Eggs. As mentioned in Minimal, there is controversy whether you can keep eggs without refrigeration. There is no controversy regarding the fact that you absolutely, positively, must cook eggs before eating them.
Eating eggs is extremely helpful in dealing with an emergency situation... possibly more helpful than you can imagine right now. Of course we all know that eggs are called 'the perfect protein' for good reason. They have a very balanced profile of essential amino acids. Egg yolks (not the whites) are also an excellent source of dietary cholesterol. And now the controversy begins.
Question is, should we consider dietary cholesterol a good thing or a bad thing? The following will be heresy to the AMA, because they desire to exterminate all cholesterol in our daily diet. But not even the AMA disputes the biological fact that cholesterol is required for the production of many essential hormones. That includes testosterone, the various estrogens, and progesterone. Here is the Wikipedia entry for cholesterol, if you want to see for yourself.
Fact is, your body makes a certain amount of cholesterol, or you couldn't even live. Your body also uses dietary cholesterol from food to reach optimal levels of hormone production. The AMA has waffled on this issue for decades, sometimes admitting that dietary cholesterol does not increase blood cholesterol levels. Recently, Fox News picked up an article from the European Journal of Nutrition on August 28, 2008, saying researchers once again found no link between dietary and blood cholesterol. And that eating two eggs a day actually reduced the blood cholesterol levels of their overweight volunteers.
As we grow older, starting in our twenties, our bodies produce less and less cholesterol. So unless we supplement, we also have less hormones. Some people, including the American Heart Association, say that is a good thing. Personally, I wonder if that just makes start to age physically all the faster. Cholesterol is required to maintain cell membranes. What does that suggest to you?
Back to the emergency situation we are preparing for. You will need a certain amount of calm aggressiveness to be able to act decisively in an emergency. You will need to call upon your testosterone stores. And that goes for everyone, whether you are male or female, because we all have testosterone. Males just tend toward having their balance of hormones tipped that direction.
Testosterone is a biologic substance that helps us make a quick decision in an emergency, sometimes essential for survival. It gives us confidence, even when the situation is grim. It spurs us to go ahead and try, even when it looks like we've lost already. And sometimes it gets us through to the other side, where we find we've actually won our survival for another day.
Did you think that it was the hormone adrenaline that helps us do all those things? You are right. Yes, it does, in association with and increasing the efficiency of testosterone. Adrenaline can make fatigue disappear for a time so we can clearly do what must be done. It can give us a tremendous temporary increase in strength for a concerted effort. It sharpens our mental abilities. And it is made from... cholesterol. In return, adrenaline can cause a rise in cholesterol levels, which in turn allows us to make more testosterone and adrenaline for the challenge at hand. And so the cycle spirals upward, until the emergency is over or until we are totally tapped out.
The downside is that this spiral of ability uses a great deal of energy and impacts our central nervous system. After the event we can feel drained and emotionally spent. The good news is that you can pre-load your immune system and also help restore it with a simple amino acid found in all protein. That is glutamine, and we talk about it at length below in Supplements.
The bad news about eggs is that the highest benefits are produced when we eat fresh eggs, cooked just enough to make them safe to eat (160 degrees F). Than means no runny yolks, but not cooked super hard, either. Scrambled eggs are not recommended, but you can still get a fair portion of nutritional magic from them, or even hard boiled eggs. If you have no way to keep eggs fresh, my guess is you can still get some benefits from prepackaged products containing eggs. In all cases, the amount of protein stays about the same, so it makes good sense to eat eggs for that reason alone.
Preserved Fruit. See Micronutrients, below.
Coffee, Tea, Coca, Soup. Emergency Pack meals and MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) often contain a beverage, but not always. You will probably want to supplement whatever is in the packs with more of these items for in-between meals. Certainly you will want to stock up on these if you are doing groceries. They are pleasant and actually necessary for good morale. Coca and soups can also be very nutritious.
For your coffee and tea, I suggest instant coffee if you can stand it. Any tea bag is fine. My thought is to get the most enjoyable tea you can afford, because that little pick-me-up can be worth more than you'll ever know until you have a really bad day in an emergency situation.
It is probably a good idea to limit your coffee and/or tea total input, because the caffeine in it can stress your immune system. On the other hand, if you need to be alert, it is a reasonable choice.
If you use milk, please get the most nutritious milk substitute you can find, and if it has any trans fats, pass on it and pretend your coffee has milk in it. That little bit of trans fat, that little tiny bit, is enough to drag down your immune system. I know that it doesn't seem like it should, but it just does.
Sugar can be okay, if sugar is normally okay for you. It can provide a little nutrition when you are running on empty. But remember that it tends to have a kickback effect, and can make you less energetic ten or fifteen minutes later. If you can talk yourself into using unrefined sugar instead of white, all the better. But a bit of white sugar, if it makes you really, really happy, may be worth it. It may actually helpful, if you have your lightly sugared coffee or tea with a good sized meal after being very hungry. It gets the fires of digestion started, so that you do not lug down and get sluggish. Of course some people say you should never eat white sugar.
Cocoa. There are some cocoas at natural food stores that retain a very energizing natural substance. This substance works on the nervous system differently from caffeine (although there is also some caffeine in most cocoa) for a much mellower 'up' feeling. Cocoa also contains a bunch of antioxidants and other helpful micronutrients, just like dark chocolate. Cocoa beans are available in some places. They are labeled as 'whole beans' or 'nibs', but either way they are actually broken pieces of the whole bean.
They can be ground and used for a cocoa drink, or you can just pop them in your mouth and chew them very carefully because they are sort of hard, and a piece of shell can always appear unexpectedly. Do not bite down hard at any time, because an emergency situation is the worst possible time to chip a tooth. But even with those caveats, I think chewing cocoa beans is just fantastic when you need a lift. I do about one heaping teaspoon. A little more, if my wife and I are going to get together before sleep. It's quite, um, effective that way, too. Hey, emergencies don't have to be all gloom and doom.
Because they can be difficult to find, and I really like them, here's a link to order them.
Canned soups and bouillon cubes are terrible, almost negative nutrition... with the exception of some organic ones you can find at some health food stores. You can mix them with other really unappetizing but technically edible items to make them more palatable... but I still hate bouillon cubes. Personal preference. The Emergency Food Pack soups are of varying quality, so check out the labels. The best soups, and the only ones really worth the name, are the ones you make from water used to prepare other food, like rice or any fresh vegetables you might be fortunate enough to find. There are also organic soupstocks that come prepackaged and are excellent nutrition. They are a base you can throw anything you have into for a unique, sustaining, and possibly even tasty meal. Which reminds me to remind you to have a few basic spices on hand if you like that sort of thing. It will keep things more 'normal'.
Soap. Although this is not food, I thought I should mention here that you will need soap for dishwashing in your emergency supplies.
Micronutrients
Food - Minimal gives you the basics of what you need to know about the macronutrients... protein, fats and carbohydrates. All that holds true when you are planning Basic foodstores. However, when you are planning nutrition for a month or more, you need to be concerned about micronutrients as well. Those are vitamins, minerals, and all the thousands of other parts of food we usually do not think about. There are over 5,000 different nutrients in the category of bioflavonoids alone, and there are almost uncounted numbers of categories, many of which we suspect exist, but have not yet defined.
If you eat a balanced diet, you can probably get most of the micronutrients you need in the food you eat, although frankly that has become more and more difficult as our soil is depleted by the nutrient-leaching chemicals of the so-called 'green revolution'. The AMA used to say vitamin pills were a waste of money if you ate a balanced diet. Their official opinion now is that a vitamin supplement is useful even for people who eat a balanced diet.
In an emergency situation, a balanced diet of fresh food is hard to come by. You will probably have very little of that on hand... and it will spoil rapidly. (Tip: eat the food in your refrigerator first, freezer second, and then go for your emergency supplies.)
So if you are storing food from the grocery, be sure to include canned fruits and fruit juices in your Basic foodstores. Also, it would not hurt to supplement the Emergency Packs with additional foodstores of canned, dried, or otherwise preserved fruit. They retain considerable amounts of micronutrients. On the other hand, most canned vegetables have little actual nutrition aside from calories, and they have very few of those. I do not think they are worth the space they take.
If you buy Emergency Food Packs, get a variety of meals to maximize the spectrum of nutrients. Nitro-Pak
Vitamins and Minerals
This is a very touchy subject for people who are really into nutrition. But most agree that a 1-a-day multivitamin is useful. So buy enough multivitamins for one per person per day.
Now I have to bring up a problem. Most multivitamins also contain multi-minerals, which is a tragic mistake, in my opinion. Calcium tends to act as a gatekeeper for most other minerals, especially zinc, copper, selenium, chromium, iron and magnesium... six important minerals we need in significant quantities. If you take calcium at the same time as any of the six, only calcium will be absorbed by the body, and little or none of the six others.
So if you possibly can, get a multivitamin without minerals. Then... oh, I hate to say this because nobody wants to hear it.. get a selection of minerals separately and space the taking of them. Do you need to do this, if we're planning for one month? No. But it is a very good thing to do all the time, and I have to mention it. The multivitamin should be taken with a meal, when it has its best chance to mimic food and sneak a ride into your system. Hopefully, your body's mineral gatekeepers will open to the minerals you need most. No one is sure that is what happens, but we can hope for the best.
Vitamins have no such problem. You can take any mix of vitamins at the same time, so far as we know. Some are even synergistic, like the B vitamin complex. Taken together, you get more benefit from each of them.
Unfortunately, minerals can be very antagonistic. But if I may, I will share with you a very difficult-to-find schedule of symbiotic combinations that some very astute bodybuilding consultants have put together. For amounts, ask your doctor, who may possibly say to follow the directions on the bottles.
Copper and Chromium - take in the morning on an empty stomach, 15 or more minutes before breakfast, or a couple of hours after breakfast.
Selenium and Iron - take just before lunch, or a couple hours after. WARNING: iron can build up in a person's body and cause severe problems, especially in men and non-menstruating women. The only people who should consider taking an iron supplement are those who have been officially diagnosed as iron deficient by a licensed physician.
Zinc and Magnesium - taking them together right before bedtime on an empty stomach is a really fine thing to do, because in many people, that combination actually helps them have a sounder, more restoring sleep, and helps their body rebuild what it has torn down during the day.
Additional WARNINGS: do not take more than the USDA official recommended amount of any mineral. Some can build up in your system and be toxic to you. I mentioned iron. Too much zinc, over 50 mg per day, can also lead to severe problems. In addition, too much zinc decreases the copper in your body, which is a very bad idea. The goal is balance. If you take zinc, take copper also, in the proper amounts and at the right time, which definitely is not together.
Confused? Just take the multivitamin. That should be fine for 30 days.
A good place to find vitamins, minerals, and other supplements too, is at
Electrolytes
The basic electrolytes are sodium and potassium, but there are others. Magnesium is possibly the most important of the others. As mentioned in Food - Minimal, some intake of salt (for the sodium) is essential for life. The AMA has again recently warned people that salt is dangerous. You must understand that what I'm about to say is only a personal opinion and nothing more, as is all of the text throughout this site. But I would very much like to share it with you. However, it is a little technical and perhaps boring, so you can skip the next two paragraphs if you want to.
I'm a bodybuilder. When I'm at the top of my form, I legpress 1,400 lbs., and lift & shrug 765 lbs. I have a sportsdrink bottle that is filled with Diet Pepsi® and ice and sea salt and potassium. The cola has lots of phosphorus in it... which is necessary for every single muscle contraction, and is a critical element of the ATP cycle. It also is highly carbonated, which zaps water out of the stomach and into the circulatory system and cells so it does not sit there and make you want to throw up as you do heavy exercise.
I put about 300 mg of potassium and about half a gram of sea salt into the mix. I can work out for 3 hours or more with very heavy weights and feel refreshed at the end, after I take my shower. I'm 60 years old. I thank God for my genetics, but also for His pointing me toward discovering this electrolyte mix. It is really helpful. As is taking 1 gram of vitamin C one hour before working out. That's nearly miraculous in preventing feeling sore the next day.
My considered opinion, based on work done by the Venice Beach Group in California, is that most people can input pretty much all the sodium (good salt, like sea salt, not fake salt) and potassium and water they could comfortably and reasonably want... as long as they do ALL THREE at about the same time. Said a different way, if you eat a good amount of salt, which I personally think is a good thing for most people (ask your doctor for the true information about the approximately 1 percent of the population who actually do have to stay away from salt, and if you are one of them) you also have to eat a good amount of potassium AND drink lots of water. Maybe even more than the ten 8 oz glasses of water that most nutritionists say is a good amount.
Then your body, if it is functioning correctly, will flush out any excess sodium and/or potassium, and/or excess water. That may take a couple of days to balance correctly, because the body will be in flux during that time, so you may feel bloated for a while. After that, you will have what your body has determined to be the perfect level of those electrolytes and electrolyte solution (water). How's that for incredible?
The Venice Beach Group has said they believe their electrolyte recommendations are especially beneficial for people with heart problems, but I have no solid medical evidence that it is so. I just have my gut instinct that says if you give your body what it needs to function best, it will... well, function the best it can. You might want to do research on this yourself, if it is interesting to you.
Parting shot: potatoes contain lots of potassium. Most people like putting a lot of salt on potatoes. Think there might be something good going on there?
Bottom Line. My strong suggestion is to have at least a pound of sea salt or other real salt, and a large bottle of potassium capsules on hand at all times. You can take the potassium caps with water, or take the caps apart and empty them into a liquid, and add salt, if you so desire. Kosher salt is okay too. My favorite real salt is RealSalt®, which comes from a mine in Utah. It happens to be kosher, super clean, and contains a significant amount of important trace elements, including iodine.
A good source for potassium is
Be sure to read the section Water, because you absolutely positively must have enough water, or electrolytes will do nothing but make your situation worse, like marooned sailors drinking saltwater and perishing from it.
Supplements
In my opinion and that of many bodybuilding nutritional counselors, the most helpful supplement for the support of the immune system and restoring the body after stress, is the natural amino acid which happens to be the most prevalent in all meat, in your own body, and in vegetables such as corn... from which it is made commercially. It is even Vegan, which might mean a lot to any of you who are vegetarian. What is this wonder supplement? Glutamine... also called L-Glutamine.
Glutamine is a semi-essential amino acid, because our bodies can make it. However, it has been determined that we almost never have enough! So the nutritional powers-that-be are considering reclassifying it as an essential amino acid, which has always been defined as an amino acid that our body cannot make at all and therefore has to get from food or supplementation.
A well administered, double-blind study (sorry, I don't have the reference because it was done more than 15 years ago) showed that giving Triathletes just ONE 5 gram serving of glutamine after a race meant they caught 50 percent fewer colds than the control groups. This is actually a reasonable and predictable result, because your body uses glutamine to create the cells of your immune system.
Perhaps the dramatic effect glutamine produced was because Triathletes tend to be chronically deficient in glutamine. But maybe so are you. The less meat you eat, the more likely you are glutamine deficient. And I'm talking real, old fashioned meat from grass-fed, free-range, contented animals, not the corn-fed frankenmeat we get in our supermarkets these days.
Bottom line: it might be a great idea to include some glutamine in your Basic foodstuffs, and perhaps even start taking some now on a regular basis. If it improved your immune system and gave you more stamina, think of what an advantage that would be in all sorts of ways, both every-day and in case of an emergency.
You must take glutamine on an empty stomach, or it will not get to where it needs to go. Mix the nearly odorless and tasteless white powder made from corn in a little water. Labeling tends to say take 5 grams once or twice a day. I know bodybuilders who take up to 20 grams after they work out, another 20 grams another time during the day, and another 20 grams at bedtime, which is the best time for everyone to take it.
Perhaps that much is overkill for most non-athletes living normal lives. But in a stress situation like an emergency, I would probably want to take 5 to 10 grams of glutamine, two or three times a day, if I had enough on hand. If not, I would be happy having even 5 grams once a day. That would help so much. So I suggest including that amount, 5 grams per person per day, in your Basic foodstuffs.
Best source I've found for glutamine is bodybuilding.com. They have the lowest prices I've found anywhere, and inexpensive Priority Mail shipping. My choice is Higher Power brand, which they bought some time ago. They also sell caps of glutamine, but I think taking a lot of caps is not nearly as good as the powdered form.
PS.. after I wrote the above, when we had no connection with BodyBuilding.com, I searched for a link to give you, and then emailed the CEO of the company, Ryan DeLuca, because I like their stuff so much. They made us an affiliate. So here's an official link with a discounted price. Hard to beat that. Higher Power L-Glutamine 1000 grams - Only $29.99 at Bodybuilding.com!
Cooking Food
Unless you have nothing but prepackaged meals, you are really going to want to cook food sometime in that month we are planning for. At the very least, you would probably enjoy and perhaps even need some warm liquids like coffee or tea or coca or soup.
To me, the most pleasant way of cooking when your house stove is unusable is a Coleman® type of gas stove with two burners. There are more knock-offs of this stove than you can shake a stick at. Some of them are quite nice. But be SURE that if you get any kind of gas stove that there are NO gas leaks from any part of the stove. If you want to do a basic check of the stove for leaks, use compressed air and run water over all the parts the gas goes through. Look for bubbles. Any bubbles, take it back. Dry off all the parts you ran water over so they do not rust or oxidize. Check your stove before each use, especially when it has been a while since it has been used.
I need to mention not to use any stove, or anything else with an open flame, without adequate ventilation. So many people die unnecessarily every year from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by gas stoves. Please read carefully the WARNINGS Coleman® gives its users in this pdf and be sure to follow them.
To make the stove usable, you must have enough of the stove gas canisters (usually propane; check your own stove manual to make sure) or larger containers with the right fittings for your stove. The standard size propane canisters, which are usually hold 16.4 ounces of propane, can give perhaps one hour of use when you have one burner turned up high. This is an extremely loose estimate, and can be way off, depending on the stove and conditions and whether the canister is actually full at the beginning, so do not count on it. Experiment and see for yourself.
For one month of cooking, you will need a lot of propane if you want hot food for every meal, and also be able to heat water for medical uses, washing dishes, etc. On the other hand, you can stock a smaller amount of propane and have occasional hot meals. It's up to you, so think about how you want to spend that month. Small canisters are relatively expensive compared to larger containers, but they are easily transportable, and can be used for barter. You can also get a few now, a few later.
Sterno® and other chaffing dish heat sources are not recommended for cooking food. They usually cannot provide enough heat to bring the food up to the proper temperature to kill bacteria.
Barbecues, hibachis and similar charcoal burning heat sources are highly recommended, if you have enough fuel and know how to use them to cook food properly, which again means bringing up internal temperatures to at least 160 degrees F. There's nothing like the smell of grilled, well, anything, wafting on the outdoors air. Except perhaps possum. Well, and a couple of other things too.
Emergency Food Pack does not need cooking. Sometimes there is a heating source packed with it for a warm meal. In this case, you do not have to worry about getting the food up to 160 degrees F, because it is precooked. Just make sure that the foil pack or any other food container is not compromised in any way with tears or holes or any other opening. That goes for all grocery food as well.
Dishes
For anything more than 3 days, use paper plates and plastic utensils, whatever your ecological stance might be on the subject. Washing dishes uses up precious water, heat, and also soap. Save those for your cookware, if you plan on using food that needs cooking. Be sure you have enough dishwashing liquid on hand to last at least a month.
Paper and plastic eatware is relatively inexpensive and stores easily for a really long time. You don't have to rotate it unless it becomes damaged in some way. But it is good to check occasionally to see that it is in good shape.
Buy at least enough plates and utensils for 3 meals per day per person, plus an an extra 20 to 50 percent more to use for food preparation. It would be wise to have double that. They come in handy in so many different ways.
Paper Towels
Figure one roll a day, minimum, for a household of three people. You will be using them for all sorts of reasons. Buy as much as you can reasonably afford.
Toilet Paper
Obviously an essential item. Tragically easy to overlook in planning emergency stores. Stock enough for everyone for two uses per day. And then get much more, because diarrhea from a variety of causes is unfortunately very common during emergency situations, especially when they extend for a month or more. I would give a figure on the amount of rolls needed per person, but people vary so widely on how much they use. You probably have a pretty good idea of the amount you buy for your household, so use that knowledge to decide how much to store. Like other paper products, there is long storage life as long as it is not compromised.
Storage
With this much food, consider splitting it into two or more parts, and storing each part in a different place. For instance, your kitchen pantry, and your garage. You want to make sure you can keep control over each area where you store food. Obviously, do not store where feral animals can break into it.
Some foods, like canned goods, can be stored just in their packaging. But put things like rice and pasta in sturdy containers that will slow down any marauding animals or insects.
You may want to limit the size of any storage containers, so that you can easily lift them in case you need to suddenly move to a different location. You could also keep duffle bags, backpacks or other carrying bags handy to facilitate a swift evacuation.