Food-Ready

First things first. Remember to store extra food for your pets! Great pet preparedness resources are available through the American Red Cross, Ready.gov, the Oregon Veterinary Medical Association, and the Oregon Humane Society. As you move through this page, remember to prepare for the more vulnerable people in your life (new parents, older adults, those with disabilities & special needs).

EMERGENCY FOOD PREPAREDNESS IS AWESOME!

Get Processed Food: The Mayo Clinic suggests shopping the perimeter of the grocery store rather than the center aisles. While this is great advice for everyday living, shopping for most emergency foods requires the opposite. This can be fun (but make sure you actually like the food you’re buying).

Buy More Calories: The CDC has great information about cutting calories and eating healthy. This too can be good advice for everyday living, but when it comes to buying your emergency food, you need to plan for enough calories. Buy more than you think you’ll need.

2 Week Vacation From Grocery Shopping: Planning meals during a normal week takes work. Some enjoy it. Most don’t. Being asked to plan out an additional two weeks of emergency meals may feel like a headache waiting to happen… however, if you slowly work toward making it a reality, when the time comes, not only will you be able to breathe a little easier knowing you and your loved ones have food, but your meals will already be planned out! Work now. Rest then.

Control: The foods you buy can be items you actually like! If you don’t plan ahead, you are basically hoping others will have enough to feed you. You seriously risk not having enough food. If you are lucky enough to find some, will it be the types of food you can eat? Allergies or other food sensitivities may come into play. Will it be the types of food you like? Planning in advance gives you control over the outcome!

If you gather emergency food supplies ahead of time, when the time comes, you’ll have the calories for the energy to do whatever needs to be done, good food to comfort and lower stress, and you might even have some extra coffee to brew.

CALORIE NEEDS & SERVING SIZE CONSIDERATIONS

Before you start shopping for emergency meals, calculate your and your family’s daily calorie needs (Baylor College of Medicine is a good calorie calculator for kids, and the Mayo Clinic’s calculator is great for adults).

Below are sample meal plans for 4 days. The column on the right shows calorie intake if you ONLY plan to eat the amount listed under the suggested SERVING SIZE. You need more calories than this! Unfortunately, there aren’t any recognized guidelines for what constitutes a serving size. Companies can list whatever they want. Make sure you are buying enough calories.

My daily calorie needs are 2,250 (Active, 5’6”, 128lbs).

In the green chart below, note the difference in calories between the red pasta sauce and the pesto! The pesto container is 1/3 the size of the marinara jar, yet the pesto has 3X as many calories. As with the suggested serving size, container size is not a reliable basis for determining whether you have enough food. Focus on calorie count, and remember, this is your list! Personalize it. Buy items you will enjoy having. Keep in mind that food kept in cardboard boxes (cereal, crackers) may be subject to weevils or other bugs. Keeping them in totes could help protect them.

Getting enough calories does not need to be expensive. For under $25.00, you can buy enough ramen to last a full two weeks. Not the healthiest of plans… but it’s much better than not having backup food.