A Shopping List for Trying Times: How to Stock Up

There’s been a lot of talk about stocking your fridge and pantry, but what exactly does that mean? What foods store well? What foods provide the most nutritional value? How much toilet paper do you really need? In his lifetime, Matthew Stein wrote extensively about being prepared for the worst, including how to properly stock your pantry for times of trouble. To make your next trip to the grocery store as stress-free as possible, read this shopping list and guide for answers to all your pantry-prepping questions.

The following is an excerpt from When Disaster Strikes by Matthew Stein. It has been adapted for the web.

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If you are planning to store food, water, and other items to supply your household for significant periods of time (more than one month), the packaging, preservation, and nutritive quality of your food stores will be vitally important. You can purchase specialty prepackaged bulk foods from preparedness/ survival suppliers (see appendix 2), or package your own foods. If you have more time than money, packaging your own supplies will be far less expensive than the prepackaged types and gives you the best chance for ensuring that your stored food is of the quality and variety that you will want to eat.

You will probably want to store a significant variety of foods preserved by a variety of methods. Traditional high-heat canning processes destroy a significant portion of the food’s nutritive value, but low-heat dehydration results in a loss of only about 10 percent. Many canned foods do have the advantage of providing syrups or juices, which can be a significant source of water if you are experiencing scarcity. If you have access to a source of water, however, it makes better sense to use dehydrated foods. A pound of dry grains or beans will contain many times the calories of a typical pound of canned foods. Each pound of dehydrated fruits or vegetables is equivalent to 10 to 12 pounds of fresh, canned, or frozen produce, and a pound of dry meat is equal to about 3 to 4 pounds of fresh meat.

Stored whole grains may be sprouted to give you the nutritive value of fresh “live” food. Most whole grains and beans can be sprouted. The sprouting process converts proteins in the seeds into different essential amino acids and dramatically increases their vitamin content. For example, sprouted soybeans have 700 percent more vitamin C than the dry beans, though they have a lower caloric content. Vitamin C is a natural detoxifier, destroying damaging toxins in the body. It is essential for helping the body maintain an effective immune system and for preventing deficiency conditions, such as scurvy. However, minerals, protein, and caloric content are not improved by sprouting.

The downside to whole grains is that unless they are kept cool, they contain oils that can go rancid, thereby ruining them for consumption. A useful fact to remember is that most foods retain useful nutritive value long after they have lost their aesthetic appeal. However, foods that smell rotten, rancid, or moldy should be thrown out. Mold may be cut off the outside of cheese, apples, and meats, but moldy grain, other fruits, fats, and vegetables should be thrown out. Most molds give off aflatoxins, which are highly toxic poisons, so your living area and foods should be kept as mold free as possible.

Whole grains last much longer than grains ground into flour, because finely ground particles have far more surface area for oxidation (degradation). A grain mill, preferably hand-cranked or combination hand-and- electric powered, is useful for turning your stored grain into flour as it is required. Most long-term storage programs stress wheat storage, because properly stored wheat has an indefinite shelf life. Some wheat discovered in the pyramids was found to be viable after thousands of years. Brown rice, on the other hand, has a typical shelf life of six months to one year, which may be extended to two to three years when packaged with nitrogen or CO2 in properly sealed containers.