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Emergency Foods Could Save You and Your Family's Life Someday

When you think of emergency foods, there're many criteria.

You want something that is lightweight in case you have to carry it on your back. Compact in case you have to stuff it into your car. Doesn't need refrigeration because you can't count on having electricity in a true disaster situation. Won't spoil for a long time, because you don't want to buy it every week like the groceries you buy to eat now. Nutritious,  because you have to keep up your health and strength. Provide energy, because you'll be under a lot of stress. Satisfying, because you can't follow it up by calling Papa John's for a pizza delivery. Not too expensive because it's insurance money, something you don't need now and hope you'll never need. If you have children, you want something they won't turn their noses up at.

Plus, of course, you want disaster foods that taste good.

If you have a freezer, you can keep foods frozen for a long time. That's good if you continue to have electricity during the emergency and you're staying at home. Even if you lose power, you can eat the foods for some days as they defrost and of course before they spoil.

However, true food preparedness also means having supplies on hand you can grab and run with it, or grab and put into the car to drive away with.

Disaster supplies should include cases of foods you keep stored away in your pantry and closets. Include big containers -- because you don't know how long a catastrophe could last. But also smaller amounts packed away in backpacks ready for you to just grab them. And keep some such survival kits in the trunk of your car.

21st Century Food Storage offers freeze dried and dehydrated foods for sale. They're based in St Peters MO, which is not far from me, but north of St Louis rather than west. They distribute AlpineAire® Gourmet Reserves, Pouch Products, and Self Heating Meals. Their home page includes a picture of the 1993 Mississippi River flood.

They point out something about emergency rations I hadn't thought about -- one problem is that here in America we no longer have large reserves of food. The national food distribution network has only three weeks worth of food.

We've stretched the lines of food distribution long -- from fields in Chile by ship to warehouses in the US to a food processing plant to a wholesaler to a retailer's warehouse to your local supermarket. It's a long and complex chain. Your food supply could be disrupted by a wave of strikes, a fuel emergency, a terrorist act is another part of the world, or a local catastrophe in another part of the country.

For example, here in the Midwest, our gas prices went up to nearly $5 per gallon in the months following Hurricaine Katrina. Yet some other regions of the US, where gas is usually higher in price, were not so affected. Why? Our gas comes through the port of New Orleans and the drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Therefore, we were hit harder than areas which get gasoline from other places.

Years ago, I used to store grain, but that's not a good idea for most people. It might be okay if you're on a farm, have a grain mill to grind it into flour and the capacity to plant some of it.

You can have consider the practical problems of emergency food storage. You'll want emergency foods you can eat easily. The aftermath of a terrorist biochemical warfare is not the time to true to bake a loaf of bread.