How do you calculate your food storage, and how many days it
will last?
That is the question…
There are a few things that go into the calculations of food
storage. There is a bit of guessing with
some things, and then some really good data on others.
The best way is to think about it in servings. This can or bottle, or even bucket has “X”
amount of servings. Dividing by 3 servings
a day will give me the approximate days this food storage will feed 1 person. All that’s left to figure out, how many
people are relying on your food storage.
This makes it very easy to calculate or estimate how many days your cans, bottles and buckets will last you…
I don’t worry about how a can will compliment a meal, I think of it as A meal. If every can is a meal regardless of contents it makes it easier to calculate. Besides, if you’re down to your last can are you going to worry about what that last can compliments?
There are a couple of challenges with calculating food storage… One being "home bottled" items.
This makes it very easy to calculate or estimate how many days your cans, bottles and buckets will last you…
I don’t worry about how a can will compliment a meal, I think of it as A meal. If every can is a meal regardless of contents it makes it easier to calculate. Besides, if you’re down to your last can are you going to worry about what that last can compliments?
There are a couple of challenges with calculating food storage… One being "home bottled" items.
1) There are a couple things you can do. The best one, although somewhat labor
intensive, would be to compare the same types of items that you have with those
you can find at the store. If you’re
like me, and utilize a variety of items for your storage, you may already have
comparable items in your storage.
If not,
a trip to the store may be in order.
Compare your home made jam to a store bought jam that is
about the same size. Spaghetti sauces,
soups, chili’s, juices, canned beans, all can be compared to your home preserves. Commercial manufacturers have to put serving
size and approximate servings per container on all of their goods. This gives you the opportunity to estimate how
many servings yours might be.
2) Another challenge is food stored in buckets or dried goods. Most people find that with a little effort on
their part, they can save a few dollars here and there by storing their own dry
items in buckets. But calculating this
can be challenging. After all how
many bags of beans can you fit inside of that 5 gallon bucket? Sometimes it really is a bag and a half. How about rice? Then there’s flour, sugar, wheat, barley, and
many other items that you’ll want to calculate.
The best way is going to be by servings. If your bag of goods is labeled with the nutritional values, it should include serving size, and estimated servings per container. However, that being said, there are many bags that only include the weight and contents. Now how can we calculate those?
The best way is going to be by servings. If your bag of goods is labeled with the nutritional values, it should include serving size, and estimated servings per container. However, that being said, there are many bags that only include the weight and contents. Now how can we calculate those?
By cup:
How many cups of “X” fit into a 1 gallon bucket? Don’t have a gallon bucket? Do you have a #10 can? 1 #10 can is a U.S. liquid measured 1
gallon.
Does 1 cup equal 1 serving?
Or is it ½, ¼, or 2 or more?
By weight:
If you know about how much a serving size is, and
how much it weighs or you can weigh the serving size, it’s then just a matter
of some math to get the answer.
If the
#10 can is commercially prepared, it will have that information on the
label.
~~For example: 1 #10
can of small white navy beans is about 5.6 lbs per can. 1 serving size is ¼ of a cup. There are approximately 48 servings per #10
can.
Let’s work with a 50 pound bag.
If we divide 50 pounds by the weight of the Navy beans in a #10
can (5.6 lbs) we get …
50 lbs / 5.6 lbs = 8.9 # 10 cans. (I like to round down to
make the math simpler. Doing this will
also give us a buffer in our actual storage.) We’ll use 8.5 # 10 cans.
There are 48 servings in a #10 can; if we multiply that by
8.5 # 10 cans we get 408 servings.~
Since we know that a #10 can is the same as a gallon, we can
then multiply by larger containers to find their serving sizes.
If you have an empty #10 can, you can use it to measure number
of servings and weight. Then just
multiply by the size of the larger container.
(I found the
information based on a commercially purchased #10 can.)
Measuring your food storage this way works for anything that
is commercially prepared. A quick web
search for serving sizes may help. (I was able to find the nutritional value, and serving size information on several #10 cans on beprepaired.com) Or visiting your nearest store to find commercially
labeled products for amounts can help.
~Of course if you or your family regularly eat more than 1 serving you'll need to compensate for that. For our purposes, 1 serving per person is enough.~
**Some of the trickier items to measure are going to be
things like sugar, white flour, wheat berries, baking soda, salt, and other “baking”
items. It will be challenging to measure
them because the amounts needed will vary between recipes.
Rule of thumb; calculate your flour and sugar or other
similar ingredients by the recipes that use the most of those items in 1
recipe. For example; if you use 6 cups
of flour every time you make bread, that’s the number you’ll use for the flour servings
size. You’ll also need to figure out how
many times a week you’ll make bread. How
many loaves each time and so on.
For
some, figuring out how many loaves per year is easy. For those who rarely bake bread, or who have
never baked bread this will be a lot more challenging.
Once you know how many cups per recipe, and how many recipes
per week you can calculate the amount you have and the amount you need.
~Don't forget; If you make breads and pies, or pies and cakes, pastas and so on, you’ll want to
base your calculations on total or estimated total cups used in a week. If your using 12 cups of flour in a week
regularly, then estimate your amounts based on those 12 cups. That would = 624 cups in a year.
If a #10 can of flour holds approximately 9.9 cups you can figure
out how many cans or buckets you’ll need to store
.
This is how I figured the math for the flour when using 624
cups of flour a year.
53 servings per container, 3TBL = I serving
16 TBL = 1 cup
53 servings x 3 TBL = 159 TBL
159 TBL / 16 TBL = 9.9 cups.
Round down to 9.5 cups.
9.5 cups per #10 can / 624 cups per year = 65.5 #10 cans.
OR, 13.1 5 gallon buckets.
~
~Always round up on
containers.~
Make sure to do this with all baking ingredients. Baking soda, yeast, sugar, baking powder, vanilla,
cinnamon, etc.
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