Food stockpile in case corona virus comes nearby


(Windmill Tilter) #21

Agreed. The protein isn’t as good. My point was that in the extremely unlikely event that the corona virus becomes a global pandemic, making sure that your hamburger is grass fed, and that your keto macros are tip-top probably shouldn’t be priority #1.

If there is only a 1% chance of it happening, it doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense to spend a lot of time, money and energy on mitigating the tiny risk. My proposal costs around $100 and takes up very little space in a pantry. I put about 5 minutes thought into that particular plan, so I’m sure it can be imroved. Still, it’s enough food for one person for six months and it’s cheap. There is a 99% chance it’ll never be used so why spend a lot of money or fill your pantry with expensive canned meats you don’t plan on eating anyway?

If it does spread to your neck of the woods, and the virus does become more lethal, and you happen to be retired, staying in for a bit isn’t crazy. In that very unlikely scenario, remaining faithful to keto will seem quaint at best.


(Ben ) #22

Spam on brother. Maybe Mother Nature is going to thin out the herd.


#23

yea I think also but fingers crossed for never :slight_smile: it is coming, control can only go so far on ‘global outbreak’ vs. old days of no overnight global travel and more. mutating virus faster than we can fix the first trouble.
I hope never :slight_smile: :slight_smile: but I see it coming in some very bad form also. who, what, where and truly when???


#24

no problem, I think if we need to stockpile for whatever reason or feel we need XYZ preps due to current global situations then yea it all is fair game and applies to a bigger pic. Do what you need to do per person, don’t dismiss those who feel they want to stockpile and if those who feel easy and calm thru global might be troubles, cool— all good and still good info food prep on the thread :slight_smile:


(charlie3) #25

My current thinking about a food stockpile is to store more of what I customarily eat. For some reason I suspect this corona thing is more serious.


(Windmill Tilter) #26

In that case, I think you have your bases pretty well covered with ground chuck, heavy cream and eggs. They’re all are pretty calorie dense. I get about 70% of my calories between these three foods on a weekly basis these days. You might put a few pounds of butter in the freezer if you like it as much as I do for frying the eggs.

It sounds like you’re looking at having a months worth of food on hand, so that shouldn’t be very tough to do with a typical freezer. Twenty-five pounds of hamburger doesn’t take up much space.

If you ever decide to extend out to more than a month, a 23 quart pressure canner is a good option, and it’s cheaper and smaller than a chest freezer. Canning food is really easy to do, and it’s a lot cheaper than buying canned mystery meat at the grocery store in plastic lined cans. The stuff you can has a shelf life of a year or more. It’s nice to have a way to store food at room temperature if the power ever goes out for a stretch of time. You can pick up a good one for about $75 on amazon. I really enjoy canning, and it’s nice to have all-hamburger “chili” cooked and ready to go when I’m short on time or don’t feel like cooking.

Here is a batch of 7 quarts (14lbs) of canned chili cooling on the dining room table. It’s about a 2 weeks worth of food for me. You can just barely see it because it’s still cooling, but there’s a gorgeous one inch fat cap at the top of each of those jars thats downright delicious.

This is the one I’ve been using for years:


(Windmill Tilter) #27

That’s looks increasingly likely. Here is an article they’re probably not going to publish in China in the near future (nor should they, the article is irresponsible). They weren’t just studying vanilla coronavirus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (China’s only level 4 lab) which coincidentally is just miles from where the outbreak occurred. They’re studying the nastiest, most virulent forms of the virus, and doing genetic engineering.

That may sound like tinfoil hat stuff, but it was actually a legitimate line of scholarly inquiry into the transmission mechanisms of diseases like SARS, ebola, and coronavirus. You can read the published research that one of their leading scientists, Dr. Peng Zhou, was putting out right on PubMed and Google Scholar. See for yourself.

Interestingly, it wasn’t just a few researchers experimenting with coronavirus in Wuhan, they were actively hiring additional post-docs to undertake new lines of inquiry just weeks before the outbreak. You can still read the job ad right on the institutes website.

So there are two plausible explanations for the outbreak of an incredibly rare and unusual variation of coronavirus characterized by two features never before seen together like this (human to human airborne transmission + high lethality).

  1. Official Explanation: Somebody ate bat soup (like they do in hundreds of places in China)
  2. The only place in all of China with dozens of people handling this exact unique strain, that doesn’t ordinarily occur in nature, and is at the geographic epicenter of the outbreak fucked up and released it into the wild.

Bearing in mind that the virus appears relatively benign so far based on official numbers (3% fatality rate), and that the government response was to immediately quarantined tens of millions of people,cancel New Years, and open 100,000 hospital beds, it strikes me that they’re not telling the whole story. I’m going with option 2.

That said, if there is anybody in the world equipped to deal with an outbreak like this it’s China. They have some of the best researchers and best healthcare in the world. The fact these same scientists were likely responsible for creating the outbreak isn’t necessarily negative, because in that case they would have a huge head start because they would know exactly what they’re dealing with already, and have a head start on figuring out a vaccination strategy.

TLDR, you’re not crazy to think about setting aside some food or for thinking that coronavirus is more serious than usual. I’m going to go can some hamburger and polish my tinfoil hat now… :yum:


(Bunny) #28

Was wondering about the snake this Corona virus came from, I was reading that the Chinese government put a ban on handling the snake?

Do people eat this type of snake too?

I forgot what the species snake is?

My roommate told me just now the CDC is flying all the infected people to an isolated location in the U.S. to study them?

Obviously these snakes got sick from this virus some how?


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #29

One good thing about eating a well-formulated ketogenic diet is that it strengthens the immune system, which will enhance our ability to avoid succumbing to nasty bugs, even if infected. The role cholesterol plays in the immune system is very interesting, and another reason not to worry unduly about high cholesterol, perhaps.


#30

I need to read about this already, I only know about corona virus that it exists somewhere… I surely don’t worry about it but I never worry about such things, my life is stressful without that and I can’t do much about it anyway.

I always have enough food to last months. Most of them are carbs but well, it’s food. If I need it to last a year…
Well, we (a high-carber and me) surely would go (partially) with @Don_Q’s idea (and we would add lots of other things like 20lbs cocoa, 20lbs raisins, 10lbs xylitol to be sure, it’s very much but well, we have space and my SO uses it for nearly every meal) BUT as I need very low-carb to function properly and only do higher-carb if I totally must, I would do my best with lower-carb items. As much hard cheese as I can fit into the fridge, as much fatty meat as I can fit into the freezer and 200lbs peanuts, that should be enough for two (we usually eat less but it’s a staple item in this household and its importance would get bigger without enough vegetables and other fresh stuff. I don’t eat it anymore but I could, in small amounts. In emergency, I surely won’t worry about oxalates and some extra carbs).
20lbs of poppy seeds and walnuts, more sesame seeds, less flax seeds… Maybe the calories are too high now but let’s be safe.
Some coconut oil (we don’t need very much), 30lbs lard because I am paranoid, okay? I have space for such food.
Vegetables… I would buy and preserve some. I don’t have fridge/freezer space for them and they spoil super easily, usually, I don’t even have a nice cold and dry space. I don’t really need them but my SO does. Fermented vegetables galore and lots of my beloved pickles!
Some canned fish but really just a few cans. I don’t eat canned meat as I only buy meat from a farm (yeah, I am more relaxed with cheese but I am poor and the cheese I buy actually tastes great and I barely eat any as I do have problems with its origins. meat is different).
Eggs, my main food is problematic. I can store 250 in my cupboard for a month and that’s it. I probably would buy more, fry the yolks and put them into the freezer. Oh right, I would cook the meat too so it would be denser.
2lbs of heavy cream, maybe. And some instant coffee, spices, salt, even magnesium pills though I don’t eat any when I have meat. But I would have little meat. I don’t know how to can meat (I suppose, I could look it up) and I couldn’t buy much meat anyway. No, I don’t think a corona virus, whatever it is, could force me to buy much meat in a shop… Okay, maybe in the part where they say it’s from local farms and I either believe them or not… I probably would think hard about it if it’s a year. A few months are fine.

Except the tiny plus work with some vegetables and the raw fruits in the fridge - and the frying egg yolks part, it’s quite fine. It’s basically what we do anyway but in bigger amounts. We go shopping once per month except vegetables and other sudden necessities like sour cream (but that happens rare).

I have a few hundred jars full with fruits and some with vegetables and fried mushrooms.

Tap water is fine for me. If my well get serious problems, it’s game over for me. Just like lack of electricity.

We obviously need to take consideration what we are able or willing to eat in that situation. If I haven’t eat anything in weeks, I surely become less choosy but eating carbs is usually worse than not eating them. I need way more fat and protein if I eat carbs as well except if I so horribly overdo carbs that I get severe carb poisoning. Eventually, I get used to it so I simply feel unwell all the time but not acutely poisoned but for just 6-12 months, I can stock enough fat and protein.
My SO thrives on high-carbs and eat the same on a high-carb diet so the lots of rice and legumes work for him way better. Legumes have much protein so I could depend on them to some extent, I would be careful with peanuts though, never a big amount. I would buy many jars of green peas, my fav legume.

Just because there is a tough situation, I optimize for my health and well-being and wish to keep normalcy and I want to enjoy my food or not hating it, at the very least as it’s almost impossible to eat then.

It was interesting, the last time I thought about such things we bought meat twice a year and I ate an excessive amount of peanuts…
(I must try how many fried egg yolks fits into a 1 liter box :D)


(charlie3) #31

I’m looking at this as a good excuse to figure out a 30 day food stocking plan, which I had when I could keep a bunch of extra quaker oats on hand. These days all the calories I eat day to day are in the frig or freezer except olive oil, which has me thinking, what can I make with olive oil other than salad dressing that doesn’t require food from the frig? Another item I can keep extra is heavy cream, used only in coffee. Yet another option I have is to cut back on exercise. Currently I do 2 hours daily which burns about 1100 calories. Cutting back to one hour would save 500 calories and have minimal impact on fitness, may be even a timely rest.


(charlie3) #32

Went food shopping a few days ago and tried to buy food for 30 days without buying things I don’t usually eat. Enough frozen meat, fish fit in the freezer, barely. Coffee and whipping cream, no probem. Fresh veggies for 10 days, twice the usual ration of eggs. Extra olive oil but need a way to use it besides salad dressing though I could increase the percent oil in the salad dressing and reduce daily meat to stretch the meat supply. I hate to buy cheese or peanut butter because I’ll snack on them but if things were to look grim may be I buy them last minute anyway. Bottom line, I’m not there yet.


(Susan) #33

That is great, Charlie. You can always stock up on Tuna, Salmon, Chicken and Ham in cans as well, to stretch the meat in way that lasts a long time =).


(charlie3) #34

Except I’ve got canned meat that’s been on the shelf forever. If I had more freezer space there would be the option of stocking more meat and going carnivore for some days.


#35

Sardines.

Olive oil is great for marinading beef before cooking. It’s also good topically if you have dry, itchy ears.

I checked in with my guru about corona virus


(Susan) #36

Ohhh okay, it was just a thought =). I am sure that you are doing great in your preparations =).


(Bunny) #37


(charlie3) #38

I believe the odds of the coronavirus problem getting lose is low but since going to a whole food diet I know longer have a 30 day food supply on hand just by keeping some extra canned goods and oatmeal on the shelf. I’m seeing a way to squeeze some more meat into the freezer. If I ever get another frig I’m going to try to find one with a bigger freezer.


(Hyperbole- best thing in the universe!) #39

I’ve shared this video with a few of my friends and family I know would appreciate it. Thanks for shareing it with me. It has made an unnecessarily weird time a bit more sane.


(GINA ) #40

I live in a part of California that spins into a tizzy over a hard frost so forgive my ignorance, but if your power is out because of an ice storm, couldn’t you move your freezer contents outside to keep frozen? Or at least frozen longer?