Guide to Living Food Storage
By Kat Jones
Freshly grown and picked foods are at their height of flavor and nutrition. Our body needs fresh livingfood to survive and stay healthy. This brings up a predicament to many who store long term emergency food and supplies in case of emergency. You can subsist on a ½ cup of dry food a few times a day, but can you LIVE WELL and LONGTERM?
Imagine you wake up tomorrow morning to discover that you will have to stay on your own property for an extended period of time . . . weeks, months, perhaps even longer. What resources would you need to have around to be able to grow your own living food? In this day and age, it’s not so hard to imagine a scenario where you might need to be prepared (electro-magnetic pulse from either a terrorist attack or solar flare, global pandemic, economic collapse or barricading yourself in against zombies, the list goes on…). We have put together a list of things you can store very easily that will grow into living foods for you on any timeline: Overnight and a few days as sprouts, and over long periods as crops.
Quick Living Food Source
You can have fresh food within 5-8 hours if you have grains that will sprout in your food storage. You can cover wheat, spelt, quinoa, chia, amaranth and many other grains with water and in 5-8 hours the seed will start its germination process. Many other seeds and beans like alfalfa, radish, mung beans, garbanzo, adzuki, broccoli and clover can grow into sprouts in 3-5 days. Once a seed starts to sprout, its nutrition levels skyrocket, making it a whole, living food source.
Nutrition of Sprouts
- enzymes become active and create a host of nutritional changes
- proteins are converted to free amino acids
- starches change to simple plant sugars
- minerals chelate or combine in a way that increases their assimilation
- vitamin content increases from 3 to 12 times the amount
- Wheat sprouts, for example, contain four times more folic acid and six times more vitamin c that unsprouted wheat. Vitamin C content in some seeds was found to increase 700% in just 72 hours of sprouting. A Yale Study of grains seeds and beans showed that sprouting substantially increases all B vitamins from 20%-600%. Vitamin E content increases 300% in sprouted wheat.
- Sprouts are called a complete food because they contain all the essential amino acids.
- They are also called quick energy food because the plant sugars are easily digested and enter the bloodstream
Solutions:
Living Foods Overnight: sprouted grains such as wheat, Kamut, quinoa, chia, amaranth
Living Foods in 3 Days: sprouted beans, peas, garbanzos, lentils, alfalfa, mung beans, radishes, onions
Living Foods in 7-10 Days: Microgreen salads, quick greens, sunflower sprouts, and grasses
- Microgreens – Hydroponic Microgreens Kit
- Grasses – Wheatgrass and Barleygrass Growing Kit
Sustainable Living Food Source
With lots of planning, you can plan a permaculture landscape that will produce food and resources (such as wood) on an ongoing basis. A small orchard, a cellar, a greenhouse, many garden beds full of herbs, melons, vegetables and lettuces are all great ways to plan for a sustainable living source in an emergency situation. One of the most important things to keep in mind is that with modern growing methods, so much can be grown indoors and in small spaces. This requires a lot of knowledge on how to garden, and lots of time spent to get results. With some education effort now, and some good garden and grain seed stored away, you can live indefinitely on your own produce.
Solutions:
- Long Term Storage Seeds: open pollinated and specially dried and sealed for long shelf life. Available at our sister company, Mountain Valley Seeds.
Check out the full selection of storable garden seeds: Click Here
Ongoing Food Preservation
Once you have a garden and fruit trees that regularly produce food, you will need ways to preserve these foods for the winter and off harvest season. There are some amazingly easy ways to preserve foods that are ideal for extended emergency situations. Traditional canning is a possible solution but it will use a lot of fuel and water, both of which might be in short supply during an emergency. By using a solar dehydrator and lactic acid fermentation, you will be able to preserve food without large amounts of fuel, water or electricity.
Solutions:
- Lactic Acid Fermentation
- Food Dehydration
Other Vegan Food Storage Resources
If you are rounding out your emergency supplies, here are some other great vegan emergency food storage options:
- Tofu: a great source of vegan protein in an emergency. Soybeans are relatively easy to convert to tofu.
- Grain Mills
- Rolled Oats
- Storable Bulk Grains
- Organic Seed
Everyone hopes that the worst never happens and that any emergency supplies will never have to be used. But if that itch in your brain tells you that having some emergency supplies on hand is a good idea--just in case, we hope you find this guide helpful.