Daily rations

[DougieH]

A member on here said he has 3 jars of peanut butter in his kit as it has 2000 calories per jar. I've only just started out and have about 2 weeks supplies of rice and lentils put by. Do you work out what is needed by calories or by fat/protein/carb balance. Just added some peanut butter and nuttela to my boxes. Lot to learn. Thanks. Doug

[sfcfinchrs]

Ok.....

Lets take a lesson in learned reality to deal with this.

Many years ago we lived in rural Alabama. This was while I was stationed at Ft. Benning GA.

Now for the moral of the story.

We had neighbours that were poor as dirt. They lived on red beans and rice much of the time.

Red beans equal Kidney Beans. Add to this a bit of veg and you can live on it.

Look up a recipe for Red Beans and Rice. Measure out the rice, kidney beans and spices into a ziplock bag and put it away for your preps.

It works.

[unsure]

not sure on the numbers here so please feel free to correct me /
they say an active man needs 2500 cals a day to survive . so if your holed up or less active then it stands to reason you only need half of that to live on .

[ukpreppergrrl]

Not necessarily....everyone has a basal rate of calorie usage which even someone lying in a coma uses up. It's called your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). That is the absolute minimum you need per day, even if doing no activity, not to loose weight. As soon as you add even sedentary activity (sitting in a chair as opposed to lying in a bed, going to the toilet, scratching your arse etc..) that figure goes up. The general calculator used by dieters to determine their personal calorie requirement uses the Harris Benedict Equation and gives your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure). Calculators can be found here: http://thefastdiet.co.uk/how-many-calor ... -fast-day/

But...calorie counting is pretty much all about not losing weight. What is more important is getting all the nutrients and protein you need. Pregnancy aside, you only need to worry about calories if you're already very thin, or are doing a lot of physical labour. Let's face it, most of us could withstand losing a few pounds! The rice and beans/lentils scenario is a good base, it covers protein, carbohydrate and vitamins. If you're losing weight and you don't want to, eat more, or add things like olive oil or peanut butter which will give you the calorie boost. Far better to concentrate on the quality of the food you're storing rather than just its calorie content.

And don't forget about food fatigue - the scenario whereby there is plenty of food to eat, but you don't because you just can't face it any more. People have starved to death surrounded by food before. So keep it varied. And remember the herbs, spices, onions and garlic to cook with. And always include treats

[preparedsurrey]

I agree with the food fatigue bit, I lived on 20c instant noodle packs with a little frozen veg for a couple of months, by the end of that time I couldn't stomach another in fact I gave away what I had left then as I had got a job.

[Wulfshead]

To be honest when the times are good we tend to have far to much on our plates.
Our long term 9 person (7 adults of which 2 a re pensioners and 2 children under 7) food preps are based on servings about 1/3 the size of our usual size servings and supplemented with daily vitamin tablets for both adults and children specific.
I actually believe that an over full stomach will register hunger faster than a stomach that has a smaller comfortable serving size.
A personal food serving guide I go with is that the stomach is the size of a clenched fist. I allow approx 1 .5 the size of a clenched fist for a rough guide to emergency food serving portions.

Remember, this is just my own personal theory for disaster rationing and I stand to be corrected by more diet savvy preppers.

Wulfshed

[Deeps]

It depends on how long you intend your scran preps to last, are you're looking at a week at home with no shops or lecky OR Armageddon. As some have said, most of us could do with missing the odd meal so unless you're doing hard physical work or its stupidly cold we can get by on less than we're used to. The peanut butter might be handy for a quick 'hit' of calories/energy and if its something you eat anyway then having some extra jars of it lying in a cupboard isn't going to make a difference but choccy etc will have the same effect. I try and store stuff that we use normally, there are a few exceptions, I've started stocking up on Frey Bentos type pies which I can use as 'hangover food' but we don't normally eat them. Hot food is both good for moral and warms us so having the ability to heat up food, even hot drinks is just as important in the short term as the 'raw' calories I think.

Good luck with it Doug

[nickdutch]

One thong you might want to consider training yourself up on (which I have FAILED to keep up!) is intermittent fasting. Apparently the body gets used to the signals of the fast after a few weeks and adjusts to it as it knows what's about to happen. This could be an 18 hour window in every 24, 2 days a week on restricted calories, one day a week having a breakfast and a lunch and not eating again to the next lunchtime and so on. I presume that its well worth researching, but it will take me time to get to that point whereby i can do it and enjoy it without tonnes of insane fooooood cravings.