Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive

So, I got this little flyer in the mail for the annual Stamp Out Hunger food drive, with a little picture of what foods to leave for the mailman to pick up. I got a little sarcastic feeling about it, so I'm going to write about it.

Stamp Out Hunger is sponsored by Campbell's, and, well, just look in the bag to see who else is in on it. This is a very logical move for these companies. They have storable items that would easily be donated to a food bank and it would increase sales; nothing wrong with that.

What I do have a problem with is that all these foods are loaded with MSG: Campbell's anything, Swanson chicken broth, Goldfish, etc. Are we really doing poor people a favor by giving them this junk? Thankfully, at the bottom of the page I have a picture of what was actually donated, and its not Campbell's. It appears to be fruits and vegetables. Phew!

Back to doing them a favor or not: after learning what I've learned about MSG, I'm going to avoid it like the plague. Now, if I was a hurricane Katrina victim, three days after the flood, and I was starving, sure, I would gobble that stuff right up, thankfully; but, if it was 3 months, or even 1, after the flood and I was still being offered that stuff, I would be horrendously offended, and say, "Hey, this is America. If I'm going to get charity, give me some real food!" (even though I know this is what the majority of us are eating).

So, this is especially pertinent for food storage. Food storage items, unless carefully planned, are loaded with MSG!



To be perfectly honest, maybe it is wise to actually add a bag of MSG to food storage. Afraid your kids (or you) won't want to eat foodstorage when it actually comes down to it? Hey, just sprinkle some MSG on it, and that yucky food will taste wonderful! (It'll kill a few brain cells in the meantime, but when it comes to survival...)























yuck

Grocery List Generator

I may be the only one silly enough to want this, but you know how recipe websites let you "print off a grocery list"? I think that's so useful. However, I'm not going to cook all my dinners from one website, and often I just cook my own recipes. So, I searched the web for a grocery list program, and this is what I found.Grocery List Generator This is a Firefoxadd-on, with a suggested donation of $3. It can be organized into an aisle-by aisle grocery list. It involves putting your recipes and ingredients into a database, and then generating a grocery list by selecting meals from your list, the quantity of those meals, and it makes an aisle-by-aisle organized grocery list to print. This is a gem. I was wasting lots of time in the grocery store with an unorganized list, and wanted to zip right through and save time at home doing my ingredients list. Sometimes its a huge hurdle for me to even get a grocery list. But with this, just click, and the planning's done.

Is it suitable as a food storage grocery list? For those with food storage on hand, how do you make a fresh produce/perishable items list? One weakness of grocery list generator is that you can't check off which ingredients you already have. Some generators do.

I was just blown away at how a another grocery list generator has been at my fingertips all along: An Excel Spreadsheet. Foodstoragemadeeasy.net has made an Excel download in which to put all the ingredients for your meals for one month, Excel multiplies it by 3, and you get to print off a 3-month food supply shopping list. I cut and paste rows so that ingredients are organized aisle-by-aisle according to my grocery store.

The down side to both of these is its takes a large time investment to start up. Entering in all your recipes can be tedious. Maybe some of you will find it worth it.

Tuna: The Triple Whammy

Look, Ma, I caught a big one!

More playing with the food storage. So, yes, tuna can contain mercury, MSG, and BPA. I'm not going to say don't eat it. Its got omega 3 fatty acids, protein, I don't even know the cost-benefit analysis of eating a can of tuna, but there are ways to reduce risks:

1. Look for tuna with just water, salt, no broth. Broths often contain MSG.

2. Buy fresh and avoid canned to hurdle BPA leached from can linings. I'd like to can my own meat if I can find the right size jars.

3. Mercury: sadly, 95% of all tuna on earth now contain mercury. What to Expect When you're Expecting (2008) states pregnant women should limit tuna and freshwater fish caught by recreational fishers to 6 ounces per week. For everyone, fish with lower mercury content are "salmon (wild caught is best), sole, flounder, haddock, tilapia, halibut, ocean perch, pollack, cod, and trout, as well as other smaller ocean fish (anchovies, sardines, and herring are not only safe, but also loaded with omega 3)." Alex Jones states he read that much of the mercury we eat passes through us with our food, but the dangerous mercury to avoid is in our vaccinations.

The Seattle Times quoted a producer on the BPA-ban in sippy cups and formulas in WA: "It's 'being put in the mind of consumers that it [canned food] is a dangerous product,' said Randy Ray, a lobbyist for the Pacific Seafood Processors Association. 'And try making a can of salmon to sell in 50 states and have 50 states tell you [you] have to do it differently.'"

I would say to him, we're all the same species and what is harmful to humans in Washington state is going to have the same affect on humans in Mississippi, so there are no 50 different standards; what endangers Washingtonians also endangers Mississippians, too.

Mercury

Word on the street, a few ways to get mercury into your system:

1. "Breathing in while passing a coal plant," will give you "the same amount of mercury found in your local flu shot."

2. Select vaccinations.

3. Eating shark, swordfish, king mackerel, tilefish, or tuna steaks.

4. Mercury fillings.

Whoa, whoa, back up. This video reveals a way longer list than I knew:

Watch Video Clip "Mercury- How to get this lethal poison out of your system"

Do NOT vaccuum up mercury, as it will distribute it into the air.

Do not have your mercury fillings removed by just anyone. Once the drilling starts, it goes into the air and can poison those present. The dentist must know what they're doing and have a special vaccuum for the vapors.

Pregnant women should not be getting the normal flu shot, even though they'll offer it; get thimerosol free.

Chelation is a process of putting proteins in the body which gather the mercury in order to get it out of the system. Also special foods and supplements.

What are the affects of Mercury on the body? (Lots of neurological, depression, weight gain, etc.) How to clean up? What to eat, what to avoid? Watch the continuation of the above video.

Read more:

Most flu shots contain mercury, but few know it

First person: The quest for a flu vaccine without mercury

Mom's Against Mercury

Thimerosol, organic mercury, swine flu, and you

Does the Swine Flu Vaccine contain Mercury?

Flu Vaccine: Contains Mercury, Take Caution if Younger or Lightweight

Your Child’s Flu Vaccine May Contain Mercury

The Mercury Story

Mercury Poisoning and Heavy Metal Toxicity

Learn more about Mercury and other heavy metal toxicities by clicking on my toxin label.

Pickles

This message by David A. Bednar became an instant hit when it first came out. My first time seeing it, I thought, "Who would go to the pain of canning pickles when you can just buy them at the store?" (Watch video "Ye Must Be Born Again" to be further enlightened to the process of home canning pickles.) My husband says I've made a 360 in the past two years, as I used to be anti-canning and anti-gardening, too. Being an economist, I judged it superior to rely on specialization of labor; make good money, and pay others to do the gruntwork of manual labor in the soil.

Debby Anglesey states that most pickles in the store have MSG, and that she has learned to make them at home in her fridge and "they're not that hard to make." Recipe in Battling the MSG Myth: A Survival Guide and Cookbook.

Upon inspecting my own Nalley Hamburger Dills the ingredients include natural flavors, yellow 5, and artificial flavors, all of which I'd rather not eat (see hidden MSG). Then I don't even know what to think about alum, calcium chloride, polysorbate 80, and polysorbate 60.

TVP and dry milk

My mom and I were discussing storing meat one day, and she suggested TVP. "TVP?" I asked. "What's that?" I guess its a meat substitute that is dry that can be used in food storage, and my mom says its an okay-tasting substitute. I did find it at my local WinCo store in the bulk section.

Only problem is, TVP (Texturized Vegetable Protein) is one of the sources of hidden MSG. So, TVP: out.

Another common food storage item: dry milk powder. This is another ingredient that often contains MSG due to processing. What to do without dry milk in an emergency situation? Where are we going to get our calcium? (My bread actually tastes fine when I omit it, b.t.w.)

Sounds like a doozy, but milk is not the only source of calcium, perhaps not even the best. To some this may be good news because not liking powdered milk is one of the hurdles of eating food storage food. (blog "Adventures in Self-Reliance" has a dry-milk comparison of brands to help). Other sources of calcium include: broccoli, collards, bok choy, black eye peas, spinach, trail mix, baked beans. (sources: spine-health.com, iloveindia)

Okay, so we're back to square one. How often do I eat these things, especially in food storage? Plus we'll have to be counting our calcium with a list of how much each of these contain instead of just counting glasses of milk (much easier).

This video here states protein inhibits calcium absorption, and of course milk is full of calcium. (Soda also inhibits calcium absorption, and too much calcium can't be absorbed all at once). I'm not sure about the statements made in here, but here it is: Milk the Deadly Poison on Hard Copy I do have to say, my grandmother lived on a dairy farm all her married life, and does have osteoporosis.

My husband says that after taking Biology at WSU, he wondered why we are still drinking milk. He says he really likes it, but he learned that everyone is eventually going to contract lactose intolerance (symptoms: bloating, gas, etc.) and whenever he has those symptoms, he thinks he must finally be lactose intolerant.

Children with autism are recommended trying a diet free of dairy, wheat, artificial sweeteners, and MSG.

Rodents, Insects, and Other Pests

Rodents and insects need to eat, too. They'll chew right through dry-pack pouches and other thin materials, so these items need further protection. Once they find a way into where food storage is, no stopping them; they can crawl through the tiniest cracks.

I had a friend with a rodent problem. She had purchased those heavy plastic 55-gallon storage containers to store her wheat in. The rats chewed holes in the lids. Again, with PETE plastic buckets, they'd chew holes right through the lids and crawl on in. Then what? Throw the whole bucket out? I suggested she get metal bins, instead, not that I've ever seen any, and she said rats chew through metal, too. Did you know they can chew right through a number 10 can? Disgusting.

So, solution? Rat poison.

Insects, I believe, can be avoided merely by rotating your food supply so its fresh, and by taking out the maximum amount of oxygen when you dry pack. Bay leaves are also minimally reliable.

Next, there seems to be a consensus that in the case of an emergency, there will be violent attempts to get peoples' food storage. Some fixes are: disguise where the food is, guns, who knows. Don't want to think about that. Rats will be more violent and starved, too, so I guess a supply of rat poison would be good.

My kids normally don't empty out my food like this, but food storage is one of their top favorite toys. They'll put it in their trike trunk, purses, shopping bags ("I'm grocery shopping" :)) or just take it all out and stack it. Once a can is dented, though, that's it; bacteria can grow in the can. Hopefully someday it will be safely locked away.

Eat what you store, store what you eat

It is quite sad to throw food away that's gone bad, or that you find you don't like, especially a years supply of it. The following excerpt is from survival-center.com

"An unfortunate number of people in our society have developed allergies to one kind of food or another. One of the more common food allergens is wheat. Even more unfortunate is the fact that of those with an allergy to this most common of grains, many of them are not even aware of it. They won't become aware of it until they try to live with wheat as a large part of their diet. This is the reason you should store what you eat and eat what you store: So that ugly surprises such as this don't come up when it's too late to easily avoid them.

A second reason to think about providing a variety of grains in your food storage is appetite fatigue. There are many people who think providing variety in the diet is relatively unimportant and that if and when the time comes they'll eat what they've got and that will be that. For healthy, well-adjusted adults under ordinary circumstances this might be possible without too much difficulty. However, the entire reason for having a long term food storage program is for when circumstances aren't ordinary. Times of crisis produce stress -- possibly physical, but always mental. If you are suddenly forced to eat a diet that is both alien and monotonous, it is going to add just that much more stress on top of what you are already dealing with. If your planning includes the elderly, young children and infants they might just quit eating or refuse to eat sufficient amounts and become unable to survive. This is not a trivial problem and should be given serious consideration. Consider the positive aspects of adding some "comfort foods".

In his book, Making the Best of Basics, James Stevens mentions a post WWII study by Dr. Norman Wright, of the British Food Ministry, which found that people in England and Europe were more likely to reject unfamiliar or distasteful foods during times of stress than under normal conditions. When it's wheat, day in and day out, then wheat's going to start becoming distasteful pretty fast. Far better to have a variety of foods on hand to forestall appetite fatigue and, more importantly, to use those storable foods in your everyday diet so that you'll be accustomed to them."

So, to keep grandma and the kids from "failure to thrive" in an emergency, be sure to have foods they'll eat! And remember that may be one of the more stressful times to find out you don't know how to cook using food storage, or have to try something new like cooking over a fire. This is one of the reasons to go with methods 2-4 of starting a food storage post because it incorporates foods the family is eating.

Food Storage in the Scriptures

Three prime examples of food storage in the scriptures are:

First, Joseph of Egypt. See the Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on We Jew.com

He was wrongfully imprisoned and then released when he interpreted Pharaoh's disturbing dream to mean 7 years of famine to follow 7 years of plenty. Pharaoh put him in charge of gathering grains and preparing for the famine. He finally caught up with his family because they were starving in Canaan, and its happily ever after.

Second, Noah.

The Lord commanded Noah and his family to build an ark and take two animals of every kind and board the ship. We don't know how long he was in the boat (the Bible states 40 days and 40 nights), but the number 40 in Hebrew represents a very long time.

The people in Noah's time just laughed when he told them to repent, and particularly at building a boat in the middle of the desert. Then the flood came, and everything was destroyed except Noah, his family, and their passengers aboard the ark.

Third, the Nephites eradicate the Gadianton robbers, found in 3 Nephi 4 in the Book of Mormon

More Mormon Channel

The Nephites were a people that immigrated from Jerusalem to the American continent in 600 B.C. In A.D. 3 a band of robbers was in the surrounding mountains where the Nephites lived. So strong were their places of hiding and their holds that the people could not overpower them; yet, the band of robbers were murdering people en masse.

By A.D. 18 the problem had progressed to the point it was all-out war, and the fall of liberty and takeover of the government was being threatened. The Nephites used food storage (and prayer) to extinguish the robbers. They gathered everyone and all their provisions and horses, cattle, and flocks to subsist for seven years if they needed to. The robbers' food supply was cut off, as they were unable to steal anymore. There was no way for them to continue to exist, as their means of survival was by stealing and murdering. After much struggle, the Nephites were able to defeat the robbers and restore peace.

Read the unedited version in 3 Nephi 2 verse 11 through chapter 5.

Now, how will food storage save God-fearing people in modern times? We shall see!

Food Storage Promo.

Of all videos, why this one? 'Cause he's right on, (man); Joseph in the Bible, wheat becoming more valuable than a Lamborghini in the day, and I love his enthusiasm. But, I do ask, when there is an emergency, what is he going to do with that wheat?

One Rotten Apple

Heard the saying, "One rotten apple will spoil the whole bunch?" While sitting in on Biology 101 at USU, I learned this is true. Bruising of an apples releases "hormones" that trigger decomposition. They help the whole apple to begin rotting, but in doing so, the hormones emitted affect other apples to begin rotting as well. Pretty soon there's a rotten bunch. So, sort your produce for bad ones, especially when storing.

Apples can be stored for a long time in cool conditions. The apples bought in the store are usually about 1 1/2 years old. Pickers and growers ship apples to storage houses, which store the apples in huge, cool, storage areas and then ship them when they're ready to be sold. They're rotating them, of course, so this years' apples may actually be last years' pick. The cheapest apples are probably the oldest and need to be sold, whereas more expensive ones may be fresher.

Also, only the good apples are fit for selling in store. No one would buy an apple that physically looks bad. The apples that go into apple juice and applesauce are actually the inferior apples, because no one can tell.

How to start a home food storage program

How does one start a home food storage program? I've compiled a list of 5 different methods I find useful.

1. Use a food storage calculator. Enter the number of people in your household, their ages, and how many months you want the food storage to last, and it will give a list of how many pounds to buy of a variety of products. The downfall is it may not be personalized to fit your family. We did this when we first got married 5 years ago and still have the majority of the tomato paste cans it recommended still on the shelf.
   
2. Compile an ingredients list to make 14 of your family's favorite meals, and multiply by 6, = 3 months of meals your family will love! The only hard part is, are the 14 favorite meals' ingredients ones that can be stored for 3+ months?
   
3. Instead of buying just 1, buy extra! For example, if a jar of applesauce is on the grocery list, don't buy just one, but load up a few more. If this is done with each storeable item on the list at each grocery shopping, pretty soon the pantry will be stocked with a large supply of food your family regularly eats. Just be sure to rotate regularly, and keep re-stocking. The downside to this method is unless you're very methodical about it, you end up with a food supply where you're not exactly sure how long the applesauce will last in an emergency vs. the storage of tomato sauce, or even how long the storage as a whole will last. Fix that by using Excel, below.
   
4. Use an Excel Spreadsheet by downloading the 3-month supply Excel spreadsheet from foodstoragemadeasy.net. This is kind of like the 14-meal plan, except you enter in all the ingredients for breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner for one month and Excel multiplies the result by 3 to get a three month supply. Then you can just print off a 3-month grocery list! With a little knowledge about Excel, this can be tweaked to make a one year food supply and have several other useful functions such as a price calculator.
5. Food Storage Made Easy also has a baby steps program with nine simple steps covering making room, evacuation plans, 72-hour kits, water storage, in 10 easy steps. Start here.
   
6. Many ministries have excellent resources (such as on-line help), or canneries, to help one get started.
   

Got MSG? Foodstorage, Fast food, even health food

You can't really ask if something "has MSG" in it these days. It just makes a big confusing mess. People don't know that its in there, because it has so many hidden names!

Check out name brand food storage companies: they say they don't have MSG in them, but read the label, and they do.

Mountain House Freeze Dried Food

Healthy Harvest I couldn't find the ingredients listing for this so (?)

These don't claim "No MSG," but they do have it.
21st Century Food Storage
Richmoor

I also found this comment.
"Many Freeze Dried foods have MSG of some sort in them, which makes me sick. I have to be very careful about the ingredients… MSG, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, hydrolyzed plant protein, autolyzed plant protein, calcium caseinate, textured protein (any type of TVP), yeast extract, autolyzed yeast, sodium caseinate, vegetable protein extract, glutamic acid, etc. All have MSG in them, up to 78%. So even if an ingredient list says no MSG, or doesn’t have “MSG” specifically in it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have it in. And, MSG is what scientists use to inject in lab rats when they want to decrease their IQ — something that we do NOT want happening to us, right? (though the food companies do, since most all processed food contains MSG). If I ever have to rely on my food storage, I don’t want to worry about getting sick from it, or getting stupid from it. We will have enough to worry about as it is." -Rebecca