What Should Your Food Reserve Consist Of

Netscape Enhanced

What Should Your Food Reserve Consist
Of And How Long Will It Store?

North: Lets talk about the kinds of foods people should probably order and then how it should be delivered, what they should do with it after they get it, and so fourth. My friend Arthur Robinson has used your services in the past. He and I wrote the book, "Fighting Chance," over ten years ago. He recommends the following mix of grains: 40% wheat, 40% corn and 20% soybeans. He has recipes that his kids cook for using these foods in various forms. They have now been eating off their supplies for several years. They are all a healthy bunch and seem to be doing all right. I guess you would probably get tired of the flavor after a while, but they seem to find ways of flavoring it and keeping it going. They are actually using it and practice what they preach. They put their grains in large plastic containers. Would you like to talk a little about how a person gets shipment of this product.

Portela: Gary, you are right. Art Robinson and the LDS Church and a lot of other groups have pretty well proven that if you have a core foundation of grains you can survive on this. And you can buy it very cheap. They don't cost very much money. Get your wheat, maybe a few beans, rice, corn, and maybe a little bit of salt and honey or sugar and you can live on these products. You can buy these core products from us in paper bags if you wish. They will need to be repackaged by the receiver or you can buy them from us already packaged for long term storage or for immediate use in buckets. We package foods typically in six gallon buckets. You can buy them nitrogen packed or you can buy these buckets in what we call a 'Super Pail.' We take a mylar, metal bag and put the product in. Then this goes inside of a bucket which even protects the products longer. The shelf life on these foods, if you store them in a cool environment, can last 30, 40, 50, or 100 years on some of these products because the shelf life is that good.

North: Arthur has a marvelous system which didn't cost him too much. He got basically a large tank then buried it. This is comparable to the designs we wrote about in 'Fighting Chance.' It has ten feet of earth over it. I'm not sure if it is a 10 or 12 foot tall tank. It is far enough into the ground that I'm sure it is within that 55 degree temperature range. It is basically a metal lined, old time storm shelter/root cellar but is impervious to rats or other rodents getting into it. So it is an ideal situation. I don't think the average guy is going to do that, but it wouldn't be a bad idea. The reality is his storage area will probably keep food good for 50 years.

Now lets talk about normal people who may not be able to do this. These are people who don't live in Kansas and who don't have a root cellar but are probably urban people. Yes, it is a good idea if they did, but let's be reasonable they probably won't. Let's suppose they get the six gallon buckets with the mylar lining. Let's also assume the worst. Suppose their air conditioning goes down and they are not in a condition to keep the air conditioning on. What then? Is it good for 3 years? For 5 years?

Portela: Absolutely, but keep in mind if the scenario happens where we have a breakdown, people will then start opening these containers and using them and they will not worry about storing food at that time. They will be concerned about the next several months, or a year or two. The food is going to be perfectly fine under those conditions. But leading up to that point - because we never know for sure - you have drawn the scenario out for the year 2000 in an effort to anticipate all of this. If the computers go down then the rest is going to happen, and we are going to have the riots and the other disasters people visualize. We also pack these food products in #10 and #2.5 cans as well as in buckets. There is a little bit more money in cans than in buckets. That is why we push the buckets so much, because it is typically the most economical way to protect your food for long term storage.

North: Tell me about nitrogen packing and why you should or should not go with it.

Portela: Nitrogen preserves freshness and extends shelf life, preventing the oxygen in the air from oxidizing the food. And so we nitrogen pack everything except for our garden seed. We do this in buckets or in cans. Our top of the line package method is the super pails.

North: What are super pails?

Portela: Super pails have the metal liner I mentioned before in a six gallon bucket. Foods packed in a super pail are going to last a long time. They will store best if kept cool. Basements are an ideal location but we realize some people live in areas where they can't have basements. So people have to put them inside of their homes, and hopefully they are air conditioned so it will stay around 70 or 75 degrees. That is certainly better, Gary, than storing it out in your garage where it is going to get 130 or 140 degrees F. and bake the food to death. Heat is the number one enemy to this food once it's packaged. But if the best you've got is inside your home, then that's the best you've got. And you are going to find that these food items will still last a good number of years - 5 - 10 - 15 - 20 years. It depends what the food is. Of course, your dairy products won't last as long as your grain products because they are going to break down a little bit quicker.

Sharing - And Getting Good Nutrition From Your Food Supply

North: One of the things Arthur recommends, and so do I, is to buy at least double what you think you are going to use, and sometimes triple it. He says this because he thinks you will need to share with your neighbors. And I think that's a good idea. One, it is generally good policy and secondly, in a crises situation you will need reliable neighbors who can police or defend an area. This gives them a stake in the defense of that area instead of leaving. You need this even if you are in a rural area. But certainly, if you are in an urban area and there is a civil breakdown you want neighborly relations. And so if you have got extra supplies of food that is a really important thing given the fact that it does not cost very much to do it.

One of the things Arthur recommends is to get vitamin C powder. I bought mine at his recommendation, probably about 15 years ago. I still have a lot of it left. There is an outfit called Bronson Pharmaceuticals down in La Canada, California, that have it. Their zip code is easily remembered: 9-10-11. They have the stuff in 1000 mg containers. You take maybe 1/2 gram a day, which is just a very small quantity of it. You put it in whatever you want. That is important for maintenance of health, very much so in my opinion. The stuff is cheap, I think about a penny a gram and I think you buy it in 1000 gram units. So it doesn't cost very much money.

Portela: There is another way, a much cheaper and easier way to maintain your vitamins and enzymes to maintain a healthy system if you had to live on your food reserves. The Benson Institute at the Brigham Young University campus in Utah did a study for me two years ago. I gave them food that was on average 29 years old. This food was stored at 58 degrees. It was packed in #10 sized cans in a root cellar buried in the side of a mountain. They rated the food on a scale of 1 to 5, five being the best. This food consisted of milk, vegetable soup, corn, oats, eggs and butter, all dehydrated. This food was all still palatable. I personally ate this food. This was an amazing test. Now we are dehydrating foods much better and much tastier than we did 30 years ago. And we are packaging food much better. The key, though, is the temperature people store it at.

We were talking about vitamins and enzymes. Let me tell you how I believe people are going to need to maintain their health. If you store food for 5, 10, or 15 plus years you are going to loose your vitamins and your live enzymes. All you are going to have left, basically, is your protein, carbohydrates and fiber, which is very important, but you still need the vitamins and enzymes. People are going to need to learn to sprout. I understand that sprouted wheat has one of the highest known forms of vitamin C in it. And so if you store your wheat like Art Robinson is suggesting, and if you store it in a cool place and don't bake it and kill the germination of that wheat, in 10, 15 or 20 years, most of that wheat will still germinate. This is not just the wheat but also your other legumes, your corn, your barley, lentils and your other commodities. Through sprouting you can get your live enzymes and vitamins. We believe in this idea and sell these products to help you do this. This is very simple and very inexpensive.

Non-Hybrid Garden Seeds

North: One of the things I have recommended for years is non-hybrid seeds. The non-hybrid seed is important obviously because the seeds harvested from the plant this year can be replanted next year. And those harvested seeds will produce new plants with the same qualities as the plant you grew this year. With hybrid seed you can't do this. You have to re-order seeds every year to get your abnormally beneficial crop. But you are completely dependent on the continuing supply of the hybrid seeds. You do have garden seed products, as I understand it.

Portela: We do. We have contacted one of the largest seed companies in the United States and with the help of the USDA's studies of the longevity of storage, it has been proven that they are going to last for 10 - 20 - 30 years. To get this kind of life the garden seed must packed in atmosphere, not in nitrogen, because nitrogen is detrimental to the germination of some garden seed. These seeds must then be dried to an exact moisture percentage, and then they are hermetically sealed. We put these packets of seeds in #2.5 and #10 sized cans. If families will take these seeds and store them in a cool place - even burying them -- they will still germinate and still do their job after years of storage. We have researched this particular problem, and I think we have got a good solution.

North: Do they have multiple kinds of seeds in each can?

Portela: Yes, each can that has 16 varieties and in the #10 can 3 of these varieties have four packets of seeds, namely the peas, corn, string beans. We do this because you need more of those. This can is able to do several acres of garden.

North: One can?

Portela: Yes, one #10 sized can will plant several acres of garden.

North: That's a lot of garden.

Portela: You need to share, you need to be able to barter. Dr. North: Well, that's true.

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