fundamentals-fat

FRIDAY FUNDAMENTALS- FAT


While there is probably nothing wrong with the Old Fab Four of food storage- wheat, milk, salt and honey- I prefer an updated list. Wheat, beans, salt and fat. Wheat berries from the feed store, used for most of your calories and your veggies in the form of sprouts. Pinto beans ( well, any beans but if you are like most places pintos are pervasive and affordable due to the local Hispanic population ) from the grocery store for your protein needs ( bean and grain combined to make a complete protein comparable to eggs or meat ). Salt from bags of water softener ( use sodium chloride, NOT potassium chloride- a thanks to Rawles for this info ), affordable at under seven bucks per hundred pounds. And fat. You need fat. I’m not sure how you got fat from the original list unless the instant milk had it. But fat is a daily need. Not like the current American diet of Big Macs and fries where you get 30% of your calories from fat. But come famine and disease after the collapse, fat goes from being dangerous due to overabundance to dangerous if you can’t get enough.

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Fifty or sixty years ago when most of us farmed, fat could be a big percentage of your diet. You worked like a dog all day at manual labor. Now that all we lift is a computer mouse it is safe to go from a 3300 calories day to a 2000, with lot less fat. But that has also blinded us for the need for fat, since now the whole focus is either cutting back ( wow, there, Uncle Billy Bob, no need for gravy over fried chicken over sausage over buttered biscuits if you ain’t hoeing cotton anymore ) or eliminating it altogether ( not too healthy, this advice coming from the morons that told you to seal up the room with plastic and duct tape, but perhaps better than immediately keeling over due to extreme obesity from life time of eating Uncle Billy Bob’s type of diet ). You will soon need to embrace fat once again. Half of my diet is grain, I bike 600 calories a day and I live in a under heated tin box in the winter. I can get by with eating a pound of butter a week along with several dinners of fried potatoes. I don’t count grams of fat or obsess over it. I just listen to my body. Once I’ve topped out with fat I get an upset stomach from fat. I used to dip bread in bacon fat, but past forty three or so my metabolism slowed down and I can’t eat even the smallest amount. My body has a good feedback signal and I listen to it. On a daily basis I can listen to my stomach plead with me to either pour on the lard or cut way back. Personally, and your mileage may vary, I don’t need a doctor to tell me how much fat to eat.

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I would say you should store about three or four pounds of fat per month. You might need less, but this seems to be the ballpark for a few hours a day out in the winter weather and not eating any fast food. You’ll eat a lot less in the summer, a bit more in winter, so I’m just ballparking an average. If you have $60 worth of lard in storage that should comfortably cover a years need. I store lard, both because of its container, its perceived longevity and its cost. When I was stocking up it was $5 for five pounds in a plastic bucket. The mice don’t seem to be able to get into it easily ( they CAN, but only if they really try- they seem to prefer thin plastic and cardboard ). It isn’t airtight but I much prefer the plastic bucket to the Crisco that comes in waxed paper containers. I would be comfortable with the lard lasting up to five years beyond its due date. The expiration dates on products are very conservative to not harm the consumer ( not that care about you, but they do care about lawsuits ). This is my own comfort level. But according to the soup kitchen cook, you definitely can smell oil once it’s gone off ( she also had bad experience with donated Y2K freeze dried meat and some of it the bums wouldn’t eat it ). I don’t know if liquid oil will last as long. I’m counting on the fact that lard is hydrogenised to prolong the shelf life. Sure, olive oil is healthy for you. It is also very expensive and has a limited storage life. I’d rather have plenty of unhealthy lard than just a little healthy olive oil. It’s the apocalypse, no need to concern yourself with trans fat consumption. Just be glad for the fat.

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This is all pretty much guessing. My lard is a bit over two years old. In another two or three years I’ll open a bucket and try it out for you. Until then, you get better than nothing fat advice as I’ve applied it to my own situation ( also, I store mine in the trailer, with its temperature fluctuations- but it is under the counters and seats so it stays cool most of the time except the middle of summer. But no rust, so no condensation, so a relatively constant temperature ).

END FUNDAMENTALS- MORE DRIVEL BELOW.

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Regarding the ongoing Japanese meltdown ( both nuclear and financial ). I have that deep down pit of my stomach feeling. But I had the same feeling in 2008 when I couldn’t stand waiting any longer and moved to the Bison Compound. I was wrong then- the Greater Depression was slowed by massive stimulus. We are still a functioning economy. But it doesn’t matter that I was off on my timing. What matters is that I listened to my primitive reptilian portion of my brain and obeyed my fear warning. How is your stomach feeling? Don’t do anything incredibly stupid, but shouldn’t you be listening to a reasonably cautious warning from yourself? If you ignore your basic programming, one day it will kill you. It might not be now, but the time will come. You can’t prove responding to fear is correct except from hindsight. Yes, a tough call. But you shouldn’t ignore such a long period of evolutionary natural selection that gave us this warning system. Intellectualize, rationalize all you want. That paranoid little weasel in your subconscious is trying to tell you something.

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