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Why Storing Food Makes Sense - Mountain House Freeze Dried Food

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Emergencies Can Leave You Helpless

You may need to survive on your own after a disaster. This means having your own food, water, and other supplies in sufficient quantity to last for at least three days. Local officials and relief workers will be on the scene after a disaster, but they cannot reach everyone immediately. You could get help in hours, or it might take days. In the case of a major terrorist attack, it could be weeks or months. In addition, basic services such as electricity, gas, water, sewage treatment, and telephones may be cut off for an extended period of time. Or you may have to evacuate at a moment's notice and take essentials with you. You will probably not have the opportunity to shop for what you need.

Disruptions in the food supply can be caused by a number of factors:

1. Unemployment
2. Economic Downturn
3. Erratic Weather (earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, tornados, droughts)
4. Contamination of Food Supplies
5. Quarantines
6. Disruptions in Transportation
7. Social Unrest
8. Acts of terrorism

Being prepared for a disaster can reduce fear, anxiety, and losses. This means having your own food, water, and other supplies in sufficient quantity to last for an extended period of time. If you don't prepare beforehand, you will be dependent solely on relief organizations and the government, and being in that position can be ugly. A prime example is how New Orleans residents fared after Hurricane Katrina. It was not pretty.

Click Here for More Information on Food Storage and Basic Preparedness

Contents at a Glance

Our food supply is fragile
Transportation is the key to food
THE POWER OF FEMA
Seven Mistakes You Can Make with Food St...
What Would You Do?

Our food supply is fragile

Grocery stores don't stock weeks of food anymore. Most keep only 72 hours of food on the shelves. If the trucks stop rolling in your part of the country during a crisis, the store shelves will be emptied almost immediately. In fact, expect a shortage of mainstay items like milk and bread to occur similar to what happens before an approaching hurricane hits. Those who are aware of the problem but who haven't already made preparations will engage in a last-minute rush to buy extra supplies.

Transportation is the key to food

Without transportation, farmers can't get their crops to the wholesalers or food processing facilities. Food is heavy and requires trucks and trains to move it around - an ARMY of trucks and trains, weaving their way from city to city, optimized and prioritized by computers. If the computers freeze, the whole transportation infrastructure shuts down.

Transportation also depends heavily on fuel, which means the oil-producing countries in the Middle East have to be able to produce the oil that gets refined into diesel fuel here in America. In other words, your food supply depends on Saudi Arabia being alive and well. Do you trust these people with your life? If you don't make preparations now, you're trusting them by default.

THE POWER OF FEMA

Unfortunately, if some executive orders and emergency powers are enacted, FEMA will have the legal power to actually confiscate and redistribute food. This makes it all the more likely that farmers will harvest it and HIDE IT in order to keep it. And that means even less food making it to the cities. Bottom line? Cities where food can't be delivered will eventually be gutted, looted, evacuated and likely burned to the ground.

You can do a lot if you start early. Also, you need a reasonable plan to get food supplies that will store well and don't cost too much. You need to plan in order to make the right decisions.

Click Here for More Information on Food Storage and Basic Preparedness

Seven Mistakes You Can Make with Food Storage

There are seven major mistakes that people can make when they decide to store food :

1. Variety - a lot of people only store the four basic items, wheat, milk, honey, and salt. Besides not being a complete diet, you can get "appetite fatigue" for lack of variety.

2. Extended Staples - don't put all your eggs in one basket. Store dehydrated and freeze-dried foods as well as home-canned and store-bought canned goods.

3. Vitamins - must be stored along with your food in order to get proper nutrition.

4. Quick-and-Easy and Psychological Foods - quick-and-easy foods can help you through the times when you may be under too much stress to cope with preparing food. No-cook foods such as freeze-dried foods are wonderful since they require almost no preparation.

5. Balance - keep balance in mind as you build your food storage. Buy a variety of things rather than a large quantity of one.

6. Containers - always store your bulk foods in food-grade storage containers. You can also buy foods that are packed in nitrogen in #10 cans. Nitrogen will give the food a very long shelf like.

7. Use Your Storage - you must use your food storage in order to know what to do with it. Replace depleted items as necessary, thereby continually rotating your supply.