If you are LDS, you have probably heard of things such as emergency preparedness, self reliance and specifically food storage. If you are just starting your food storage and other preparedness goals you probably have discovered that the amount of information and number of things which you can do seem endless. If you are single and renting, have roommates, or are in school; you probably haven’t even begun. Nevertheless, it is something you can start planning and even start on a small scale. If it isn’t possible to store a years worth of supplies in your current living arrangement you can use resources and planning tools such as the Emergency Essentials Food Storage Analyzer to help you begin with small steps.
Food Storage Analyzer
The Analyzer is a web based tool that offers a lot of functionality. Obviously you can use it to plan your years supply of food storage, you can also use it to plan the food storage for multiple people, short and long term nutritional analysis, browsing foods by nutritional strengths and entering and saving your own foods and values among other things.
Analysis of Nutritional Value
One of the really impressive features I found in the food storage analyzer is the analysis of nutritional value of your food storage. If fulfills your daily caloric requirement with the items you list in your food storage list and then compares the nutritional value of those foods with the US RDA values. The output is a simple chart at the bottom of the program that shows you how nutritious your food storage is in regards to Calories from Fat, Fat, Saturated Fat, Trans Fat, Cholesterol, Sodium, Carbohydrates, Dietary Fiber, Sugars, Protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Calcium and Iron.
Using this information you can determine how nutritious your food storage really is. If you discover that your food storage’s nutritional value is low for a particular nutrient, there are quick links provided to find foods that are high in selected nutrients.
How can this benefit you if you are just starting your food storage? For planning your anticipated storage, the calculator has the ability to select items that you want to have in your food storage so that you can see how these items will affect the nutritional value of your food storage. Since it calculates based on the number of days that you have enough calories for, you can start off planning for one month of food storage or an even shorter period if required.
Even if you have no food storage and eat out all the time, you can use this tool to see where your diet may be insufficient. Simply get copies of all nutritional information sheets for everything you eat in a week and enter the data in the system. You can easily see where you may need to start purchasing some other types of foods to improve your nutritional intake. For example, if you try to live off of hamburgers and pepperoni pizzas, the analyzer shows you you have high amounts of protein, fat and sodium,whereas you are very low in vitamins A and C. A couple of clicks away shows you that you need some dehydrated carrot dices to round out your nutritional intake.
Search for Products by Nutrient
Searching for foods by high nutrient content is easy using the quick links beside the chart at the bottom of the form. The results are ordered highest to lowest so you can easily start at the top looking for something you like. In the pizza and burger example above, dehydrated carrot dices appeared first under vitamin A content.
Enter and Save Your Own Foods
As I mentioned earlier, you can enter your own foods in the analyzer. This allows you to track your own diet, no matter how unique it may be. By creating a profile, this information is automatically saved for you so that you may come back and adjust and monitor your progress in the future.
Click the link below to try the Food Storage Analyzer.
Tags: food storage
