Preparing a food supply for the winter
It is worth taking care of food for the winter in advance, as you may not be able to buy the necessary products due to Russian shelling and possible blackouts. In addition, if you are planning to evacuate, you also need to know what food to stock up on.
You should also take care of the principles of healthy nutrition in case of food shortages. So, you should definitely have food with vitamins in your supplies. But, for example, protein food is something that a person can live without for the first time.
What foods should you stock up on for the winter? What should be bought that is easy to prepare? What micronutrients are essential to have in the diet? Daria Ozerna, a health advocate, spoke about this.
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What food supplies should be taken during evacuation?
We don’t know for sure how long we will be on the road, so we should definitely have the following list of products with us:
- drinking water
- sweets, crackers (especially if you have children with you)
- a device for boiling water
- tea, coffee, sugar
- dry non-perishable food (dry soups, biscuits)
- fruits
A person can do without salads, meat and fish for the first time, but they need water and carbohydrates, especially when it comes to children.
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What can help you cook on the road?
Tools from tourist shops are suitable for setting up a picnic, for example, on the roadside, to boil water, make tea, coffee or instant porridge or soup, melt snow, or sterilise something. Various devices using gas cylinders or dry alcohol with a relatively high efficiency are suitable for this purpose. They can have insulation against the wind, they can have thermal insulation of the pan in which the heating takes place. They are compact and rather safe; the gas doesn’t leak if it is disconnected from the appliance.
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What foods should you stock up on?
You should prepare foods from different groups.
- Carbohydrates (porridges):
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- buckwheat
- millet
- maize
- oatmeal
- wheat
- barley
Porridges are suitable for long-term storage, they should be put into airtight containers where moths and moisture will not get in. They are compact, high in calories, nutritious, contain B vitamins, a certain amount of protein, and are easy to cook.
- Oils, fats:
- salted lard
- several bottles of different oils (sunflower, olive, corn)
They can be used for cooking and simply consumed, as oils and lard are both high in calories and contain the nutrients we need.
- Proteins:
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- canned fish
- legumes (beans, chickpeas, lentils, peas)
- nuts, seeds
Meat can be stored in the freezer, but if the power goes out, it must either be eaten immediately or shared with others. If you’re lucky, you can put it out in the frost. Therefore, frozen chicken drumsticks are not very suitable when preparing for a hard winter.
- Fibre:
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- home-made or bought canned salad
- eggplant or zucchini caviar
- tomato paste, ketchup
- dried mushrooms, carrots, beetroot, cabbage
- fermented cabbage
We need vegetable ingredients. It is preferable that they don’t spoil, so the dry form is best when we are preparing supplies. These products are quite nutritious and interesting as nutrients. They are high in antioxidants and fibre.
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What vitamins are essential in the diet?
In winter, in our latitudes, modern medical guidelines recommend that all people take vitamin D. Therefore, you need to stock up on vitamin D for the winter in case of any problems. If you suspect that you will not have access to fresh fruit and vegetables or fermented cabbage or apples, it makes sense to stock up on vitamin C in tablets. If you suspect that there will be a huge shortage of vitamins, you can also stock up on multivitamins in tablets, but multivitamins have no proven benefit.
A person needs a balanced diet; it can be quite ascetic, but it should be complete and balanced enough to contain all the elements.
