[banananutmuffin]

Just a fun poll/question!

Assuming you still had power (for cooking/refrigeration) and a water supply, how long could you and your family survive off the food that is currently in your house right now? (You cannot go to the supermarket to buy food... you are trapped in your home.)

[berryblondeboys]

For just me alone - probably a month to 6 weeks (depending on how fast some foods spoil). For the family of 5 who all live here - 2 weeks. I just went to the store yesterday and I keep things well stocked. Plus, I home cook/bake everything.

[bargoo]

I'd say about a month.

[pixiegotfat]

3 weeks and those would be some creative non-nutritive meals that last 7 days probably

[Ashley777]

well just went shopping and including cans and the cereal and pb a j we stocked up on cause it was less then half price at least a month for three. U usually only do one big shop a month. Without the 24 year old who works hard manual labor 12 hour shifts 14 days straight I d say closer to 7 or 8 weeks

[mj5]

maybe 2 weeks. I use mostly fresh produce (some frozen) and don't use anything canned or processed. I shop every week.

[JoJoJo2]

Several weeks, but it certainly wouldn't be any fun. I keep the house pretty well stocked with food since with winter coming we could be snowed in, the roads could be closed - that sort of thing.

If the power were off, and that could happen in the wintertime, it would be a shorter time since cooking would be difficult, plus what is in the freezer and the fridge would spoil quickly.

[nina125]

For my husband & me, I buy 12 eggs, 1 gal skim milk, 2-3 kinds of meat and 4-5 kinds of veggies every week. I have some frozen veggies like edamame and peas to toss in a soup, and some minimally-processed dry/canned goods in the pantry like tomato sauce, buckwheat groats, quinoa, flour, etc. So I would be able to last about 1/2 - 1 week.

I try not to stock my fridge too well because I tend to waste more food that way. So I try to plan my meals every 3 days or so.

[April Snow]

If I wanted to stay on plan, about a week If I was willing to eat anything that I had, at least another week beyond that - I still have lots of non-plan (carby) food around from before I started on May 22.

[zoodoo613]

Survive? I long time, although I'd be hard pressed to put a number on it. Fruit in veggies would probably run out in the first 7-10 days. The only meat is some salami. That's probably go pretty quick. There's plenty of milk, and some frozen berries, so smoothies for a while. Probably a package or 2 of dried beans or lentils. Those would probably last nearly a week a piece. There's some rice. There's flour, so I could make bread. I could last a good long while, but I bet I'd be sick of it all long before it was gone.

[CrystalZ10]

If I cook all the meals than our food would last two weeks, perhaps three? But when my husband cooks, the food lasts less than a week. lol

[runningfromfat]

Not very long at all. Maybe a week? We don't keep a lot of food in our house and don't have the space for it either. Plus, fresh fruits and veggies are mostly what we eat so we go to the store pretty often.

[Scarlett]

Maybe I'm taking the question too literally.

You can go a month without food (as long as you have water) before you die of starvation.

There are alot of calorie dense things in the house. Bottles of canola oil and olive oil, PB, crisco, bag of sugar etc

If I calculated how many calories are in the kitchen and gave myself a 800 kcal diet. Then add into it surviving a month without food it would probably be much closer to 6 months. Though it wouldn't be fun at all.

I just went through all this when deciding against stocking up for Irene.


Though to the point of the question. If I ate like I eat now I could probably maintain it for a month or 2 on the food in my kitchen.

[kaplods]

Survive? Probably at least 6-9 months - not because the pantry is that full, but because we have several months worth of fat stores on our body.

We do keep the pantry, fridge, and freezer fairly well-stocked, because we're extremely frugal and the best way to spend the least on groceries, is to stock up when you find an extreme bargain on foods you regularly use.

The most economical way to buy rice, for example is in 20 lb bags. We don't eat enough rice for that to be practical, so we buy rice in 5 lb bags (which is much cheaper than rice in 1 lb bags).

When we learned that my family was going to be visiting from Illinois this summer, we had my sister bring us 8 lbs of dry tvp (textured vegetable/soy protein) and we reimbursed her. TVP looks like grapenuts cereal or beige gravel, but it's a dehydrated ground meat substitute that's much cheaper than ground beef and almost fat free (I use it to extend ground beef). In their area in Illinois it's only about $2.50 per lb, and around here it's almost twice that.

Because 1 lb of tvp is equivalent to about 4 lbs of ground beef, I have the equivalent of almost 30 lbs of ground beef in my pantry (in two large plastic canisters).

We don't have much easy-to-snack on (and therefore binge on) food in the house, but we wouldn't have to go mealless for at least a couple months.

[theox]

3-4 weeks comfortably. Quite a bit longer than that uncomfortably. Although I have fresh food, most of that would come from dry, canned, and frozen foods I have, as well as my disaster supply kit, which contains a week's worth of canned food (among other things).