How to Store Food for an Emergency

As people who live throughout the world know all too well given events of recent years, emergencies happen. Whether it be acts of terrorism or acts of nature, most of us at one time or another will find ourselves without access to our usual resources. For that reason, it is wise to store food for an emergency beforehand. Read on to learn more.

Instructions

1. Find a place away from your normal pantry to use for emergency food storage. It can be an unused closet in a spare bedroom or a sturdy set of shelves in the basement. You can even store emergency food under your bed.

2. Determine what types of foods you want to include in your emergency food stockpile based on your existing eating habits. While you are unlikely to eat like a king during an emergency, you will be glad to have foods that approximate your normal diet.

3. Purchase food to add to your emergency food stockpile. Check all expiration dates before you buy anything to be sure you are getting items with the longest possible expiration dates.

4. Rotate old items out of your emergency food storage stockpile first by placing them in your normal pantry for use in meal preparation and replacing them with the newly purchased items.

5. Store grains and other staples such as flour, corn meal and oats for long-term storage in food grade pails lined with Mylar bags. Insert the appropriate number of oxygen absorbers into the Mylar bag on top of the food before sealing the Mylar bag and the bucket.

Tips & Warnings

• Make sure that the space you devote to emergency food storage is as dark, cool and dry as possible. Light, heat and moisture are the three things that degrade food quality the fastest.

• If storage space is at a premium in your apartment or home, get creative. Store canned goods in lidded Rubbermaid-style wrapping paper containers that slip under your couch. Buy risers to elevate your bed so you can slip boxes of food under it.

• If you feel you will not use the food before its expiration date, donate it to a food pantry or other charity.

• Canned, dehydrated and freeze dried foods will offer the longest shelf life in your emergency food storage stockpile.