Disaster Preparation: Important Warnings About Food Stores

Don’t start buying emergency food stores until you read these important warnings. The quality and mix of what you buy now could be the difference between life and death in the event of a disaster.

Are the Emergency Food Supplies 10 years old already?

Y2K resulted in hundreds of companies selling food stores in 1999 – about 10 years ago now. If most of these companies did not sell their inventories, where is this food now? Beware of what you are buying.

• When was the food manufactured and packaged? Is the food fresh, in good condition and above all, safe to consume?

• If it is ‘aged’, has it been stored properly e.g. in a climate controlled warehouse? Do you think the company you are buying from could afford proper storage?

• If you have any doubts, keep looking for an alternative emergency food stores supplier. Cheapest is not necessarily the best. There are no opportunities or refunds available after a disaster. You need to be certain the most important emergency supplies – your food – will ensure you survive.

Don’t Pay for Wheat or Sugar

When comparing emergency food supplies, make sure you can compare like with like.

Product A may be $10 per kilo and Product B may be $20 a kilo, but which product is more nutritous and better value?

• Take out the added wheat and sugar that is commonly used to increase calorie content, shipping weight and price and then compare.

• Sugar and wheat are self-storing so buy your own and save the money.

• However, never buy more grains and never just buy grains. You need to make sure your diet is balanced.

Balance Water and Food Supplies

The body cannot eat without adequate water. We need water to digest food. Try surviving on dry wheat and no water and see how long before your bowels block up and you cease to exist.

• Balanced food stores include water. 6 weeks of food includes 6 weeks of water.

Don’t Buy Premixed Flour-Based Products

• Avoid premixed flour-based products. Products containing flour such as muffin, pancake and bread mixes have a short shelf-life for a reason. They contain raising and other chemical agents that result in the product going flat, rancid or becoming useless for ingestion.

• Be aware that any processed food with chemical agents (e.g. bleaching of flour) may result in changes to the ingredients over time if temperature, moisture and contamination is not carefully controlled.
• If you don’t own a climate controlled warehouse or you’re not willing to take a chance with your survival food kit – do not fall victim to premixed flour-based foods - especially when they contain flour.

• They may be cheap and they may look big and useful, but big boxes of useless food are big boxes of useless food.

Balance Your Supplies Between Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, Dairy Products and Sprouting Seeds

Always buy complete portions of emergency food stores. You may plan to get around to buying the milk powder, fruit and vegetables later, but what if you don’t have enough money, time or memory?

• Purchasing a complete, balanced supply for emergency food for 6 weeks is always better than buying 2 years of wheat, beans and milk.

• If you buy a 6 week balanced emergency food storage kit - you are guaranteed immediately to have everything to need for 6 weeks. No worries, no mistakes, no disaster in the food storage area.

• Add to your initial balanced emergency food supplies gradually. Buy another 6 week emergency food store kit when you have the money and space.

• The exception is wheat and sugar as outlined above. Just make sure you can survive for a minimum amount of time before bulk buying other staples and then add wheat and sugar to the mix.

Sources:

• Image from My Food Storage Deals ~ a great personal blog to help you get one year’s supply of food, one week at a time
• Article inspired by information found on found on eFoodDirect ~ a supplier of emergency food supplies that meets the above criteria.

Related Articles:

1. How To Survive 2012
2. National Preparedness Week – September 2009 (USA)
3. Prepare for 2012 Meet Up Groups Around the World

Tagged as: disaster preparation, emergency food supplies, emergency supply kit, food storage