Learn From Four-Day Food Trials
So, what might that first four-day trial run look like? Assuming an average daily caloric requirement of 2000 to 2500 calories per person, here are three options depending on how fancy you want to get: Spartan, Peasant and King.
The Spartan Four-Day Trial Menu
This is a very basic plan and most of us would almost certainly lose at least a little weight during the four day trial of the Spartan plan. On the plus side, the Spartan plan is the least expensive and takes up the least amount of storage space. It does not require a basement nor a root cellar and it will keep you alive and healthy when used with a daily multivitamin.
Quantities below are per person (assuming about 2500 calories per person) for the four day survival trial. As with all of the trial plans you’ll find in this report, multiply quantities by 0.75 for the average female; by 1.5 for males working hard; and by 0.5 for children. Remember, these are quantities are per person per four day trial.
Soft winter wheat or hard red wheat kernels – 4 lbs
Black beans – 10 oz
Powdered milk – 3 oz
White sugar – 10 oz
Salt – 1 1/2 oz
Lard or cooking oil – 4 oz
Water – 4 gallons
How to Eat Wheat
As you can see, the staple food in the Spartan option is wheat, and wheat is a component of all the other options too, but how to eat it? Whole kernels of wheat are a great survival food because they keep so well and they’re so nutritious. Buy it in 50 lbs bags or grow your own (more on this later). Preparing wheat is simple, as long as you know how. Soft winter wheat is soft enough that people with good teeth can chew it raw, but we like the taste of hard red winter wheat better at our house. Either way, there are several easy ways to make wheat easier and more interesting to eat than just chewing raw kernels.
Roasting: This is the simplest option. Spread a single layer of wheat kernels on a dry frying pan heated to between medium and high on the stovetop. Keep stirring the kernels to expose fresh surfaces to the hot pan, then remove the kernels when most of them are a little brown. Let the kernels cool on a flat surface. They’ll become a crunchy, tasty treat. If raw wheat gives you gas, roasting like this is the answer. Roasted grain moistened with a little olive oil and sprinkled with salt is one of the oldest and all-time best snack foods. It’s first mentioned in the oldest books of the Bible.
Flat Bread: Grind wheat into flour, sift half a teaspoon of salt into the mix, then add enough water to make a thick batter. Ladle onto a hot, greased frying pan, then flip when brown. Much simpler to make than bread, and just as good. Actually, it’s better than bread made from home-ground wheat, which always turns out too heavy.
Cold wheat porridge: Grind wheat into flour, put it in a bowl, then add enough water to form a thick, soupy texture. Add sugar or honey to taste. Fast, nutritious and requires no cooking. I eat this for breakfast.
Coming up later in the course you’ll get lots of information on growing your own wheat without fancy machines or farming equipment. In the mean time, watch the video up next to see how I grind wheat into flower using a hand-operated wheat mill I bought 35 years ago. It’s simple, effective and is still working perfectly today.
VIDEO: How to Eat Wheat
TECH TIP: Gluten and Reality
Wheat is loaded with gluten, and gluten intolerance is a popular self-diagnosed malady these days. And though some people really do have trouble digesting gluten, fewer people have gluten intolerance than think they do. That’s a good thing because whole wheat (and the loads of gluten that comes with it) is a very valuable food – especially as a survival food. Gluten is not a poison nor is it some sinister chemical residue. It’s a naturally occurring component of wheat and it’s the thing that gives wheat flour the ability to rise as bread dough better than any other grain. So if you believe your body has a problem handling gluten, get yourself tested. If you’ve really got a gluten intolerance, then you’ll need to make-do with rice (which is gluten-free, but second-rate as a survival food) instead of wheat. But if your gluten intolerance isn’t verified by testing, congratulations. You’re free to include one of the best and most widely available grains in the world in your survival food plan.
The Peasant Four-Day Trial Menu
This four-day trial plan builds on the Spartan plan with more food and more variety. It’s still simple, but it assumes access to a root cellar of some kind. Remember, quantities listed are per person for the four-day trial.
Root vegetables (potatoes or carrots are good) – 12 oz (about 2 potatoes)
Canned meat – 8 oz
Soft winter wheat or hard red wheat – 4 lbs
Dried black beans – 10 oz
Powdered milk – 3 oz
White sugar – 10 oz
Salt – 1 1/2 oz
Pepper – 1/2 oz
Lard or cooking oil – 4 oz
Water – 4 gallons
TECH TIP: Don’t Forget About Water
A healthy adult with at least a little existing fat can live for 30 days without food, but less than 3 days without water. Water is also heavy and it easily leaks or gets contaminated. All this is why you need to pay close attention to your emergency water supply. Water is actually more important than food. What does this mean? Two things. First, understand that there’s no way you can lay in a year’s worth of drinking water for your family. You’ll need at least one gallon a day per person, and this leaves very little left over for cooking. A family of four would need 1500 gallons of stored water per year (plus a cooking allowance), and that’s not practical for most people. So, what should you do? Create a combination of stored drinking water (20+ gallons per person) coupled with a supply of fresh water that’s independent from any kind of central system.
One simple, emergency option for purifying water is called SODIS. It’s the simplest, easiest, lowest-tech way to make water safe for drinking. Put non-cloudy water in clear PET drinking water bottles, put the bottles in the sun (at least 6 hours at mid-latitudes on a sunny day; 2 days when it’s cloudy) so the water temperature rises to at least 86ºF. The combination of heat and UV rays kills diarrhea-causing organisms quite reliably. SODIS doesn’t work with glass (it blocks UV rays to much), and the water needs to be fairly clear for the UV to penetrate. If you can read the headline of a newspaper through the depth of water as viewed from the top of the bottle, the water is clear enough for SODIS disinfection. This method is recommended by the World Health Organization for third world situations. These are essentially the kind of emergency conditions you’re preparing yourself for.
The King Four-Day Trial Menu
This plan builds on the Peasant plan and assumes both a root cellar and some kind of off-grid freezer capabilities. Eat from this plan during a collapse event and you really will be feasting like a king.
Root vegetables (potatoes or carrots are good) – 18 oz (about 3 potatoes)
Canned meat – 8 oz
Frozen fruit – 12 oz
Soft winter wheat or hard red wheat – 4 lbs
Dried black beans – 10 oz
Powdered milk – 3 oz
White sugar – 10 oz
Salt – 1 1/2 oz
Lard or cooking oil – 4 oz
Water – 4 gallons
Remember, the quantities above are for your four day assessment experience only. Live with this food (and nothing else), see what it’s like, then make your own customized version of the menu plan. Multiply by 100 and you’ll have the quantities of food you need per person per year.
TECH TIP: Edible Extras
There’s no reason that your survival food supply can’t have some tasty extras for when you want to enjoy treats now and then. It’s good for your mental health, especially when your day-to-day diet is plain. Here are some simple, long-keeping extras you should consider stocking up on, over and above your basic stores.
- sealed jars of peanut butter are an excellent choice and will keep well for more than a year.
- canned salmon is a terrific treat; get the kind with bones for best nutrition
- coffee is a mainstay for many people, and the craving won’t go away just because the world has collapsed. Sealed metal cans of coffee offer the best shelf life. Get small cans so you don’t have to unseal large quantities at one time.
