Food - Comfortable
This section assumes you have looked at the preceding Food - Minimal and Food - Basic sections.
To achieve a Comfortable level of foodstock, we recommend you buy enough to see you through 3 months without outside help.
If you are considering this option, you have already come to the conclusion that a rescue response may be considerably delayed in case of a Class 1 disaster. I think that is good, responsible thinking.
This level of preparedness differs from Basic primarily in the quantity of food stored, with a few add-ons and some hopefully helpful ideas.
Expiration Dates
When you are looking at three months worth of food from the grocery, checking expiration dates and rotating your stocks is of the utmost necessity. You have to be aware of it each time you shop. You can't use something and not replace it quickly. It is a bit of a hassle, but there is no option, and I can attest that a person gets used to it after a while.
If you have someone besides yourself being responsible for shopping and rotating stocks, you must oversee it. Check on it every couple of weeks until you are sure that they are doing it correctly every time. You cannot just hand someone this concept and assume it will be done. It is a routine that some people need help in building. Be kind, be gentle... or it can blow up on you altogether... but also be gently firm about it. This is good training. In an emergency situation you sometimes must be able to persuade people without alienating them. Here may be your chance to practice that very thing.
Emergency Pack food helps make long term storage simple, but you really do need other foods in your 3 month supply, even if you prefer the Emergency Packs for most of your foodstock. As with groceries, Emergency Food Pack expiration dates are of prime importance. Perhaps they would be edible and safe quite a while after their expiry date. It is not wise to count on it. If I'm starving, would I eat something out of date? Sure, as long as the packaging is not compromised in any way, does not smell bad, does not have any sort of growth whatsoever on it. But I wouldn't want to make that part of my plans. I'd rather go hungry a while longer than get botulism.
For more about expiration dates, best-by and sell-by dates, go to the blog post Food Expiration Dates.
Additional Foods
Desserts and Snacks. A person can do without dessert. Same with snacks. But as time stretches on, a person misses the little things more and more. It would not hurt to have a 'goodie bag' of snacks and treats for those days when people need a little something extra.
Can you include some of the junk food favorites you like today? Yes. But I implore you to skip the ones that have any trans fats. As I keep saying, just a little bit of trans fats can really throw a monkey wrench into your health status, something you can't really afford to do in an emergency, whether it lasts a few days or a few months.
Recommended:
Dark chocolate, which I've mentioned before as a source of good fats and other nutritional marvels. Personally, this is my choice for dessert. On the 3 month level you might want to greatly increase your stores of this excellent, happy food item. If you really dislike dark chocolate, still be sure to include some as Basic foodstores. But if you love milk chocolate, fine, get a little as a treat. Be advised that it contains much more sugar and it can cause a mucus response in some individuals, so I think it would be good to go easy on the milk chocolate.
Organic snacks. Even if you are not really into organic food, this is an area where you can 'have your cake and eat it too'. Many organic snack foods such as chips and crackers and candy are actually much more nutritious than mainstream dinner foods. They cost more. But the benefits in a long-term emergency far outweigh the expense. You might want to go to a health food store... if it's your first trip to one, you might be pleasantly surprised... and get some to try out around the TV. Again, you might be pleasantly surprised.
Candied Ginger. Okay, this is not for everyone. It's an intense taste. But some people really like it, almost get addicted to it. The reason I bring it up is that ginger may have helpful qualities for stomach upsets and possibly even sore throats. And I admit. I'm addicted to it. Some candied ginger comes in really neat tins that you can then use for storage of little items.
Rice. If you did not think a backup of 20 pounds of rice was necessary for Basic stores, I hope you change your mind if you are considering 3 months of food. If I had the resources, I would have 20 pounds of rice per person per month as a backup in case things really go wrong. You can transport the bags almost instantly, and they will sustain life by themselves for a long period of time. It is of course far, far better to have a selection of foods, but if you had just one... this is it.
Be sure to keep the bags in a sturdy outer container against the intrusion of small animals and insects. How long does a big bag of white rice last in storage? Hard to say. Quite a lot time. Years. Rule of thumb is that when you see any small insects in it, it's too old. But not to be too gross, you could pick them out. Or not. Depends on how much you need the food.
Brown rice goes off quicker. And organic rice lasts only a few months. That reminds me of the saying that 'good food goes bad more quickly'. Fish is really good food. And it's next up.
Fish. Canned fish other than tuna. If the fatty fishes seem anathema to you, stock some anyway. My best suggestion is Kipper Snacks, which is a name for kippered herring. You can put it on a cracker and viola!, it's gourmet hour devours. Really. I've been served them. So even if you have to hold your nose, get some.
Also sardines. They come in all sorts of truly tasty sauces now. But you really should not buy fish that is packed in oil. The balance of omegas in those oils negate the beneficial effects of the omega 3's in the fish. If you do, you still get the protein, but you do not get the purpose you bought the fish for in the first place. Go with mustard or catsup or hot sauce or something like that. They even have sardines in tomato and basil. It's pretty tasty. Really.
If you are still not onboard with fish, I understand. There is one that more people like a lot. Salmon. You can get canned salmon. Just be sure they have not somehow removed the fats from it. Check the label. It would be wise to look specifically for the amount of omega 3 fats it contains. If the label does not mention omega 3 anywhere on it, the chances are that they have been removed by processing. Still good for protein, but why bother.
Best news: you need only 2 or 3 small tins of fish a week to help your omega 3 balance considerably.
If you simply cannot stand fish, look below at Supplements, where it talks about omega 3 supplements. You really need to do one or the other to maintain high health in a long-term emergency situation.
Flour. Even if you yourself do not bake, you may come across someone who does. A bag, large or small, would not be a bad idea. If you do bake, stock what you think you need. There are lots of ways to bake without your stove oven. At some point we will have those ways on this site, but bear with us for a while... can't do everything at once. Which in itself is a great survival lesson.
Additional Supplements
Omega 3 Fats. I almost put these into the Basic foodstuffs, because they are so useful in creating a healthful balance of fats in your diet. But I think you have to be a little more hardcore to really do it. Most health nuts don't actually do what they need to do in terms of omega 3 fats. It's a great lot of trouble. The capsules go bad easily in hot weather. They really do need refrigeration after they are opened, no matter what the label says, unless you live in a very cold climate. They do not taste good. They tend to be large. No end of trouble to them.
That's why I think getting omega 3's from fish is good.
But you need them even if you hate fish. So how are you going to get them? If you go the capsule route, make sure you get top quality. Store it per the label instructions in a cool place, keep the bottle as cool as you can once it is opened. If it starts to smell bad... which means worse than it did when you opened the bottle... toss it.
Option: flax and/or hemp seed. Not the oil, which goes bad rapidly without refrigeration. Get whole seeds. Chew them before, after, during a meal, whatever. Be sure to break the seed before you swallow it. Although they make pretty good roughage as intact seeds, the idea here is to release the oil so you can digest it. Next to impossible to digest the seeds. That's why God made birds. They eat seeds along with the fruit, and then... scatter the seed when it comes out the other end. Oh, yes, all animals do that, but I liked the bird thing.
Btw, hemp seed is legal, and will not get anyone high. That's why they can sell it. But it is a most excellent source of both omega 3 oils and protein. The only reason it is not listed as a food is that it is so expensive and hard to find, and frankly, I can't eat enough to make any real contribution to my protein intake.
Which brings up one other problem. Eating enough of either seed to make a difference in your balance of fats is very hard to do. That is why I recommend fish.
L-Lysine and L-Tyrosine. These are two amino acids found in all meat and a bunch of other food. But in supplemental concentrations, they seem to have significant effects on the body. Perhaps they could be categorized as aids against systemic viral infections. Think of their possible importance in an emergency situation where medical help is simply not available.
Lysine is my friend. When a family member had 'shingles', which is an adult outbreak of the virus that causes 'chicken pox', they got some AMA medicine for it, and were told to expect further episodes. I thought that odd, since in the previous generation, it was thought that a person could get shingles only once in a lifetime. So I researched the subject, and read studies where taking lysine had stopped or lessened outbreaks of herpes. Some people swore by it.
When the predicted second episode of shingles occurred, that family member went for the lysine instead of the medication. Guess what. The outbreak did not progress. It went away. No medicine.
Now, when she feels really tired and overstressed, she does a couple grams of lysine. It keeps the virus, which stays in the body lifelong and is apparently prone to multiple outbreaks in today's world... at bay. She thinks it's a lot better than the AMA meds at $100 a pop. Personally, I wonder how much the existence of those meds contributed to the present situation of multiple outbreaks being possible. Did it help the virus mutate?
Anyway. We now all take lysine when we are stressed and do not want to develop any viruses we might be harboring. Whether it has any effect on things like flu virus is far beyond my ken. But it would not be impossible, I think.
Tyrosine is grouped with Lysine, because many researchers have found it to be a help to the body in times of "...stress, cold, fatigue, prolonged work and sleep deprivation...." That is directly from Wikipedia. We find it to be synergistic with lysine, so we take them together. What we do is 2,000 mg (2 grams) of lysine, and 1,200 mg of tyrosine. I cannot say what would be good for you. We have sufficient quantities in our own survival stores.
Garlic. If you like garlic, you've just now found a great reason to stock it in your foodstores. If you don't... try it when you're hungry. You'll like it. I like it not only for its taste, but for its recognized value as an anti-viral. They have isolated the chemical compound that does the job, and it is called allcin. It is actually a binary, which means there are two halves of the compound that are kept separated in raw garlic. It is only when the two are combined that allcin is created. How wonderful that is, don't you think?
You must combine the two parts by crushing or mincing the garlic at least 10 to 15 minutes before you use it. That gives enough time for the chemical reaction to take place.
An option when there is no cooking possible is to... chew it. I kind of hate doing that, and I kind of enjoy it. It is certainly sort of vile. And a little fun, too. But enough of that. The really good reason is that if you chew and eat a clove of garlic a day, I find that it makes you completely off-limits to all sorts of nasty insects, including mosquitos. To me, it's worth the excitement of chewing it, for that reason alone.
More Vitamins
The Basic section suggested taking a 1-a-day multiple vitamin. Good start. But here are some others you may want to consider that the quantities in a multi just can't provide:
Vitamin C. You may already have a viewpoint on this one. The person who developed the first practical polio vaccine, Dr. Jonas Salk, played around with C as a cure for the common cold. He recommended 3,000 to 5,000 mg. (3 to 5 grams) of C a day to ward off colds. It didn't work. It turns out the body dumps C above a certain level. Worse, the body becomes used to whatever level you give it consistently. Then it goes into vitamin C deficiency when you stop giving it that much. You can get symptoms of scurvy, the disease sailors got in old times when they were at sea for years and didn't get any vitamin C for a long time. So taking a megadose consistently is a pretty bad idea. Especially when an emergency can cause you to stop taking it unexpectedly.
There was some success taking a single megadose of C in the 3 to 5 gram range when a person first felt the signs of a cold coming on. One of C's actions is to scrub the body of free radicals. Perhaps one dose has some benefit when a virus is just starting out, although personally I can't see what that could be. After the cold is established, getting rid of free radicals is probably a very bad thing, because those radicals attack invading viruses and bacteria.
On the other hand, we probably need more C than there is in a multivitamin. I personally use 1 gram one hour before doing very stressful exercise. It is phenomenal in preventing soreness the next day. But that is the only time I take it, so my body does not build up a resistance against it.
So perhaps you would want to stock C in your stores. How much of it you take, and when, is up to you.
Vitamin B. Or more exactly, the complex of the eight B vitamins. These are very serious nutritional elements. They help regulate your metabolism, enhance the immune and nervous systems, promote red blood cells, insure the proper growth of all your cells, and help combat stress.
We live in wondrous times, and sometimes that's a good thing, because there are now B-complex supplements that have a mix of all eight in the right proportions, in quantities that actually work in a real body. Kudos... or in today's language, cudos... to those who developed them.
You will probably see a wide selection of dosage levels on your department store or vitamin store or health food store shelves. Pick the level you think best. I personally go for the one that has 100 mg of vitamin B1, B2, Niacin, B-6, and Pantothenic Acid; 100 mcg of b-12 and Biotin; and 400 mcg of Folic Acid.
But I'm Irish. That actually means something here, because Irish genetics cause us to absorb vitamin B at about half the level of most other peoples. Even taking a 'normal' amount of B vitamins, we can get symptoms of vitamin B deficiency, which include bleeding gums. What a bummer. But since I know about that, I make sure to get enough. You may want to choose a B-complex that has half those levels. Or you may be Irish, too.
Then I also take... totally against any AMA recommendations and dire warnings... an additional 3,200 mcg (that's micrograms, NOT milligrams) of Folic Acid. That is a personal choice based on a lot of smart people's research. But I cannot recommend it for you. Do the research and see what you think.
Seriously, the amounts of any and all supplements, vitamins, food... everything mentioned on this website... is subject to individual needs and quirks and tastes and belief systems. I cannot say what is right for you to eat or take or chew. You have to decide for yourself. Question everything. And do nothing without your doctor's orders, written and notarized, in triplicate. You know what I'm saying.
IMPORTANT: Buy Real Vitamins. The performance level of the vitamins you buy becomes critical as we prepare for 3 months or more, but is always true. When you shop for vitamins, do not just get the most inexpensive kind. There is a world of difference between the cheapie vitamins and the ones made by pharmacologically astute companies. The first kind may not even work. They may pass through your digestive system with little or none of the vitamin being absorbed. Or they may have less or more or different substances than is on the label. They may have 'fillers' that counteract the thing you want. So... take the high road and reach deep into your pockets, and get the real thing. Or frankly, don't bother. It's better to know you don't have something than to think you have something, but don't really have it.
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