Top 5 Foods You Need to Start Saving Now

When preparing your food stores people tend to focus on items such as canned food, grains, and canned/preserved meats. While these are all vital to your survival, there are a number of other food items that you will want and need.

 

Along with the essentials, smaller things you take for granted now, like vitamins, will be necessary to keep you healthy and strong. Below are the top 5 items that might not be on your list but should be.

1. Multivitamins and Food Supplements

As you settle into a survival environment, the selection of foods you eat will go down. You will rely on your food stores to give you the nourishment you need and to give you the vitamins and minerals your body requires. No amount of preparation can help you if you catch the flu, but some vitamin preparation can help that not happen.

The ideal vitamins you are looking for are good quality double encapsulated multivitamins. Along with the multivitamin you should take a B-complex tablet to boost this part of the multivitamin. This will help round out your immune defenses and keep your body processing nutrients as it should.
Make sure to store the vitamins in a cool, very dark place. Much like other foods, light kills vitamins. Depending on the vitamin, most need replaced every three years at most.

2. Vitamin C

 

Vitamin C is known to be one of the safest and most effective nutrients to take as a supplement. One of the most important aspects for survival is Vitamin C’s ability to boost your immune system and to prevent issues with eye disease, cardiovascular disease, and even helps prevent stroke. Recovery from trauma and bruises is greatly increased with vitamin C as well.

Even better, there is little to no risk in taking very high doses of vitamin C. A daily dose of 500mg of the vitamin can give the benefits listed above. If you are getting less fruits and vegetables, this can be increased.

Taking huge doses of any vitamin over the long term can be difficult on your kidneys, so balance your need with overall health.

3. Natural Laxatives

This probably seems like an odd entry on the list, but when you move into survival mode, your diet will change from what you currently eat now. A quick shift in diet can make for a very unhappy

digestive system.

4. Coffee

For most people, it goes without saying why saving coffee is very important. If you are a daily coffee drinker, having enough to wean you off of the caffeine you’re used to is necessary to keep headaches, frayed nerves, and jitters from creeping in.
While it is difficult to preserve coffee and retain a perfect taste, storing it pre-ground in the freeze-dried bricks you find it in at the grocery store is good enough.

Keeping a bulk quantity of Metamucil on hand is a great way to make sure when your diet moves to more meat-based as it probably will, your bowels will keep moving properly. If they don’t, disease is bound to follow along with discomfort and inability to work at your fullest.

5. Peanut Butter

Not only is peanut butter a comfort food, one that can be a snack to offset the possibly bland food you



will be surviving on, but it can serve as a great source of calories. A regular 40-ounce jar of peanut butter has on average around 6,500 calories. This means that peanut butter is very calorie-dense food that is great to balance out your diet and give you the energy you need to survive.

Along with calories, peanut butter packs a healthy dose of protein, something else that is important to keeping you at your best. Peanut butter is very portable, requires basically no preparation, and depending on the variety, has a shelf life of up to two years. Remember, though, that peanut butter is meant as a supplement to your diet, not to replace any key item.

Wrap-Up

This is just a small list of the commonly overlooked survival foods and supplements. Remember, survival is not only about basic living; it’s about your mental state, too. Make sure you have more than basic grains and canned meat. Keeping your spirits up with things like peanut butter and coffee will make sure you can survive for the long term.