Everywhere you look, those who are preparing for disaster are stocking up on beef jerky, canned meats, dry milk and powdered egg product. Folks also are stocking up on livestock once they can, even if it’s only alittle flock of chickens to supply meat and eggs should disaster strike.
But what if you’re a vegetarian, particularly a vegan? How must you go about prepping so as to meet post-disaster nutritionary desires.
The good news is that you’re not going to need to do far more than different preppers. If you’re a lacto-ovo vegetarian, stockpiling are even easier because you’ll still be ready to meet your calcium and protein needs by stockpiling milk powder and eggs or by having a cow and a few chickens. If, however, you’re a vegetarian in the strictest sense of the word, you’ll need to invest a little additional effort.
If you’re a vegetarian, you most likely meet your vitamin B complex needs by eating tofu or drinking soy milk. Clearly this isn’t going to be an choice is SHTF. If you live in soybean country, you’ll be in fine shape, however most of you’ll not be so lucky.
Stock up on multi-vitamins
This is really a good idea for all people because we tend to ne’er understand when a disaster can strike that may damage our fresh vegetable crops. You seriously ought to stock up on a good multi-vitamin. the explanation that I recommend this is because if you’re dependent upon canned vegetables only, you’re not going to be obtaining enough of many vitamins, together with calcium B6 and B12.
There are a few of vegetable sources of vitamin b6 together with sunflower seeds, pistachios, apricots, raisins and prunes, however you’d need to eat anywhere from a cup to four cups of them each day in order to satisfy your vitamin b6 wants. Not significantly realistic when you might have to ration food. If you’re fortunate enough to live in a tropical area, bananas and avocados are smart sources of vitamin B6, too.
Though you’ll get calcium from leafy green veggies, you don’t find very several good ones in a will and when you do, they’ve seemingly been so over processed that they’ve lost a substantial quantity of their nutritional value.
Stock up on blackstrap molasses
This thick dark sweetener has an overwhelming flavor till you get used to it, however it’s an excellent source of minerals. Simply one tablespoon provides you almost two hundredth of your daily calcium. It also provides iron and different minerals. Plus, it very will taste good once you get used to it.
Beans and legumes
Believe it or not, beans are a good supply of Ca and also vitamin B6. One cup provides anywhere from 14-18 % of your daily necessities. Throw some blackstrap molasses on your quick bread and you’ll be well on your way to meeting your daily nutrient requirement.
Can your own foods
By canning your own foods, you’ll ensure a few of things. First, you recognize precisely what goes into it; during a post SHTF society, there might not be labels on cans to tell you regarding what went into the can. Another good reason to can your own food is that you can process it long enough to be safe to eat however not most that it loses all of its nutritionary value.
A good rule of thumb with vegetables is that when they’re cooked to the point that they’re losing their bright colours, they’re additionally losing the enzymes and nutrients that create them so healthy.
That being said, you would like to create positive that you process low-acid vegetables like tomatoes, green beans and corn in a pressure canner in order to stop botulism. If at any purpose you notice that your vegetables aren’t sealed or that they have bubbles or foam on top of them after they’re sealed, throw them away; that release of gas may be a good indicator that your food has bacteria in it and isn’t safe to consume.
Protein
One of the largest misconceptions that meat eaters have regarding vegetarians is that they’re lacking protein. If you’re a practicing vegetarian, i really don’t need to answer this question for you. If you’re a meat eater prepping food for a vegetarian family member, simply stock up on lots of beans, nut butters, and perhaps even some vegetarian protein powder, that really wouldn’t be a bad issue to possess in your stockpile, anyway.
Now that we’ve touched on the dietary problems facing vegetarians and vegans, let’s speak a little regarding why folks opt for the vegetarian life style because that leads us into the next segment.
People usually become vegetarians for one of 2 reasons, though they’ll do so for each reasons. The first reason that someone might decide to become a vegetarian is for health reasons. Fruits and vegetables are extraordinary for you.
They provide you with all of the nutrients that you want without all of the saturated fats that come with eating meat. There are even some dietary vegetarians that include fish in their diets, so makes getting protein and vitamins b6 and b12 a snap. Also, if someone is simply a vegetarian for health reasons, they probably won’t mind eating a little bit of meat if necessary in order to survive.
The second reason that folks become vegetarians is for ethical reasons. They believe that it’s wrong to hurt another living being regardless of whether it’s for food or for its skin. If this can be the type of vegetarian that you are, you’re going to find life a bit tougher in the face of world disaster.
If preparing for long-term survival, you should probably include many additional coats and pairs of shoes/boots in your stockpile because if things get very bad, all that’s going to be available for a short time for shoe and coat making is going to be leather.
In order to meet the guidelines of your ethical compass, which is something that everyone should do, consider the substitutions that you make the most and then decide if they’re going to be available during a post SHTF world. If not, stock up.
Prepping as a vegetarian isn’t very that much different that prepping is for anybody else; it’s simply a matter of evaluating your dietary wants then stockpiling in order to meet them. You’ll need to build a couple of extra things yourself, including things like granola bars and soups, in order to make sure that your food is vegetarian, but you’re probably used to doing that anyway.
Alternative suggestion is to carefully consider what you’ll need. If you’re dead set against wearing any reasonably animal product then you better stock up on what you already use to replace them.
