As you prepare your emergency 72–hour kits, food is an essential item for those 72-hours. It can take up a lot of room. If you are storing a large quantity of canned foods, the kit can quickly become heavy. Since an ideal kit is portable, you should avoid making your kit too heavy to carry. Here are some ideas for making the kits more manageable.
1) You can purchase MRE’s for your family to eat during the emergency. MRE stands for meals ready to eat. They include an entrée and often dessert for each meal. You may want to test them out on your family to find ones that are to their liking. These were originally designed for soldiers, so they are compact and lightweight. They also have a relatively long shelf life.
2) If MRE’s do not pass the test for your family, you should consider packing lightweight food. Breakfast food might include granola bars, fruit and cereal bars and instant packets of oatmeal. Lunches could include crackers and peanut butter, tuna and cracker packets, fruit cups (these come in plastic as well as metal) and dried fruit. For dinner you may pack ramen noodles, noodle cups, cans of soup (if you only have cans for dinner it won’t be too heavy), pork and beans, canned vegetables and Chef Boyardee meals. For snacks you can pack pretzels, crackers, fruit snacks, and fruit boxes.
3) Be sure that you pack food that your family can eat. Many people call me a picky eater. This may be true, but I have a highly sensitive stomach, and if I eat certain foods I know I will be sick later. I am picky, but I have a real reason for being picky. I am not going to pack any problem foods in our kits, because I don’t want to have to worry about being sick during such a stressful time. Also young children may not eat foods that they do not like, even when they are hungry. You do not want to be worrying about that during a stressful situation.
As you put together your emergency kits make sure that you plan your menus carefully. You can still have a fairly healthy diet over those three days if you have planned it out carefully. You will need to make sure that you rotate it on a regular basis. You may want to do this in conjunction with the time changes in the fall and the spring. That way you can use what will expire in the next six months, and easily replace it. If you pack canned foods, make sure you pack a can opener.