Quick Calculation for food levels.

[Scythe13]

Hi everyone

Just a really quick post about some boring maths.

SD has provided a really good system for how much food everyone needs. Worryingly, not many people check the main site and can miss very helpful stuff.

So, here's a quick little maths game for you all to use for yourselves.

Here's the situation.
I've emptied my cupboard, and am putting in tins from the ground up. Each level has 40 tins.
There are 2 people in the home.

Time for the maths.

2 tins = 1 meal.
1 day = 3 meals
1 day = 6 tins.
40 tins = 6.67 days (let's call it 7 days to make it easier).
Each level = 1 week's food.

That's a really easy calculation that ANYONE can do. And it's a good way to work out how long your tins will last you.

This is something some people might be OVER relying on. Bulking foods.
Rice and Pasta, for 1 meal a day. This will mean only 1 tin is needed for that meal.

2 tins for 2 meal, and 1 tin + Bulking, for 1 meal = 5 tins a day.
5 tins a day.
40 tins, divided by 5 tins a day = 8 days of food.

That's a pretty nice step up. Wait, what about porridge for breakfast?!?!?
Porridge will feed us both, and only uses a bit of honey, sugar, or pollen (no joke, it's actually pretty nice) to make it palatable (yes I have a damn sweet tooth! Some sicko's can still use salt!!!)

That means
Breakfast = no tins
Lunch = 2 tins
Dinner = 1 tin + Bulking.
1 day = 3 tins!
40 tins, divided by 3 = 13 days (almost 2 weeks)

Granted there will be a few tins left over, okay, just the 1 tin. And it does rely on self control, and delicious tinned food. But lets be fair, most of us have probably had the same thing for breakfast everyday for the last few months. Dinner will be a variation of about 4-5 meals, and lunch will be whatever we can get out hands on.

Provided we have enough porridge and bulking foods, the tins you have can last you a bloody long time!

This basic calculation means that 365 days, at 3 tins a day, would be just over 1000 tins. Yes that's a lot. But having 100 tins, isn't that much. It would be 2.5 layers of my cupboard (it's a f**king small cupboard!!!). It's pretty easy to make rice and pasta last AGES, just because when you add water to it, it bloats up. Same as most dehydrated products do.

If anyone on here, has less than 3 months worth of food, for everyone in their house, I put it to you that you either have a huge family, no space (cut that liner out from under your bed! You'll be impressed how many tins you can get under there!), or you have not got many oats, rice, pasta, and other dehydrated goods. Either that, or, you need to learn to make bread and other things that fill you up VERY quickly.

Some of my favourite Lunch tins are Macaroni cheese, spaghetti bol, ravioli, spaghetti-O's, and stuff like that. It's a meal in a tin, can be eaten cold, or hot. Even a tin of beans (sorry Terry).
For bulking meals (dinner) I recommend things like chopped tomato, if you can't grow your own, or a stew type mix, maybe even soup, which you can then use as flavouring for your pasta, rice, pulses, or something like that. Even a tin of beans again, they have the sauce for the pasta, and add a good load of protein.

ALWAYS underestimate your timing. I like to put a minimum of 4-5 tins per day, including bulked out meals. That way, you can enjoy Rice Pudding, Custard, Chocolate Pudding/Sponge/Brownie (hard to get, but well worth it). Which then makes each layer back to the earlier 8-10 day level. But that's with being slightly glutenous.

Using that system above, work out how long you could last on just your home stores. You don't need to post on here what it is. But you should keep track of what you have, and what you need more of (tins, bulking, oats, flour for bread, etc) and then go from there.

I might have lied that this was a quick post. But I hope it really helps those of you new to the forum.

You might also want to consider a draw FULL of chocolate and sweets!!! It's always a lovely pick me up, over the weeks, to enjoy a Chomp, Boost, Mars bar, KitKat (chunky), or a CHOCOLATE ORANGE!!!!

Work out tins per person per meal (it can be 1/2 a tin for smaller people/babies/younger kids, then figure if you're going to finish that tin for them....like I would.....if so, that's 1 tin for that person too).

Work out your bulking meal ratio. Some people would bulk each meal, and could cut their tins to 1 tin lunch, 1 tin dinner, both meals bulked with rice/pasta/bread/etc).

The idea is to totally ignore the food from the garden/fields/allotment/lake/woods/anywhere outside of your home. That way, we're calculating a worst case scenario, how long your food would last (super harsh winter, or something like that, if you need a scenario).

Enjoy.

[bigpaul]

ot try this one, you can print it out for future reference!: http://www.thefoodguys.com/foodcalc.html

[Tarrel]

funnily enough, I use a similar idea to the "one level = one week" calculation to gauge how long my wood supply will last. I know roughly how many logs we use a day, and I have "sampled" the log store to see how much depth this number of logs represents. I have marked divisions of this size up the side of the store so I can see how many weeks' supply I have

[Prepper1]

With your food I suggest, (yes it's what I'm going to do) you go on half rations straight away and it's given once a day with what you've managed to scavenge (if anything).

As much water as you like though, don't skimp on that.

For any kids in the group, or people who aren't that keen on the taste of water, take some cordial to put in the water to add extra taste.

This is only for adults in the group, you can include children if you wish but get them (and you) extra vitamins to help suppliment yours and their diet ( this is extremely important for any preppers stores).

Yes I know its already going to be a difficult time so why make it harder?
It means...

Your food stores suddenly double.... not really but because your on half rations they last twice as long.

It gets you used to less food than you'd normally have just in case you cant find food by growing, scavenging etc...

That way its not such a shock to your system if you don't eat for a day or two for some reason.

Have treats in your stores as well, I've got those crunchy breakfast type bars for a end of the day treat or some such thing,
obviously substitute for something you like.

Half rations may not be everybody's cup of tea and yes you'll loose some weight ( scythe tubby custard) but for me its what I'll be doing for my group.

If we manage to grow or scavenge food stores along the way or hunt the odd pigeon etc... all well and good.

I'm not aiming to starve anyone so if somebody's working hard or shows signs of weakness through lack of food I'll increase rations to 3/4 of the daily rate so I still save food.

Sods law (murphys law) is if tshtf, it'll be in winter when everwhere's snowed in and there's not much of anything around so... I'd rather arrive at a self sufficiency level with food going spare from my stores than having eaten it all 2 months ago and be a walking skeleton...

Not saying you SHOULD do it, just have a think about reducing rations so they last a bit longer, even an extra months food could make the difference...

---

That equates to 1 tin per person per day.

NO breakfast

NO dinner

JUST tea.

After all its not normal life we're planning for here, its shtf not camping in the woods, or holidays.
That foods got to see you through to self sufficiency and depending on the time of year, there may be wild foods or more than likely NOT.

---

I aim to survive and thrive.

Food can be indulged in later when your infrastructure, food supplies are in place.

[Scythe13]

I agree with you on this Prepper1. But not quite so extremely.

I'm currently around the 4000 calories a day level. So cutting to 2500 will be a HUGE drop for me and the wife. She's a triathlete, and is SUPER-FIT!!! She can wake up any day of the year and run a marathon, follow that with a hefting swim, and a cycle ride that would make my bum bleed (I hate those saddles).

So, although I agree with the cut in calories taken in, I also think it's worth enjoying what you can leading up to the event (if it is a sudden event/trigger).

I completely agree about vitamins, minerals, and the alike. I make sure our home has a minimum of 20lbs of protein powder as well as our usual stores of food. Protein will be the hardest thing to get, post SHTF. So I'm making sure there's enough to get us through most of it.

[Weyoun]

I like your thinking Scythe. I am stocking up on protein powers, mass builders and BCAA's but to name a few. I work out 3 times a week and understand nutrition well. I am lucky enough to have a 2 year food supply for my whole family. Even so, I am now building on this with other supplies such as meds, toilet roll, tampons etc. Next is weapons. I will stock up on bows, knives, anything.