r/preppers • u/Virtual-Feature-9747 Prepared for 1 year • 1d ago
Question Rationing Food After A Complete Collapse
As someone who does not do "hungry" very well, I'm wondering about the ability to successfully ration food after a complete collapse. Could be sheltering in place after any catastrophe where supply chains have been completely broken and society has collapsed. But let's say you have a large stockpile of food and let's even say you're able to keep it hidden/safe. You need to make it last long enough to ride out the storm, outlast the masses as they die off, and/or get crops in the ground then harvest them.
Questions for the group:
Do you have a strategy for rationing food? If so what is it? How many calories per day? What does that look like in terms of rice and beans or whatever?
Do you have the discipline to be hungry and/or calorie deficient when you still have months of food stores?
Or is it more important to maintain health, energy, and morale while you have food on hand?
Concerns out of scope for this discussion: community, sharing, raiding, defending against raiders, hunting/fishing/gardening, etc. Let's just focus on the long term (12 months) management of a food stockpile internally please!
39
u/Mindless_Road_2045 1d ago edited 10h ago
I know I might get some flack from this, but as a person who only eats when needed. And can go quite a while without food. (Cause I’m spun up like a 10 year old in a sleep over) Start rationing when the lights go out. Cook perishable food quickly and preserve it. Use it first. Water before food! If you have sugar use it in your water. Some salt too. Conserve energy, work smarter not harder. Work with a plan. Besides the more you dive into your work the less likely you will be hungry. Busy is not hungry. Your body will tell you when you absolutely need to eat to survive. I would rather have the situation end before my food does. Eat what you need only. Humans lived for millennia without counting calories, (kinda why most of us are still here) Early humans and animals live days without food. If you have a huge stockpile of food, find other food first, stockpile is last resort! But that’s just me.
Oh one other thing. Remember your grandparents. Chew your food 20 times then swallow. A big mush in your tummy of water and food makes you feel fuller. And it helps in digestion. Therefore more energy gets extracted by your body. Rather ending up as waste. Plus the less your digestive system has to work on digestion, the less energy you spend.
Have a plan, work your plan.
7
1
u/Charming_Spinach_362 3h ago
I agree, but one caveat for me and maybe others. I am hypoglycemic and can go most of the day without even thinking of food if I'm focused on something. I've come close to having the "shakes" from not eating a few times lately and am working on TRYING to eat as soon as I get out of bed. Eat to live. don't live to eat.
80
u/Wickerpoodia 1d ago edited 1d ago
Quick tip. Everyone thinks when things get bad they will just eat a lot of rice and beans.. the average person in the US doesn't eat enough beans regularly and changing your diet to eating beans heavily is going to give you digestive problems. Start incorporating beans more regularly into your diet now.
30
u/CreasingUnicorn 1d ago
Yes, one way to approach this issue is to always eat your preps semi regularly, so that when you have to rely on them you arent eating food youve never had before.
If you go from earing fresh fruits and meat to suddenly eating 3 cans of lima beans per day in a crisis, you are going to have a bad time.
My family is used to eating boxed macncheese with spam, instant mashed potatoes, canned veggies and fruit, imstant coffee, and powdered drink mixes, so if we suddenly lose access to a grocery store for a few weeks we wont be too out of our element.
14
u/Loose-Compote-9824 1d ago
Some of us store what we eat. We eat lots of beans, and rice. Which is why I store lots.
3
1
u/fuzzybunnies1 7h ago
If I have to eat 3 cans of lima beans in a day I'm just giving up, sometimes life just isn't worth it. ATM we have about 3 weeks worth of the food we carry on backpacking and bikepacking trips, so we're familiar with it. But it would get tiresome after a while.
7
u/Any_Needleworker_273 1d ago
Or freeze dried food. If you are not used to eating it. Whew, it can work a doozy on you. Even seemingly innocuous things may upset your stomach if your not used to it. For example, we recently added canned chicken to our deep pantry, something I eat like every few years in a camping meal, so I made something with it, and even though it was pretty much chicken and salt, it still gave me an upset, bloated stomach. So be mindful and try what you store to ensure you don't end up with tons of food that causes you a lot of problems.
2
u/MrHmuriy Prepping for Tuesday 1h ago
If before cooking beans, you soak them for a day or better even two, and change the water several times, then there will be no big problems with digestion even for those who have never consumed beans before
1
u/PrisonerV Prepping for Tuesday 17h ago
Good tip. Going to start keeping some generic Beano around, especially if I have beans, cabbage, or cauliflower.
-2
u/Virtual-Feature-9747 Prepared for 1 year 1d ago
I don't disagree, but when you are hungry enough anything will taste good.
54
u/mrrp 1d ago
It's not about tasting good, it's about having the right mix of bacteria in your guts to handle what you're eating. It doesn't matter how much you're eating if you're birthing liquid hot snakes while laying on the floor in the fetal position - you're not going to be getting much benefit from food that's speedrunning your digestive tract.
13
2
u/Grendle1972 11h ago
Rinse the chicken several times in the can before using it. I carry a can of chunk chicken and a pouch of Uncle Ben's rice in my work bag in the event I can't grab a meal while at work. 90 seconds in the microwave, and the rice is done. Add the chicken to it and the rice will heat it up. An easy quick meal.
66
u/2everland 1d ago edited 1d ago
Many people here have never been in a crisis. Sadly, some of us have. When disaster strikes, the stress response in your body will probably caused decreased hunger and sleep disturbance.
I have a big appetite and I remember I had to force myself to eat. It was crazy. I was dropping weight despite having food around. So were others. After the first week, rumors spread of how to take care of ourselves and stay functional, like mentally-physically functional. Lack of appetite was an unexpected concern in the community. So the rumour about eating that helped me was -
You have to make yourself hold the food in your hand. Even if you can't eat it, keep holding it, and eventually you will mindlessly take nibbles.
Yeah, it took me like an hour to eat one little protein bar. Also it doesn't help you will quickly bore of eating the same old not-warm food all day every day, which doesn't help appetite. And all the while I was only sleeping 3 hours a night, so my body was stress burning calories like crazy. Lost a lot of weight which of course all came back when the traumatic stress shifted the other way and hunger and sleep came slamming back. Interesting times....
Anyways, don't worry about your appetite or sleep, it'll be fucked to hell anyway. My advice - Have a diversity of food options (You don't know what your body will want in crisis-mode). And always strive for balance between taking care of yourself and helping others. And if you have to lean one way, lean towards helping others.
7
5
u/Donexodus 1d ago
100% this. When SHTF, you don’t need to eat much for a good while. More of a nibble mode.
42
u/WhereDidAllTheSnowGo 1d ago
Drink water but don’t eat for 24 hours
You’ll understand the questions and answers far better
25
u/Dananddog 1d ago
This. One must experience the thing they're worried about overcoming.
Fasting for 24/48 hours isn't a blast, but it's very doable.
15
u/IGetNakedAtParties 1d ago
Better 48 hours. My experience is that it gets worse for 24h then stabilises. Doing some cardio at the end of the fast makes hunger severely reduced too.
1
u/Miserable-Tell-4072 7h ago
Fertile women do have different requirements and shouldn't be randomly fasting, without consideration for their cycle, if they want to remain fertile. Just saying. It's not like everyone can just turn it on again, when they want it.
54
u/Many-Health-1673 1d ago
Once you dig into your food reserves you start the clock towards starvation if you do not grow/harvest your own food as a way to replenish your stock.
Keep to a specific number of calories a day (2,500/3,000 or whatever number you decide on depending on how active you are) as a way to prevent under eating or over eating. People doing hard manual labor will need 3,000 a day.
9
u/jshuster 1d ago
I do a fair amount of manual labor and walking, and I eat around 4k calories a day
15
u/Many-Health-1673 1d ago
A person's size and weight, muscle mass, metabolism, activity level, and type of activity being performed will all play a part in determining the proper amount for your needs.
12
u/jessmartyr 1d ago
My gut says if it looks like it’s going to be a prolonged situation that stretches past your stores comfortably allow then ration, if not then prioritize maintaining health and energy levels
5
8
u/SheistyPenguin 1d ago
If you just care about measuring food storage, and you mostly stock retail, this is easy to test (though requires some discipline).
Start with a full pantry and an empty fridge. Get totals for each class of food you have in the pantry: boxes of pasta, cans of beans, etc. Then track what items you consumed over the course of a week (or how many ounces/kg of bulk items). Divide your total of each category by amount consumed, and that's roughly how many weeks of real-world eating you have.
In terms of rationing food... try not to. It's like saying: "how much car maintenance can I skip, in order to keep my car repair fund going as long as possible?"
Maybe try to avoid excess, and switch some more expensive proteins (meat) for cheaper proteins (beans). But otherwise starving yourself is just going to give you health problems.
1
u/Virtual-Feature-9747 Prepared for 1 year 1d ago
I think I was getting at something like this: How does one limit themselves to a diet of one cup or rice and one cup of beans per day when you are sitting on top of a large stockpile of food? Technically, you can live off a diet like this for months. Add in some canned meat and you could do it for a year. but it would not be fun.
The real question in my mind is how to stay disciplined and on track. The person who is truly starving has no need for self control, nor does the unfortunate soul dependent on government/community rations. They have no choice.... a good prepper does.
5
u/SheistyPenguin 1d ago edited 1d ago
I would argue that trying to plan for a scenario of rationing every last crumb, ruling the larder with an iron fist, starving yourself, etc. is not very realistic nor productive. How would you even practice something like that?
A ration of food should have sufficient nutrients, variety etc. to meet someone's caloric needs, whatever they are. Preemptively putting everyone on a monk's diet is a recipe for failure. It's basically an admission that you didn't prep enough for whatever goals you had in mind, and it increases the odds of people making bad decisions (or even mutiny against the jerk who is starving them for no apparent reason).
Your year of preps is really buying you the most precious resource of all: time. Time to react to the situation and plan your next steps. Time to find other sources of food, or relocate to somewhere safer. Time to plant seeds for the next growing season. Do you think it might take you longer than a year to do that? Then maybe store some more food.
2
u/Virtual-Feature-9747 Prepared for 1 year 1d ago
Agree on all points. But there is no schedule or time limit on emergencies like this. Yet your resources ARE limited no matter how much you have. The question is management of those resources.
2
u/Loose-Compote-9824 1d ago
Ok, but that just means you need to be figuring out a way to replenish those supplies, that doesn't include the grocery store.
1
u/Incendiaryag 14h ago
I'm more likely to stick to a plan when it is written down. That's what my husband and I do to avoid week to week food waste, we write down what veggies, proteins, and sides are for what meals. I'm less likely to paint myself into a corner by using something meant for completing another meal. So I would write down my meal plan still week by week, just not just under good circumstances.
16
u/dnhs47 1d ago
Your fixed amount of supplies will run out, guaranteed, no matter how you ration.
Sure, you can make it last longer by having everyone starve a little faster, eating less food. Yippee! Sorry, that’s not success.
The correct approach is to balance an initial food supply with the ability to replenish it; i.e., grow your own food after the collapse.
If you can’t grow your own food, it’s guaranteed you’ll starve to death.
Without the ability to grow food, you might as well eat well as long as you can and then check out (pills, bullets, poison) when your food runs out. “It was nice while it lasted.”
1
u/Virtual-Feature-9747 Prepared for 1 year 1d ago
This assumes a finite supply (which is true of any stockpile) during emergency with an infinite duration (which may or may not be true).
As I mentioned, a renewable and sustainable food source is an entirely separate topic. I'm talking about managing your food stores for the ~one year is going to take for 90% of the population to die off which may or may not include the months to bring some kind of crops to harvest.
If we consider an infinitely long crisis then no amount of preparation is sufficient.
8
u/dnhs47 1d ago
"If we consider an infinitely long crisis then no amount of STOCKPILED FOOD is sufficient".
But stockpiling seeds, gardening and agriculture books and tools changes that. You're just stockpiling different/additional things.
But ok, that's a separate topic.
7
u/Loose-Compote-9824 1d ago
Sure. But, you should really be growing now.. because if you aren't you'll never grow nearly enough when you need to. Gardening is at least as much art as science. As much luck as skill.
1
1
u/monty845 1d ago
You aren't wrong. But for those of us who do not enjoy gardening, it becomes a question of whether we want to spend our limited free time doing something we don't enjoy, to prepare for an event that will hopefully never happens... (And at least in my approximation, is very unlikely to happen)
0
u/garfield529 1d ago
If we assume a catastrophic event, most people are going to migrate to population centers to try and find help/supplies. I think rural areas would become and stay quiet quickly. Then it just becomes and issue of cultivating and growing calorie needs to extend your existing supplies. If you live in a city center then you are going to have a different calculation. Just kicking the thought around, but we really won’t know unless something happens, because there is no SHF comparator in modern times for reference.
4
u/Foundation__Of__Rome 1d ago edited 1d ago
People absolutely won't stay urban if there is no food and no help coming. All their time will be spent trying to find food.
People flock to cities for the benefits. They will leave super fast once those are gone.
Many Americans could go months before dying of starvation. Possibly years depending on what they find and their starting weight.
I do 7 and 14 day fasts. It's surprising how little weight you lose besides water weight. 3 or 4lb of fat for 7 days. Many folks got 100lb or 200lb of fat.
3
u/garfield529 1d ago
I think mobility becomes an issue in this case. If fuel is abundant then it will allow people to move dependent on the transport conditions. However, I have worked with groups running restricted calorie movements over distance and find that most people run into fatigue and motivation decline for distances beyond 15-20miles. And honestly most Americans are not in sufficient help to move with adequate supplies over distance. Not saying it wouldn’t happen, but being semi rural gives some advantage. Again, all table top thinking and armchair quarterbacking here. ;)
2
u/Foundation__Of__Rome 1d ago
Most folks will have a tank of gas or battery charged Unless it's an emp event and cars fail.
Even just walking these people will live for months on fat reserves. You don't just collapse and die for most folks until your body looks like a skeleton. A slow walk takes you 2 miles in an hour.
Most of these disasters are going to happen extremely slowly however. food will become harder and harder to come by over a matter of weeks months and years. I don't think anybody's really prepared for that scenario.
4
u/Craftyfarmgirl 1d ago
Yep my strategy is growing more food. Check! Why malnutrition yourself and be hungry when you can grow a kitchen garden in containers even? That’s what they did in the depression and the wars victory gardens. I have plants started indoors in winter, by the time they bloom they’ll be rolled outside for the bees and rain to take over. Quail are easy to keep. Lay an egg a day. If I didn’t have a farm I’d still have a kitchen garden and my quail at least. I’ve gone hungry before when I wasn’t farming. Never ever again!
1
u/Virtual-Feature-9747 Prepared for 1 year 1d ago
Planting takes time, growing takes time, harvesting takes time... all with no guarantee of success due to many factors outside our control. In the mean time, we have our food stores. With harvest months away the question is how to you ration your limited food supply.
10
u/nanneryeeter 1d ago
I would eat based on math and monitor health.
I have a lot of self control when it comes to food so no bigs.
3
u/snakes-can 1d ago
Ration. But have extra carbs before hard work or when your life may depend on you having max energy. 200 lb man for example: Moderate activities. 2000 cal/day —- Lazy inside day, 1600 cal/day. —- Heavy exertion day, 2500 day.
These are all probably around a 10% defect. So expect to lose a pound a week or so on this.
Everyone burns at different rates though.
If you wanted to know, you could do the math during good times to find your daily caloric expenditure.
Lots of tools and calculators online. Just need a $10 scale and to track / weigh exactly what you’re putting into your body for a few weeks.
3
u/tempest1523 1d ago
It depends on how long you think the emergency will go on. If it’s a long time you have to ration more. I know I have 3 months based on my family size. Should SHTF we have squirrels, raccoons, possums etc to supplement and what many describe as renewables.
Should a serious event occur where supply chains are seriously disrupted for an extended time then fasting will be involved, reducing calories, and reducing energy expenditure.
I keep a stock of vitamins and protein powder as well with the food. So on a reduced calorie diet you can stop meet vitamin requirements. I have a male teenage son that has a super fast metabolism and he eats a lot while being no body fat. He would have a harder time than me so I always plan more calories for him because even though he is 70 pounds smaller he eats much more due to that fast metabolism.
3
u/SingedPenguin13 19h ago
My food prep also includes bottles of multivitamin with mineral. Even one bottle of 300 can help me stay healthier for a year or two…. Depending on my intake of foods, can only take one every few days, or every day when food is lower quality. So ,I currently have 3 bottles (on rotation fifo) for just myself and dogs. My son bought me 5 big buckets of wheat berries that do not expire until 2050. Been eating and planting some too!
3
u/CaonachDraoi 12h ago
practice fasting. observing Ramadan has helped me immensely. i know how i think and how i act when im very hungry and thirsty.
5
u/TheRealBunkerJohn Broadcasting from the bunker. 1d ago edited 1d ago
In general, it depends on activity level. It's not an overly complicated strategy, just math. You shouldn't be planning to be hungry- that's why storing sufficient food is the goal. Yes, you'll need self-discipline, but that's a skill independent of prepping that affects all other aspects of life. I personally don't plan to ration with fewer calories than needed, because...well, I don't need to. And you SHOULDN'T unless survival requires it.
Not getting enough calories can be deadly in a survival situation. Not just because of starvation, but because your mental faculties start to degrade, and you'll end up making bad decisions.
2k/person/day x365. That's a general average for a year. (2.5k/person is safer imo.) Holding to that means you'll survive and be (calorie-wise) healthy.
If you have access to water and a wheat grinder, it looks like this: Nine 5-gallon buckets and some #10 cans.
https://rainydayfoods.com/basic-unit.html And costs $1,000.
In terms of funds and space, that's very very doable. Speaking of which, I wonder what the limit on my credit card is...(I speak in jest, of course, but if you don't already have a year's supply, this is a good foundation I would strongly recommend. Rainy Day Foods is a solid company.)
An additional list for what 1 years supply might look like- https://brightspotcdn.byu.edu/b1/4d/75fc449e4ce9843daa701f69faa4/an-approach-to-longer-term-food-storage.SEPT2019.pdf
As for how much you need, it varies. Just staying indoors away from the chaos? 2k calories/day or less is likely fine. Doing extremely hard labor? Might have to increase to 3-4k+
So, you should store to account for that. And then factor in any sort of ways to grow/hunt or otherwise replenish your food stores. Gardening/passive game traps (rodents + birds) is the most logical option, considering in a long-term collapse will see large animals hunted to near extinction in the short term.
Now, if you DIDN'T store enough...that's an entirely different matter, and now it's you and the other 99% of the country that are in the same boat. And that gets ugly, fast.
2
u/BigJSunshine 1d ago
Popcorn is fiber and filling as fuck. If store it properly, it will last 5-10 years. It’s nutritional value is not great, but as good as rice. So consider it for a stockpile.
You still need a viable garden and a source of protein, but its a start
1
u/Virtual-Feature-9747 Prepared for 1 year 1d ago
I love popcorn. I have some stored in mylar bags with oxygen absorbers and some kept in the freezer.
What is your definition of properly stored?
2
u/mrrp 1d ago
Your primary concern, as with all grains, is probably rodents and pests.
Popcorn will not pop if its moisture content is too high or low. Getting too low is what you'd expect during long-term storage. Some report success rehydrating popcorn. (I've never tried, so won't comment on methods.) If that fails, it's still corn and you'll end up grinding it up and eating it in other ways.
1
2
u/Wayson 1d ago
If you do not have a plan to restock either from harvesting crops or buying / trading for more food then you are only delaying the inevitable by rationing what you have. Poor nutrition will make it easier to get worn down and tired which will make it easier to get sick or injured.
The worst time of year for everything to instantly collapse would be late summer. For most peoples climate zones that is too late in the year to get any kind of a crop into the ground and so you would need 10 to 12 months of food to survive there. I will check out before I starve to death but you have the option to keep on hoping I guess.
If you think it is easy to grow a crop from seed to harvest then I encourage you to start with a raised bed to get an idea of effort and scale up from there. I did this with corn and realized that my yield projections were way too optimistic. Potatoes were a better result. Beans were a mixed bag but oh my god shelling all the dried beans was incredibly time consuming and mindless.
1
u/Virtual-Feature-9747 Prepared for 1 year 1d ago
Late summer is going right into harvest season. Why would that be the worst? I would think winter would be worst because growing season is a ways off and it takes months to harvest anything.
As you pointed out this is not easy. This is why we should have a years' worth of food stored.
The question is how to ration the dry goods and canned food. Yes, initially you have plenty but you can't eat like there is no tomorrow....
2
u/ISOMoreAmor 1d ago
I've incorporated fasting as a part of my lifestyle. My work and mental fortotide to get things done before I take a lunch break are my norm. Have had Tuesday situations I was so immersed in, I had to force myself to take in calories before passing out from exhaustion. A shtf, rationing situation would be another Tuesday for me.
2
u/adroitus 1d ago
Hunger isn’t linear for most people. If you eat a pretty high-carb diet, which most people do, then your metabolism is gets used to having a constant supply of carbohydrates for energy. Carbohydrate storage in the body is very limited. Your carbohydrate stores will be used up pretty quickly, which causes intense feelings of hunger. That’s why, for most people the first couple days of a fast are the worst.
But after that, your body starts to metabolize stored fat for energy, at which point the hunger pains go away, your energy goes up, and you can sustain yourself for several days without eating.
Compare that with calorie restriction, which generally results in sustained low blood sugar, hunger pangs and intrusive thoughts about eating and the amount of time left until the next meal.
If I ever find myself in a situation where I cannot obtain more food, I’ll just eat what I have at a normal rate and start fasting when I run out.
2
u/Docella 1d ago
We have decided to put out food stockpile in weekly bins. Yes it takes up more space but for us it works. It makes it easier to know how many portions we have, and make it easier for us to have meals sort of planned out. We are storing 3 months of food bins and 3 months of mri food bags.. Both are devided into portions.
This system will not work for everyone. We make it easier for ourselves so we adopted a system that works for us.
2
u/CopperRose17 23h ago
I think that's a good idea. I've planned meals with shelf stable foods, but I'm not sure exactly how long my family can survive on it. I'm testing the recipes, and finding out the portion sizes aren't as big as I thought. I am aiming for three months, with rice/beans/flour back up. Thank you for your post. It brings some realism to this subject. :)
2
u/JRHLowdown3 1d ago
15 or so years ago I was cutting weight for a competition and lost 40 lbs. in 4 months.
Calorie restriction works for losing weight. Your weight in lbs. X 13 is the amount of calories you need daily to maintain. Take in 500 less per day and you'll lose a lb. a week, take in 1000 less per day and you'll lose 2 lbs. a week.
I made a point to continue to do combatives three times a week, all my normal homestead and regular work and jog 2 miles three times a week. Most days I was averaging 1,500 calories a day or less. Often times by 4-5pm when we would go out to jog, I would be under 1,000 calories so far for the day.
It' doable. You will develop a bit of a memory "fog" after a little while on restricted calories. But this is an important exercise to do and everyone should know how their body reacts under these conditions. And let's face it, most of us need to drop some lbs...
I've done this again briefly several times over the last decade, during periods where I was injured, couldn't train and my weight crept back up to the 190'ish range. I like to stay 180-185 this is where I can go train for the weekend, run around on less calories and not feel too bad- a little in the gas tank but not a lot.
A true emergency situation would NOT be the time to experience this for the first time or do this at all unless completely necessary. You'll need all your faculties and contrary to stupid info put out by people that don't live this way, survival is WORK and you'll be doing a boat load of work every day. You need proper calories and nutrition for that.
During Helene, it was all work.
2
u/Blackwater_Park 1d ago
Have you tried intermittent fasting as sort of a test of yourself? I’m not a doctor/nutritionist but I found, as a person who really loves food and eating on a “normal” schedule that after a few days your body really adapts. Im fasting for 20 hours and only eat in a 4 hour window each day. still going for runs, etc. again, only recommending you try in so far as it helps you plan better. The other thing I found is that I eat less during my “eating hours” and am not specifically trying to limit calories.
2
u/CopperRose17 23h ago
I did intermittent fasting for years before it was a "thing". It was a pattern my body fell into naturally. I aim for limiting eating to six hours a day, concentrated early in the day when I'm more active. You can acclimatize to this, and it might be good to practice in case SHTF.
2
u/Cute-Consequence-184 22h ago
Depending on where your are... many won't have to ration for long. Only long enough to get into the next growing season.
This has happened throughout history. Now it is just different because not everyone gathers their own food or preserves their own food.
Short of a nuclear winter, farmers will just keep planting and making food. Mega farms would have issues but small farmers will persevere. Farmers keep fuel last a season usually.
So yeah, many would fail but there would be many more just keeping on keeping on.
1
u/Virtual-Feature-9747 Prepared for 1 year 20h ago
There a many more scenarios that will impact a growing season beyond nuclear war. If SHTF in winter you can't even get a crop in the ground for several months, with several more to harvest. It may be a year or even two before some kind of new food supply chain is worked out.
For example, even if farmers have fuel and fertilizer for a season, there may be no transportation to market... or a workable system to buy food. Or an ongoing civil war may prevent organized farming. Or the government could nationalize all food production and control food distribution.
This is all beside the point as the question was about how to ration the food that you have. Since you have studied history, you know that disaster and starvation go hand in hand.
2
u/Repulsive-Owl-9466 18h ago
I thought about doing this and maybe it will work for you. Have some cheat foods prepped.
Like have some tasty shelf stable foods set aside specifically for when you got the munchies or just wanna treat yourself.
We are all human and got our hungry urges. Having some meals where you can just pig out a bit will probably do you well for mental health/morale.
You could probably plan something like "ok I have three months worth of food. I'm going to make sure I stick up on enough so at least once a week, I can eat like a king.
2
u/Loose-Compote-9824 1d ago
No definite plans. We eat what we store and store what we eat. I doubt we'll really know we're permanently down for a while. So, at least for a while we'll continue to eat as normal. Eventually we'd combine freezers, etc. I have two medium -large chests that stay 50-80% full. At need we could rapidly eat down and combine them into one within a month or so. There's usually a good bit that's not really required to be frozen in them (flour, grains, beans, spices, etc).
3
u/Virtual-Feature-9747 Prepared for 1 year 1d ago
Honest response. I also have flour and rice in the freezer - as well as 'properly' packaged for long term storage.
But something to think about in for the first few months: Eating normally reduces your survival time vs being continuously hungry to stretch supplies.
2
u/Loose-Compote-9824 1d ago
Eh, there's usually something growing, which has a finite shelf life (lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, etc). Eggs to collect and consume, trade or sell. Lambs and calves and pigs and chickens to raise and eventually butcher, and thereby eventually restock freezers with. Supplies won't last forever. Better off eating them while you have them, and replenishing as you can, with what you can. Instead of "rationing" and wasting away and then going bad
1
u/Virtual-Feature-9747 Prepared for 1 year 1d ago
What kind of food are you stockpiling that does back in days or weeks? I mean, yeah, eat any perishables foods ASAP. I'm talking about month two, month three, etc.
As your lambs, calves, pigs, and chickens... do you have all that? Do most people?
1
u/Loose-Compote-9824 1d ago
Idk about most people, but yes, we do. Lettuce and such have a very finite 'shelt life' as I've never found a way to store them for more than a few days at best. We eat lots of salads in season. Tomatoes, peppers, beans, etc can be canned or pickled or frozen, but we still eat as many as possible in season, preserving what's left.
3
u/silasmoeckel 1d ago
No I have a reliable food stock of 4500 cals a day (trust me do real work you need more food and gives you the chance to turn some more useful as animal feed). Grains today are so stupidly cheap vs the effort and space you need to put in post SHTF.
Months who measures them in small numbers try decades, 3 to be exact. This is not a ton of space 60x8x8 mixed in with other sundries for my family of 5 so about 12x8x8 per person. A small bedroom or not much space in a basement.
12 months is nothing anybody can do 6 in deep pantry. No expense just buy ahead what you eat. I fit a month for my family of 5 on one rolling bread rack the pantry in my house could fit more than a dozen on those if it had to.
If you have your day to day deep pantry and freezer (with the requisite solar prep to support it) that's 6 months of just day to day food there. Hunting plays into that as if you do now you understand processing and storing the bounty. Thats half your year.
You have a bug out location that gets prepped much the same and between the two you have a year.
3
u/Wayson 1d ago
12 months is nothing anybody
12 months of 2500 calories a day for one person takes up two 72" shelves, even with most of the calories coming from beans rice oats and pasta. If you are fitting five months for one person or one month for five people on a bread rack in your pantry I think I have to call BS.
0
u/silasmoeckel 1d ago
Your math 2.5k takes 1 foot of shelf per person per month I have 30 of those for one month for 5 people, assuming the same depth and height per shelf with my 6 5 foot shelves. So I'm 1/6 of your density in my deep pantry. If your meaning 2 72 inch chelds top to bottom for a person thats a shelf a month per person and were pretty close, 72x what would make the different 12 vs 60x14 is very similar in square inches.
Mind you all my calories are not there deep freeze is all the proteins and a lot of the dairy like butter. Were pretty protein and dairy heavy vs carbs from grains in our day to day. Also how much of your is premade th volume of straight flour is a lot smaller than finished products.
4
u/Virtual-Feature-9747 Prepared for 1 year 1d ago
So let me get this straight... 4500 calories per day for five people for THIRTY YEARS? That is 246 million calories or about 164,000 pounds of rice (for example). I'm calling BS on this - LOL!
Anyway, I'm prepped for one year... but the question is how or if to ration it. So you have thirty years of food. Ok. What if the emergency lasts 40 years? Say, an meteor impact that leads to a global winter lasting four decades. Noe, do you ration your food? If so, what is your plan to maintain self discipline if everyone is continuously hungry?
0
u/silasmoeckel 1d ago
Dry rice is 3500cal per kg and about 20kg per cubic foot (I know metric to imperial but hey that my shelves) so 70k per that 3700cf ish
60*8*8 is 3400cf BTW and I said about. My shelves are that tall so add a couple foot for the top bucket and we are well over 4k. Squared off buckets help a lot for bulk.
Now sugar is 4x the calories per kg and it's slightly denser more kg per cf.
Beans are similar to rice in cals per kg but again denser.
Wheat berries is pretty similar to rice in cals and kg per cf.
So learn to do math before calling BS. That's one and a half high boy shipping containers BTW.
40 years isn't practical though in that scenario I'm not doing much work mostly trying to keep me and mine warm so expect under 3k. Giving me 45 without spoilage. Point being is you can not ration your way out past a point things are going to go bad you need to be able to replace things. In that 40 years of winter unless your sporting an RTG happen to live next to a hot springs or have a natural gas well your gonna die.
2
u/Virtual-Feature-9747 Prepared for 1 year 1d ago
I did the math, still calling BS. Thirty years of food for five people is an insane amount of supplies. That's ~$100,000 worth of food. (I did the math on that too.) So, yeah, no worries if you are a millionaire with a bunker.
1
u/silasmoeckel 1d ago edited 1d ago
No you didn't.
Retail price jumped a lot in in 2008 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000701312 but it was 50c or so before that that's retail in small quantities. I mean sure if your buying at walmart today what idiot would prep like that (well we all started there)
Bulk I'm looking at a bit over 25c a lb 40k or so todays price for a stock that was built up over 20 years. It was not quite half that 20 years ago.
Wheat berries (a better long term storage and more cals per lb) do to any feed store and your looking at under 25c retail. Wholesale it's just over 10c https://www.macrotrends.net/2534/wheat-prices-historical-chart-data bushel is 60lbs at just over 6 bucks, half that pre 2008.
So todays number lets go all wheatberries your looking at about 15k. Now you need a mix etc it's going to be more than that but even at 2x the price it's 1k a year for 5 people. People spend way more than that on plate carriers tactitard vests etc. Hells current ammo prices I go through more than that at the range keep in practice with the pistols.
Now do I spend that little no I'm more protein to match my dietary requirements. TVP is about 50c in large quantities wholesale and that's less calorie dense than rice. Were not talking millionaire money either. That's a couple months normal grocery bills for normal people with a family my size (correction checked and feds say poverty eating is 1150 a month for family of 5 as thats what food stamps pays), I figure hunting more thans offsets things, it's nearly 1k lbs dressed out red meat from deer season alone (3 hunters 9 tags and a bit over 100lbs dressed a pop), cheap beef is 4 a lbs around me.
1
u/PrepperBoi Prepared for 9 months 1d ago
The real problem is resupply in the event of a crop failure year.
2
u/silasmoeckel 1d ago
Again who measures in months? 3 decades is about the max with nutrition and the point of it is to cover those failure years. Storage today is cheap and easy cover your bulk calories and supplement when you can for more nutritious garden etc.
1
u/ResolutionMaterial81 1d ago
I will not be rationing food!
And if that is a concern (and I think it should be), now is the time to increase your pantry size.
If you have the secure temperature/humidity controlled storage space & can afford it; wheat (& the quality infrastructure to mill & mix it) and Freeze Dried can store for decades.
1
u/ResolutionMaterial81 1d ago
I will not be rationing food!
And if that is a concern (and I think it should be), now is the time to increase your pantry size.
If you have the secure temperature/humidity controlled storage space & can afford it; wheat (& the quality infrastructure to mill & mix it) and Freeze Dried can store for decades.
1
u/Virtual-Feature-9747 Prepared for 1 year 1d ago
No matter how much you increase your food store, it is still a limited resource. But that is not the question at hand. The question is management of that resource. Specifically, the disciple and ability to limit your eating during an emergency.
2
u/ResolutionMaterial81 1d ago
Is stored food a "limited resource"...sure, at some future point-in-time I will have crank up the diesel tractor & prepare a plot for a large garden. And I have acres of arable land & many successful gardens under my belt, though that was decades ago.
All that being said, I have LOTS of long term food storage...over 1,000 extra lbs of wheat put away just since 2020/2021 & hundreds more cans of Freeze Dried since then as well. 500k calories in FD since the 2024 Black Friday Sales, 16 more #10 cans in the last week.
But if it gets to the point where we are concerned about running low on stored food, that would be many, many sunsets from now.
And the majority of humanity in North America long since ceased to have earthly concerns.
(Even if I were stranded away from home in either of my primary vehicles, have enough Freeze Dried for a month for 2 people. And there are lots of calories most people would dismiss as weeds to consume if it came to that.)
TL/DR...Not rationing, no need.
1
u/endlesssearch482 Community Prepper 1d ago
Learn how to grow food. Permaculture, forest gardening, guerrilla gardening… they’re your long term strategy to battle with food insecurity. And besides, food is cheap now. At least basic calories like beans and rice are. Store a surplus.
1
u/Virtual-Feature-9747 Prepared for 1 year 1d ago
Two points: One, planting, growing and harvesting crops takes time. Two, however much you store it is a limited resource. The question is about management of that resource.
1
u/endlesssearch482 Community Prepper 1d ago
It does, but what else are you doing with your time? You can’t hunker forever. I can splice an apple branch onto an ornamental apple tree and nobody will notice it… hell, I have a permaculture garden, but for city dwellers, so something. Supplies can’t last forever.
1
u/concept161616 1d ago
I've found that one meal a day and intermittent fasting is actually pretty easy to adapt to, and I am fully confident that I could ration myself to one meal if I had to. Fasting is a great practice for SHTF
1
u/Derfel60 1d ago
Food rationing is a bad idea unless absolutely necessary, such as a short trip where you can only carry limited rations. If youre prepping for complete societal collapse, then you need a farm or smallholding and the knowhow to work it. By all means keep an emergency stockpile in case of a bad harvest one year, id personally keep 5 years worth of food for anyone you expect to live there, 2000 calories per day, rotate out the oldest when you bring in the new harvest.
If youre prepping for an earthquake, or other natural disaster after which you expect normal life to resume, then it shouldnt be too hard to keep a couple of months worth of food.
1
u/premar16 21h ago edited 21h ago
I don't go by calorie but by meals. Now is the time to get to know local farmers,growers,ranchers in your area. That way when things get tough you already have a local source of food. You are already on their radar. You can find out ways you can help them when they need it. For example. I do have space for a big garden but I have friends who do. I often give them scraps for their animals or compost. I sometimes help with weeding and other things. I get my eggs from the store but I do know where I can get eggs from friends or people in the area. If you have a farmers market go there and chat with some of the vendors
1
u/mcapello Bring it on 17h ago
Do you have a strategy for rationing food? If so what is it? How many calories per day? What does that look like in terms of rice and beans or whatever?
Our stockpile is designed to deliver somewhat a little bit above the maintenance needs of our family in order to account for a combination of physical labor and growing children. So between 2,500-3,000 calories per day. Most of it is in wheat, oats, and dried beans.
We live on a farm and our stockpile is mainly designed as a bridge to growing our own food. We're been gardening and raising livestock for many years, but not at a scale needed for self-sufficiency, so the dry storage is meant to give us a room to fail for the first year or two.
Do you have the discipline to be hungry and/or calorie deficient when you still have months of food stores?
The food we have stored is going to taste like absolute shit. Getting my people to eat enough of bland beans and porridge is going to be more of a challenge.
1
u/Incendiaryag 14h ago
A step before rationing is order of consumption to avoid waste. For the first week or so your focus is not wasting what could go bad in terms of perishables. Next you are going for conscious use of shorter shelf life "pantry items" like breads, cookies, crackers. Look at unopened food as your insurance policy and first see how long you can eat off items that will expire in weeks (with consideration for how you cope with or without power). I would first plan out how long that stuff would last me and then do rough math for the truly shelf stable items (and how I would plan to eat/prepare). Planning for 1800 calories a day isn't crazy.
1
u/NotTooGoodBitch 8h ago edited 8h ago
12 months of total societal collapse? You'll need to defend your rations and yourself quite often. People are going to hit levels of desperation you've most likely never encountered. Multiple waves of people are going to go home to home looking to take what they can.
People will begin rapidly losing weight. By 6 months, it will be very apparent who is eating and who isn't.
Edit: Loose lips sink ships. Anyone you've told about your prepping, and any person they've told, will show up at your door.
2
u/SunLillyFairy 6h ago
I think your post brings up a good point to think on. I've seen folks comment things like, "I can live off 1,200 kcal a day, so every 36,000 I store should last a month." But would it really work that way? What if they usually eat closer to twice that? Are they really going to ration out their calories in that way - like all the sudden be able to super diet? For how long? Maybe if they had those meal kits where it's already listed out, but less likely if they've got a bunch of grains and beans - one would need to know how many calories per cup or can or whatever and do a lot of figuring, measuring and precise preparation. Also, generally if someone is having to ration out food because of a shortage or bug in or whatever.. they are not going to know the exact amount of days they will need to live off it.
I think it's more reasonable figure out what you eat on an average day - like track everything you eat for a week to get an average - and use that number. 2,000 is often used as a general daily amount, but there is quite a big difference depending on age, gender, weight, muscle mass and activity level. For example, I maintain my weight at around 1,500 a day, my husband is a trim runner, and he needs about 2,500 a day to maintain, and more on long run or race days.
1
u/AdditionalAd9794 1d ago
Maybe consider intermittent fasting now, for practice and for the health benifit.
For me atleast, about 10 days in it becomes routine and much easier
1
u/Virtual-Feature-9747 Prepared for 1 year 1d ago
I've done keto and OMAD (one meal a day). It works (at least for me) and yes, you need a few days to acclimate. But this does not work for everyone. And most westerns are used to eating whatever they want, as much as they want, whenever they want.
I think we'll get sick of rice and beans but still, some disciple here is required (internal or external).
2
u/in_pdx 1d ago
Rice and beans are better than pottage. Pottage was a medieval starvation food made by taking the couple tablespoons of crumbs left in the bottom of the flour bag and boiling it in a pot of water. Maybe throwing in whatever bits of onion skins, leaves or whatever. It was basically tea.
1
u/Virtual-Feature-9747 Prepared for 1 year 1d ago
I recently saw a YouTube video that went into detail about what medieval peasants ate. Pottage was a primary staple. It's good to understand how they survived back then, but even better to take steps to avoid or improve on that situation.
1
u/AdditionalAd9794 1d ago
I do a 20 hour intermittent fasting, so I only eat between 5pm and 9pm. I'll eat a snack when I get home from work and meal later in the evening
1
u/Lethalmouse1 1d ago
As someone who does not do "hungry" very well, I'm wondering about the ability to successfully ration food after a complete collapse.
The most useful prep is training. Without training many people's preps will be useless as intended.
If you "can't do hungry" then the best plans will fail to your human behaviors.
It's no different than some ninja assassin prepper buying 400959993994 guns/ammo with his Rambo dreams, while being unfit and untrained in his guns.... he ain't doing jack.
So, the only real answer is to practice "normal" forms of hunger, like well health considered intermittent fasting etc. If you can't do that, you'll probably screw yourself in a rationing scenario.
Do you have the discipline to be hungry and/or calorie deficient when you still have months of food stores?
There's a lot of variables. Whenever you lose weight you're in a calorie deficit, what kind of calorie deficit are you talking about? How long does the person actually think they need their food stores purely? Etc.
I don't personally prepare for your type of level, I plan within the scope of supplemental. So it would never be relevant, I suppose if all my animals died and the world collapsed that hard, and my pond lost its fish... well, I'll just go away to the afterlife because I don't want to be here anyway.
1
u/GrouchyAnnual2810 1d ago
I enjoyed reading everyone's comments. I even picked up a few knew ideas.. thank you all for sharing!
0
1d ago edited 1d ago
[deleted]
1
u/Virtual-Feature-9747 Prepared for 1 year 1d ago
Again, the question is not what to store but how to ration it. Say you are in month one, are you ok going being hungry all the time when you still have a mountain of food?
0
1d ago edited 1d ago
[deleted]
1
u/Virtual-Feature-9747 Prepared for 1 year 1d ago
This assumes you know exactly how long the emergency will last. There are no certainties.
Plus you might be limited on what you prep by money, space, time or other factors.
No one is going to *chose* to go hungry but it's a freaking emergency... some disciple is required on how much food to eat, how much water to drink, how much power to use. These are finite resources.
1
0
u/AlphaDisconnect 1d ago
Stinging nettle. Tea, soup, topping. Pine needle tea. Sadafrass root tea. Know your local berries. Blackberries and salmon berries run rampant in some areas. Mushrooms. Stick to the easy. Shaggy mane (sometimes called inky cap) distinct look, cut town the middle, hollow stem. That's an ID. The little gemstone puffballs. Lions mane. Cat tails. If in season, look for paw paw. Maple syrup. Buckeyes. Wild grapes. Crab apples.
Fishing. Trapping. Hunting (but that could get scarce fast)
Move less. Practice intermittent fasting.
Start spreading these around now. There is food all around. Start finding recipes now.
1
u/ranchpancakes 1d ago
Intermittent fasting doesn’t help here IMO. You still need x amount of calories to function a day, it doesn’t matter if it’s spread out over 18 hours or eaten in a 4 hour window or one meal. Not to mention trying to run around hunting, trapping, fishing, gardening, etc in a severe caloric deficit.
2
u/AlphaDisconnect 1d ago
It helps you teach yourself that the body's reflex to no food is not omg I am going to die, but perfectly OK. More discomfort training than anything.
Likely got fat reserves for a month. Tea recommended to break up the just water.
Don't run around. Keep it close, keep it simple. Scavenge without picking or taking now. Now one is not wandering.
Dandy lions. Forgot that one.
0
u/Few-Carpenter6698 1d ago
I'm sorry, but if you're not implementing other resources to bolster your stockpile, then you're not truly prepping your pantry. If you're unable to supplement your stockpile with home canned goods via hunting/fishing, foraging, gardening, etc; then barter/trade with someone who can do so. Utilize other skills to make a deal. You will still have to probably watch how quickly you eat through your pantry; but it will be better to go about it this way instead of relying on just what you currently have at your disposal.
0
u/andy-in-ny 1d ago
I live on the outskirts of a Metro area. We keep like 2-3 days worth of stuff, but remember, no gas, no electric, so frankly still fucked. So its a 2 hr drive to where we can get all the stuff we would need. Can contribute to family there with Hunting/Cooking/Building/security.
There are some places that Shelter-in-place is not possible. Moving to shelter, based on geography and general calamity are not possible. 10 million people 100 miles from New York city. How's that gonna work? Ive already seen the government seize something from institutions that have and deliver to places that they believe need it more. (Strangely enough election maps were used)
0
u/GrouchyAnnual2810 1d ago
Anymore even the sizes of the cans and package of beans has gotten smaller too.
-1
u/ResidentImpossible40 1d ago
I’m going to keep eating what I want. No one will notice my chubby cheeks, double chin, and love handles and wonder why I still have them six months after the fan was hit./s
-3
u/OnTheEdgeOfFreedom 21h ago
I will never understand why people talk about a complete collapse of society, to the point where food isn't being distributed, and their first and really only question is "how do I avoid being shot for the food I do have."
Sure you put that topic out of bounds. That just means you're writing fantasy. But to answer your question, the available calories in a bags of rice and bags of beans are printed on the bag, and stays more or less the same after cooking. Figure 2,000 calories per day for every human involved. Look up the MDR for vitamins and minerals ad cover those bases, too. Remember that you can't absorb vitamin A (needed for survival) without fat intake. (Fat is hard to store long term.) If you can multiply, you can work out how much of everything you need to last as many days as you want to last. Remember to apportion a gallon of water a day per person. If you cover the calorie intake, you won't start binging on your supplies unless you have some sort of emotional issue - 2,000 calories is a lot. It takes some discipline, sure, but if you lack discipline you're dead in a societal collapse of the sort you propose anyway, so food isn't the issue.
Having left you with a math problem a fifth grader can solve, now we'll leave the realm of fantasy and talk about what actually works. Or if you want to stay in your fantasy sandbox, stop reading here.
Because in the US, and probably a number of other places, you'll be shot for your supplies. In the US there are more guns than people. In your scenario, 333 million people in the US are starving. They aren't going to take it calmly. You'll be dead long before how you apportion your food becomes a problem, because most people will be.
One solution, espoused by some in this group, is to be a better shot and have more ammo than other people, and a community to help guard. That works until it doesn't. Someone only has to get lucky once to catch you napping. Your community only works as long as no one in it decides to grab your goods and run. If you're surrounded by hundreds of people, that's a lot of people who only have to get lucky once to end it for you.
There are two solutions that work to the prospect of a collapsing society. Both are hard.
1) Work your ass off to prevent the collapse and convince people to do likewise. This means voting and knowing what you're voting for, building networks to prevent poverty from wiping out your community, getting involved in politics and/so social work... anything to keep the lights on and the gears turning. It can be as simple as talking your neighbor out of voting for a disastrous candidate or as grandiose as founding an organization that helps battered women, veterans, the disabled - any group that would lead the way down as society begins to unravel. It's the people getting hurt that start yanking society apart - work to make sure they don't have a reason to.
2) See it coming and move somewhere that won't collapse.
If you fail at both, it will be too late to start counting raindrops in the hurricane.
3
u/Virtual-Feature-9747 Prepared for 1 year 20h ago
What a bizarre, condescending and irrelevant response.
120
u/CreasingUnicorn 1d ago
I think if you have an idea of when you can reliably restock food from either trade, harvest, or foraging, then it makes sense to ration what food you have until that point if you have to.
If you are in a survival situation where you dont know when your next meal is, i believe keeping up strength and morale is most important. Walking around half starving is going to lead to a lot of bad decisions and lowered awareness.