This is quite possibly the hardest thing for me to figure out for my 72-hour kits. Everything else is pretty straight-forward. But when it comes to food and water -- there are some major factors you need to consider:
- What will your family eat? For a long time, Chopper and I kept a couple of MRE's in our packs. That was awesome for us, but there's no way that our kids will eat those! Plus they are about 300 calories in one sitting and Chopper says you have to eat all of it or you'll have digestive problems. Only he didn't put it that way.
- How do you prepare it? Ramen noodles and light and filling but require water to eat them. I'm personally already worried about carrying water to drink so I'm not sure it's a great option for us -- especially when the kids wouldn't drink the broth. If you're packing ready meals like Spaghetti-O's or Hormel, will you eat it cold or do you need to carry a way to heat it up? Those take up space and weight in your pack.
- Nutrition/Calories: I found a great chart for how many calories you need in a day, but on average think 2000 calories per person, per day. Do you want those calories to be awesome or junk? We're actually going for junk. My reasoning? It's 3 days of survival and makes what could be a real crisis situation into an adventure with special treats!! Also, junk tends to have more calories in fewer amounts. Truth.
- Expiration/Rotation: This is why the MRE's were awesome! They were good for a LONG time. A friend of mine just bought these 72-hour food buckets for their storage and they also have a good shelf-life. Looking at it online though, I'm not sure that it includes the water you need to hydrate the meals. Back to the junk foods -- surprisingly they often have a short shelf-life. A good rule of thumb is to go for a 6-month rotation and then DO IT every year -- LDS General Conference is a good point to remember that. But that also means that you need to be ok with purchasing replacements every 6 months and dumping what's about to expire into your regular pantry. So I don't want ABSOLUTE junk food.
- Water: Oh Texas. How I loathe you. I can't carry enough water for my family and neither can any of them and it is HOT. Find a way to filter it. In fact, that needs to be a whole separate post.
Resources for storing food (and some water) in your 72-Hour Kits:
The above resources are all for putting together your own, since MRE's and other add water meals are pretty easy to find. Our food packs are NOT complete but this is what we have so far (that is junk but not junk, and has a shelf life of 6 months and decent calories per serving):
- Nature Valley Breakfast Biscuits (experiment food -- may not make the cut in 6 months) -- 230 cal.
- Jif to Go peanut butter cups - 250 cal.
- Strawberry Fig Newtons - 100 cal.
- Starkist Tuna pouches - 70 cal. - plus crackers - 160 cal.
- fruit snacks - 80 cal.
- fruit pouches - 70 cal.
- fruit leather - 45 cal.
- granola bar - 90 cal. (Quaker Oat chewy)
So far that gives us a total of 1025 cal. for one day. Yeah I've got a lot of work to do.
