Thinking about food security sparked our recent Three Weeks from the Pantry challenge. We had shopped on Christmas Eve and our plan was to buy no more food until going camping in mid January. We cracked and I bought more vegetables from the Farmers market today and it wasn't because we ran out of food. We had about three days of vegetables left and rather than run out and have our only option to restock being Woollies I bought early at the weekly Farmer's market.
The challenge has raised some interesting points to consider when thinking about food security in natural disasters.
1) WE DIDN'T RUN OUT OF FOOD. We psychologically ran out of food, in particular fruit and vegetables. Even before I shopped this morning we had enough enough fruit and vegetables for at least three days.
In fact the crucial triggers were that one member of the family is a child and there was social pressures to feed her properly. Never mind that we would still have eaten better than the majority of the world's population and it would have been a week without vegetables at the most.
Transferring this to the general population I can see that psychologically running out of food is going to happen much faster than actually running out of food in a natural disaster. If people cannot eat the food they usually eat they are going to become distressed. In our case it is fruit and vegetables but for other people it may be meat, processed food or caffeinated drinks.
Maybe in a real disaster a can-do attitude would prevail and any food would be enough rather than worrying about a balanced diet with fruit and vegetables (add your essential food item). Maybe???
2) The normal amount of non-perishables in most people's pantries is not enough. I think we would have made three weeks but some "essentials" like rice, oats, flour would have run out forcing us to use alternatives.
3) Root vegetables like potatoes, sweet potatoes (kumera), onions, garlic and carrots are really important. They keep well, even without electricity and could last the three weeks (if you had enough), which we didn't. Try and keep enough for several weeks at all times.
4) Running out of your normal hot drink is distressing. We are almost out of tea (although we have plenty of herb teas and coffee beans). I think in a natural disaster this would become more psychologically important because of the cultural soothing ritual of a cup of tea/coffee/herb tea.
5) Alcohol drinkers would also find being deprived upsetting. Not saying that people should stock up on alcohol but think about your dependence on it.
6) Having dried milk in your pantry is very important. We started with 4 L of milk which despite rationing we would have run of by the end of two weeks. Buy some today!
7) Mental flexibility is very important in managing food security in a natural disaster. So you don't have this ingredient, what could you use/substitute instead? Used to having porridge for breakfast- have some stewed fruit instead.
8) Bread. Really not sure how important this is to people but you are going to run out. We normally make our own bread and still had enough flour to last.
9) Add a visitor or someone else stuck in the natural disaster and you are going to push your food reserves even harder. Perhaps another thing to factor into your natural disaster preparation.
10) Fresh greens. This experiment has really emphasised how important having a vegetable garden producing fresh greens would be in a natural disaster.
11) Foraging for greens and fruit really helped eke out the fruit and vegetables.
Even though we didn't reach our three week target (day 11 instead) this exercise was really useful in thinking about food security at a household level. If we were all just adults I would have kept going to the three weeks while acknowledging that our food choices would have been much more restricted, unlike last night's dinner (see below).
The challenge has raised some interesting points to consider when thinking about food security in natural disasters.
1) WE DIDN'T RUN OUT OF FOOD. We psychologically ran out of food, in particular fruit and vegetables. Even before I shopped this morning we had enough enough fruit and vegetables for at least three days.
In fact the crucial triggers were that one member of the family is a child and there was social pressures to feed her properly. Never mind that we would still have eaten better than the majority of the world's population and it would have been a week without vegetables at the most.
Transferring this to the general population I can see that psychologically running out of food is going to happen much faster than actually running out of food in a natural disaster. If people cannot eat the food they usually eat they are going to become distressed. In our case it is fruit and vegetables but for other people it may be meat, processed food or caffeinated drinks.
Maybe in a real disaster a can-do attitude would prevail and any food would be enough rather than worrying about a balanced diet with fruit and vegetables (add your essential food item). Maybe???
2) The normal amount of non-perishables in most people's pantries is not enough. I think we would have made three weeks but some "essentials" like rice, oats, flour would have run out forcing us to use alternatives.
3) Root vegetables like potatoes, sweet potatoes (kumera), onions, garlic and carrots are really important. They keep well, even without electricity and could last the three weeks (if you had enough), which we didn't. Try and keep enough for several weeks at all times.
4) Running out of your normal hot drink is distressing. We are almost out of tea (although we have plenty of herb teas and coffee beans). I think in a natural disaster this would become more psychologically important because of the cultural soothing ritual of a cup of tea/coffee/herb tea.
5) Alcohol drinkers would also find being deprived upsetting. Not saying that people should stock up on alcohol but think about your dependence on it.
6) Having dried milk in your pantry is very important. We started with 4 L of milk which despite rationing we would have run of by the end of two weeks. Buy some today!
7) Mental flexibility is very important in managing food security in a natural disaster. So you don't have this ingredient, what could you use/substitute instead? Used to having porridge for breakfast- have some stewed fruit instead.
8) Bread. Really not sure how important this is to people but you are going to run out. We normally make our own bread and still had enough flour to last.
9) Add a visitor or someone else stuck in the natural disaster and you are going to push your food reserves even harder. Perhaps another thing to factor into your natural disaster preparation.
10) Fresh greens. This experiment has really emphasised how important having a vegetable garden producing fresh greens would be in a natural disaster.
11) Foraging for greens and fruit really helped eke out the fruit and vegetables.
Even though we didn't reach our three week target (day 11 instead) this exercise was really useful in thinking about food security at a household level. If we were all just adults I would have kept going to the three weeks while acknowledging that our food choices would have been much more restricted, unlike last night's dinner (see below).
Comments
Post a Comment