Food and Fear

Lauren Kirchner’s article from this morning makes the point that there is a growing industry to support the increasing number of people who are interested in some flavor of preparedness, survivalism or prepping. She focuses much of her writing on the marketing of food storage and we agreed with some of her opinions in our own article last month. In short, the overzealous marketing of long term storage foods is often ridiculous and much of what you can buy doesn’t taste all that good. Certainly, there are exceptions to this trend, but sometimes a 120 calorie pile of wallpaper paste flavored glop is called a “hearty gourmet serving”. There are plenty of other options, though. For example, we’ve started up a free recipe section on our site with food that actually tastes really good and is made with stuff from your pantry with a good shelf life.

Where we really start to disagree with Lauren’s work is towards the end of her article: “Nor does it make explicit the most insidious, and the most cynical, aspect of survivalism’s sales pitch: the message that when disaster inevitably strikes, we won’t be able to rely on our friends and neighbors (and certainly not our local authorities) for help…We won’t be able to trust anyone but ourselves.” Um, if neither you nor any of your neighbors has put any effort into getting realistically prepared for the disaster that you find yourself in the middle of, you are going to be hard pressed to be able to help anyone at all. What is going to let you assist your neighbors  is having those extra supplies on hand when bad things happen. Being able to work together and help each other out is a common preparedness ideal.