I have been evaluating my food stocks to see how long they will last.

I have a shelf packed with canned goods and some plastic bins full of pasta, etc.

What I did to guess how long the food would last is sum up all the raw caloric values on the labels and divided by a given cal/day/person scenario.

Is there a better way to compute this information? I have a hard time believing that this packed shelf full of food will last only 3 months.

-- Tim the Y2K nut (tmiley@yakko.cs.wmich.edu), July 19, 1999

Answers

Believe it. "Visualize" how much food you would store if you took your weekly shopping trip (two bags? five bags? Whaaa?) and did it 52 times (crude, I know, but illuminating).

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), July 19, 1999.

A timely post, Tim. I was trying to do the same estimate this weekend, and I thought that a database what I have compared to what I need would be useful. Never thought of adding up caloric content. Interesting solution. Seems like a good way to make a quick estimate.

I'm considering adding a food inventory system to my freeware Y2K Community Database application (see recent thread below.) Can anyone reccommend a good tabular list of prep foods/supplies with suggested quant. per person per week (month?) I'll contact them and see if I can use it. Does Red Cross/FEMA have a list? I just remembered that Cassandra Project has one. Who else? Dang I feel like I've seen these things everywhere over the past year, but I never bookmarked them.

Thanks-

-- Lewis (aslanshow@yahoo.com), July 19, 1999.

I see that community database thread is alot further down than I thought, so if anyone's interested:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00150h

-- Lewis (aslanshow@yahoo.com), July 19, 1999.

I've got a food storage calculator in my favorite places but it is not complete. However, she says she compiled it by going to NAT. If anybody knows how to link it, it gives all the nutrition information. Sorry, I can't help more than than.(mentally and technology challenged).

-- sue (deco100@aol.com), July 19, 1999.

There are a total of 3 food calculators listed at Stan and Holly Deo's site.

All need to be downloaded, of course. The Deo's own version runs on Excel. There are two others available, one by LDS. I checked the Deo version against my own stuff -- I made up my own plans a year and a half ago, drawing on several that were available at that time, and kept it updated as best I could. There were some variations......if the Deo version is correct I have just a little too much stuff for the time I am anticipating -- what a shame :)

Since you mentioned canned goods and pasta, it could be that you'll need to add the staples: rice, beans, wheat, other grains. Actually, these should be the starting point of a storage program, since they're relatively cheap and provide a lot of bulk.

Important -- after you compute your requirements, be sure to add in some special stuff.

-- de (delewis@inetone.net), July 19, 1999.

Do it like Big Dog - only more so. As far as you can, keep a diary of what you you actually use for a week. Remember to include the snacks, and make due allowance for all the extra fats used in cooking. In other words, work from what's real, then use the theory as a cross- check. Most of us eat more than we need to, but for most of you (Northern hemisphere) you'll be measuring in summer, and eating in winter. That is not the time to be cutting back drastically, particularly if you're also short on heating.

If you want to play it super safe, then when you've got all the essentials, and all the luxuries, you could go back and get fifty or a hundred more kilos (110 to 220 pounds) PER PERSON more of pasta and white rice. After all, it's not going to go bad before you can eat it, even if Y2K is all good news. In fact, if it's good news, Year 2000 could be the year you save enormous amounts of money, just because you're eating cheap (use that as an argument for the "wont'- prepares").

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), July 19, 1999.

Tim:

Good to see you on the forum. Hope to see you at our next meeting.

Does anyone happen to have the caloric value of wheat per dried ounce? That might be of assistance.

-- Jon Williamson (jwilliamson003@sprintmail.com), July 20, 1999.

de-

Thanks for the link to Stan and Holly's site. That looks like a terrific resource.

Now, where to find the time...

regards

-- Lewis (aslanshow@yahoo.com), July 20, 1999.

I suggest using the USDA's "Food Pyramid" recommended daily servings of the basic food groups and multiply up from there. All below is per adult person.

Cereals, bread, rice, pasta: 6 to 11 servings/day. 180 - 330 servings/month.

A serving is a biscuit or 1 slice of bread, or a half cup cooked rice or pasta. One way to visualize this for one day (at 8 servings) is 4 slices of bread or 4 biscuits, 3/4 cup cooked rice, 3/4 cup cooked pasta, 1/2 cup oatmeal, 1/4 cup flour (in a leavened bread). 1/2 cup cooked pasta is 1/4 cup dried pasta (for macaroni, anyway, noodles will be different). A five pound box of macaroni has 80 half cup cooked pasta servings in it. One cup cooked macaroni per person (1/2 cup dried) is an ample serving for most people, but if it is the only thing on the menu, then a little more may be wanted. If it is the only thing on the menu, add a little oil and sprinkle with oregano and black pepper.

Vegetables: 5 servings/day, 150 servings/month

Serving = 1/2 cup cooked vegetables = 1 serving. If you are relying on canned vegetables, e.g. a can of carrots has 3.5 half cup servings. That's about 48 cans/month

Fruit: 3 servings/day, 90 servings/month

1 serving = a medium apple or other small fruit, 1/2 cup chopped or cooked/canned fruit/raisins, 3/4 cup juice. Say 3 gallons for one person per month of juice. A 20 ounce can of pineapple chunks has four half cup servings, so if you relied solely on canned pineapple, you'd need about 12 twenty-ounce cans. (5 thirty ounce cans of cherry pie filling would also work, each has 10 half cup servings.)

Proteins: 2 - 3 servings/day; 90 servings/month.

1 serving = 2-3 ounces of meat or fish (a small flat can of tuna has 6 ounces), 1/2 cup cooked beans, 2 tablespoons nuts, seeds, or peanut butter, 1 egg. So, 15 cans of tuna equals 30 servings. With most beans, 1/2 cup cooked beans equals 1/8 cup dried beans (a half cup of dried beans equals 2 cups cooked beans, varies a bit with the type of bean.) I don't have the figures at hand, but you can see by this that a 20 pound bag of beans has a LOT of servings in it.

Dairy: 2 - 4 servings/day, 60 to 120 servings/month

1 serving equals 1 cup milk, 1-1/2 ounces of cheese. A large box of powdered milk (4 pounds) makes 20 quarts. 2 cups in a pint, 2 pints in a quart, 80 cups (liquid reconstituted). At 4 cups of milk a day, a 4 pound box is sufficient for one person for 20 days. (This milk could be used in sauces or gravies.) Kids will need additional milk.

Fats and oils: "Use sparingly."

But they are very necessary. There are 16 tablespoons in a cup. So if you used a half cup of oil a day, thats 15 cups a month, figure a gallon. One cup a day is 30 cups a month, 7.5 quarts, or a little less than 2 gallons, and this would allow you to do some deep frying: deep fried breads such as donuts or scones, not to mention onion rings and french fries, are Very Important Comfort Foods.

Miscellaneous

This isn't a USDA category, but it is where you put things like sugar, spices, flavorings, comfort foods, etc. Figure at least a cup of sugar per desert-snack-type recipe, and you'll want a desert or snack every day (very important for morale purposes, not to mention taste). So allow at least 1/4 cup/day sugar per person, maybe a bit more.

Hope this helps

Robert Waldrop the printable flyers guy http://www.justpeace.org/printflyers.htm

http://www.justpeace.org/better.htm Better Times Cookbook and Almanac of Useful Information for Poor People.

-- robert waldrop (rmwj@soonernet.com), July 21, 1999.

Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr near Monterey, California

I've put together a list of pantry items and estimates of the amounts used. The abreviations used depent upon the type of item. The numerator refers to the unit of measurement such as g or q or p for gallons or quarts or pounds. The slash itself stands for "per person per". The denominator is the unit of time: y, q, m, w, and d are year, quarter, month, week, and day.

I made this list by studying the LDS guides, reconciling them against each other, adding meats, and tempering with our own experience. I'm looking for a list made by a Ted somebody that also had some amounts. I'd like to see what he recommends for matches and for cleansers like pinesol or simple green. His is a much linked page that I just can't seem to track down this week, for some reason.

-- FoodDancr (addy.available@my.webpage.neener.autospammers--regrets.greenspun), July 22, 1999.

Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr near Monterey, California

Tim - To address your question more directly, though...

I am figuring five pounds per person per day, net weights after hydration in case of freeze dried foods, not including drinking water. This is what Americans average today, and we may have to be working hard. It sounds like a lot, I know. If you were going to get all your nutrution from those cans (which I don't advise, but just as a guide), you'd have to have have about six per person per day!

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage.neener.autospammers--regrets.greenspun), July 22, 1999.