Preparing for an emergency is not a new thing.
It was not so long ago that refrigerators and freezers were a luxury and people had to take steps to preserve the food they gathered through canning, curing and other methods. The Great Depression taught a generation of Americans to be thrifty and reserved in what they bought and used items to their fullest extent.
In the 50′s and 60′s fear of nuclear war prompted many to build bomb shelters stocked with survival foods and water. The late 90′s produced a wave of preparedness in the event of a national disaster due to outdated computer programing. Fast forward to today. We have uncertainty in the financial market. Fears of economic collapse, terrorism, EMP, and more have once again brought preparedness to the forefront of our minds.
Many companies have emerged to help us get prepared
Especially in the food department. As part time shoppers, we can easily be deceived by full time marketers and wind up getting a lot less that we expected. For example, we recently purchased from a large sporting goods store a bucket of food that boasted 60 servings. This bucket cost about $100 and we initially thought that we’d have about 20 – 30 days worth of food depending on how many meals we ate per day.
We were unpleasantly surprised to find out that our initial calculations were way off and in fact we only had about 6 days of food in reality. When we opened the bucket to see what we got, there were only 6 pouches of food and lots of empty air space in the bucket for plenty more food. The company didn’t lie about what they were selling, but we incorrectly assumed that a serving was a meal. Pay attention to what a serving is. In many cases, a serving is only 50 – 100 calories. If you are looking to sustain a 2000 calorie diet during a disaster, be sure your survival food is calculated by calories not servings.
