#5. Nutrition.

As I continue to read Jack Spigarelli's book Crisis Preparedness Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Home Storage and Physical Survival, I am struck by how much thought he has put into the whole topic of food storage.  He talks about the nutritional value of the food stored, and recommends adding multi-vitamins with minerals to your inventory.  Even if you have a "balanced" diet stored (something a lot of the food storage lists out there don't seem to have), a multivitamin is certainly a good way to make sure you are getting enough to survive and maintain your health.

He has a table of the recommended daily intake of various important vitamins, minerals and protein, and discusses the best sources of each for your food storage.  For example, calcium.  Calcium is something that most people get mostly from dairy products like milk, cheese, and yogurt.  He provides some figures to help you figure out how much calcium (in the form of dry non-fat milk powder) a person would need (based on weight, age and gender).   So taking myself as an example, my calcium requirements would be about  1300 mg of calcium per day. 

Using non-fat milk powder as the base, this means I need approximately 32.5 kg (71.5 lbs) of non-fat milk powder over the period of a year, assuming that was all I had to provide my calcium intake.  Fortunately, there's cheese and yogurt to take the place of some of that powder.  He gives the equivalents weight-wise of buttermilk powder (use it in baking), canned milk (baking, adding to coffee or milk), and cheeses. 

I figured out how much milk product that would be for a one-month (4 week) supply, and it works out to be about 2.4 kg (5.5 lbs).  When I had worked out quantities based on Wendy Dewitt's method, which basically focuses on two meals (breakfast and supper), there was a big difference in quantities (4 cups of milk powder and 2 cans of evaporated milk).  I'm thinking that I need to review my recipes for nutritional value, and add in lunches (plus snacks) and re-work my shopping list from there.  Two meals a day does not a realistic shopping list make.  I still thank that Wendy Dewitt's system really starts you out in the right direction, though.  You just need to take it to its logical conclusion.  Plan for every meal and snack, and then add a flexibility factor.

In any event, Spigarelli focuses on the nutritional value of what you store, and making sure you have enough to meet basic nutritional guidelines, such as 2 servings of fruit per day, and 3 to 4 servings of vegetables (functionally 3.5 servings).  He also talks about the size of containers that your food storage products are in. 

For example, in the can/bottle etc., a food item might last for 5 years; however, once the can is opened, that shelf-life is going to greatly reduced.  Dehydrated cheese will last for 5 years in the can, but only 4 months once the can is opened.  So if there is only one or two in your group, you need to have smaller containers to avoid having food go bad before it's all used up.

He also gives good ideas for finding sources of products other than the "preparedness" vendors (which we don't have a lot of here in Canada anyway).  Restaurant supply companies, warehouse clubs (Costco!) and other outlets sell "institutional" sizes of dehydrated and other foods at lower prices.

Well, I'm going to read some more of this terrific book.  More again....