Rules of 3 - Food

We finally get to the last of the rules of 3. The purpose of laying out the rules of 3 is to help prioritize your preparations, and your mental preparedness for the tasks and jobs at hand if you find yourself in a survival situation. Keeping your head, and with adequate preparation you can make smart moves that can and will save your life. The last of the rules of 3 is food. It is really funny to hear everyone when they first think about any disaster, any emergency, any disruption to normal life to immediately start worrying about food. It almost always seems like the first reaction of most people. But when you look at the rules of 3 you know it is the last thing they should be worried about. This is precisely why people die. They don't understand the priority and why certain things must come first. Hopefully by posting this and reviewing it you will be familiar with these rules as they might apply to your home. Of course each scenario is completely different when talking about the rules of 3 on the road or at your place of work. The priorities are the same, but the things you have to do to accomplish them are going to be different obviously.

Rules of 3 - Food:
Food should be approached by taking it in steps. If your new to this world of preparing or prepping as you will hear it called then the first step is to keep your priorities simple.

- 72 hour kit
- Short term storage
- Long term food storage

Let's go over each of these areas briefly:
1. Focus on a 72 hr kit which will address the water and food needs of you and your family. For your 72 hr kit you might want to look at storable foods like MRE's, and pre-prepared means that are ready to eat. These keep a long time and will be there when you need them.
2. Short term storage: This goes into the area of buying and storing foods that have a good shelf life that you commonly eat every day. These would be items that are canned, dehydrated, and dry pack items. These should be every day use items and should be rotated so that your using your oldest items first. Your immediate goal once you have your 72 hr kit is to start building a 30 day supply of short term storage, then a 60 day supply, then 90 day supply. Just keep adding to it. Your target should you choose to accept the mission is to build up a 1 year supply of short term food items.
3. Long term storage: These are foods that typically have a very long shelf life if properly treated and stored. We are talking about grains, beans, rice, pasta and things that have a very long storage life. Most of these things if vacuum sealed and properly stored can last 30 years or longer. These foods are not common to many peoples diets today and will take some adjusting. The food plan here is to augment your short term storage and to build out supplies for a one year supply of these items as a general rule of thumb.

Here are some examples of long term storage and the types of storage you will see. The first is what you will hear referred to as a pail or super pail. This is a food grade bucket that has a mylar liner that has oxygen absorbers in it and is sealed and a sealed top. These are typically 5 or 6 gallon pails.



The second form of long term storage you might see will be in #10 size cans. You can buy these from a variety of places online, and you can can your own at a local Latter Day Saints cannery. We will be attempting to get an interview and tour of a local LDS cannery to show folks later on in this blog. The example I have here was purchased at an online retailer.


And a 3rd option is to seal your own long term storage items using canning jars as an example. So here is a sample of some things that I have vacuum sealed in 1/2 gallon jars.



Now you might be saying "OH MY GOODNESS!", "HOW IN THE WORLD AMI GOING TO DO THAT!?". And the answer is easy... Don't freak out. Start with your 72 hour food supply. Think about the things you could buy, and store that your family would eat in a 72 hour time frame. What is the difference between 72 hrs and one year? You just add a bunch of 72 hour time periods together! Ok, maybe not quite that simple as you will want some variety, and try to balance your meals.

So one of the first rules of food storage.... Eat what you store! Sounds simple right? Well it can be, but for many people they have to adjust what they eat so that they are using their food storage and rotating it. This is a challenge at first as many people find it hard to change thier eating habits. I personally am not fond of prepackaged foods and after seeing movies like Food Inc., The World According to Monsanto, and The Future of Food I find it very hard to buy anything prepackaged knowing what is in the food and that it isn't safe.

So your mileage may vary but I would encourage you to give these films a look. You can find all 3 on YouTube and can see them for free. You might not look at food the same way.

It is hard or almost impossible to talk about the specifics of the things you should buy. Everyone's diet is different and what I might like you might not like. So this is why you won't see a lot of lists recommending things for food storage when talking about short term storage. Longer term storage items seem to be somewhat more universal so we will talk about these things in future episodes. We will show you some of the items in our long term food storage and even show you some ways you can store these items.

So we have talked about your emergency needs for the first 72 hrs, short term storage of food, and long term storage of food. These preparations can save your life in a prolonged situation where food delivery may be sparse or non-existent. You can live for 3 weeks without food, but what happens if the food hasn't returned to your local market by then? As we have seen with large disasters or civil unrest in places all around the world and in our own backyards that it does not take much to completely disrupt the systems we rely on everyday to provide the things we need. So take the time to investigate the various forms of food storage and start thinking about your food plan. We will get into more detail in a future episode on how to break out your food plan by calories needed, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins and what your body needs. So make sure that your food plan includes variety and planning for the specific food content to maintain a balanced diet. Thanks for reading!

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