Foods and Food Storage

At the heart of good prepping is laying down not only enough food to see you through any period of emergency or crisis but knowing the best food to sustain you in the best possible way for as long as possible.

With those goals in mind, let’s take a look at what foods need to be included in any prepper’s larder and how they should be stored.

What food – perish the thought

Think about storing food and there are essentially only two types of food – perishable food and non-perishable food. Think prepping and you will conclude that there is only one type of food – non-perishable food.

While all manner of perishable foods – fruit and vegetables among them – are going to be highly nutritious and would otherwise form an essential ingredient in any balanced diet, during a crisis you might be relying on long-term food stocks that provide the nutrition you need but at the same time last for several months at a time.

Non-perishable food is the key to any prepper’s food store.

Picking non-perishable foods

You don’t have to be an all-out, dyed in the wool prepper or survivalist to shop for your long-life, non-perishable foods – an article in that trusty favourite Good Housekeeping magazine on the 27^th of March 2020, suggested a list of foods with a shelf-life of months at a time or even several years:

• most of your food stores, in other words, can be bought from your local supermarket while you are in the prepping phase and you do not need to search high and low for specialist “survival” foods;

• rice and dried beans, for example, can last more or less indefinitely if you’ve taken care in the way they are packed and stored;

• canned goods are the pick of most recommendations for long-life foods – but make a point of choosing the healthier option by avoiding high salt or sodium content and making sure to wash out the can after use;

• so many nutritional foods can be canned that you would be able to survive many months on canned goods alone – items such as tinned salmon or tuna and any amount of vegetables, from potatoes, tomatoes, sweet corn, carrots, peas, and many more;

• you’ll want to avoid frozen vegetables and other food for the obvious reason that you probably will not be able to rely on the electricity supply for the freezer, so opt for root vegetables (carrots, swede, turnips, parsnips), which can last several months if stored in a cool, dark place;

• dried fruit retains all the goodness and nutrients of the fresh variety and can last for up to a year if placed in dry, cool, storage out of the sunlight – you can even stock up on your own dried fruit by investing in a food dehydrator.

When laying down your food store, then, you are looking for long-life, non-perishable foods, with a shelf-life of at least several months and preferably a year or more.

Of course, the food you choose needs to be nutritional, so avoid salt, sodium, and manmade preservatives. As well as the healthy options, also consider maximising the calorific value of the foods you store – those high in calorific value will be especially useful if you subsequently need to keep on the move from one place of safety to another.

The food in your store should be easy to prepare – you may not want to lose valuable time making food in an emergency – so, you might want to focus on ready-to-eat meals requiring basic rehydrating or reheating and those can be mixed and matched with other ingredients from your stores.