I’ve just finished reading a book about food supply (based on a UK model) that refers to some areas as “Food Deserts” as they are so isolated from any decent supply of food. All that is available for a considerable distance is take-away shops. Where would this leave people in the event of a pandemic? Particularly those without private transport?
You know, I think you can have a food desert in the middle of an oasis if you’re not careful. We’re surrounded by affluent neighborhoods (not ours, but nearby) and the main highway here is wall to wall take-out or fast food eat-in places. The houses in these neighborhoods have the biggest and best appliances in huge kitchens the size of our condo, yet these people don’t eat in their own homes. The restaurants & fast food places are packed EVERY night with waiting lines up to 45 minutes or longer on any given weeknight because all these well to do people don’t want to cook or don’t know how to cook so they eat out EVERY meal, EVERY night. Scary.
wow..is that in the US or the UK?
Woodstock - I don’t know about where I’m is referring too for certain, but there are plenty of places like this in the US. More and more more meals are eaten away from these days. As part of my preps I’ve tried to reduce our dependence on eating out since it won’t be an option if TSHTF. Small local “corner” grocers have closed as they can’t compete with the big chains, or their prperty is more valuable than what they can make so they bail out. Where I am I can’t possibly walk to any grocery store - the closest one is 9 miles away. There are plenty of rural pockets in the US that are even further from the closest food source. What do they do when food runs AND they have run out of gas as well? It’s a scary realization and one that has prompted me to prep.
Oh - and my parents in FL live in the exact environment I’m is talking about - lots of affluent retirees who, after years of cooking for their families, don’t feel like cooking any more. If you don’t hit a rest. in the busy season before 6:00pm you’re in for very long waits at even meidocre rest.
Woodstock, that’s exactly WHY we’re probably all prepping to some degree. Even if we lived close to a grocery, the point in going to one is to bring back home something you need. That means for most of us hiking to the store then hiking back with added weight that would cause most of us to be exhausted before we’d even gotten halfway home, if that far.
There are people with bicycles who could rig a wagon-type thing that they could pull behind their bike, but then that’s added weight TO and FROM the store plus the additional load of more groceries than they would be able to carry just in their 2 hands or in their backpacks.
More muscle power than they’re used to moving on a bike, for a bigger load over an extended distance, would make the trip harder & probably make even the most fit person muscle sore for a few days until they got used to the excess load.
But to address your original question, short of trying to make it to and from a supply store of any sort, rural people, especially the elderly, if they haven’t ‘stocked up’, will be dependent on activities like Meals on Wheels, an agency that delivers food to the elderly here in the U.S., or something along those lines. How they would sign up for such a service, how they would determine if they would qualify, etc. would be up to the community running the agency I suppose.
One thing I’m trying to figure out in this whole food-supply issue is, exactly how much of an areas food IS supplied by a grocery store. I know, people say if TSHTF, the store shelves will be emptied in a few hours if not sooner. I agree. They don’t have a lot of food stored in the back of the store. Grocery stores get daily shipments of food from elsewhere.
But, at least where I live, most people do NOT get all their food from the grocery store. Many, as people posted above, buy just stuff for a few meals, and get a LOT from McD’s takeout windows and such. Or the local 7–11. Or the bagel stand at work. And their kids get 2 meals a day (breakfast and lunch) through the local schools free or reduced lunch program. The parents get lunch at their office’s cafeterias, or at the Wendy’s down the stret from their office.
I would bet most of my area purchase only about 1/3 of their meals as products from a grocery store.
So, of course, if people go to the stores to try to meet all their meals, there couldn’t possibly be ebough to feed everyone, even for one week. On the other hand, there are sources of food suppliers out there that have to be considered as well… whomever is supplying all those fast food takeout places and the school and work cafeterias.
After you have cooked tens of thousands of meals for family, and if you are living without others you tend to eat out for many reasons. My mother cooked elaborate meals even if alone, but my brother would often drop by and share a meal with her. I am a loner in many ways, but also a people person and like to chat or be amongst others of my kind, so I eat my one main meal out. Some older people eat a price fix meal supplied by the state for about a $1. I tried a few different ones just to see what was what. Absolutely dreadful, and dismal. I may be old, but I’m not dismal, and I won’t eat food that has all the goodness and taste processed out of it. The surroundings aren’t so bad, one is the gate house of an old estate with a pool on view. But the food. Ehhh, blehhh.ugh. The people sit staring into space masticating. It may keep body and soul together. But the spirit? But at least they get out and some take advantage of exercise programs. It depends a lot on the director and the people who frequent it. Reminds me, I think I’ll go to one lively one and do tai chi, now that the worst of summer might be over. Everyone seems to eat out now. Its an affluent area and we have a lot of good restaurants in every price range, plus the usual gourmet take outs, the take outs in supermarkets, again in every price range, the salad bars, the soups. Then of course the fast food of every kind. America eats out.
I think for the elderly, and somehow I don’t include myself in that grouping do get a good deal for the 1.50 at the senior centers. I may think its awful, but I still have my taste buds intact. I think its low salt and more institutional in nature, but its soup, bread and butter, a protein, a few vegetables and a desert. Plus milk, coffee and tea. Why even a cup of coffee in a store cost more than this whole meal. I think they also pick up seniors who don’t have transportation. They also give a salad with a meal, and seconds if anyone is so inclined. Its really an excellent idea.
Another issue is people are getting further away from the “normal” food supply. As noted above in the US more and more people eat prepared and or processed foods. There are many people who don’t even know their way around a kitchen.
I have a 20-year old niece who in 2 years of living on her own went from slim and in shape to gain 25~30 pounds because she cannot cook and eats only prepared or processed foods. There are MANY people like this out there. Now what will happen to these people in the event of food supply disruption or shortage? -They can’t cook for themselves. -They most certainly don’t have any basic food staples on their shelves. -They certainly aren’t prepared for even 72 hours of SIP. -They are going to be in trouble in the event of an emergency and unable to feed themselves.
My 4-year old could probably survive for days on his own at home in an emegency because he had basic cooking classes at his pre-school.
this gets more and more scary after reading the posts above. We do eat out a lot in Sydney it seems to me, but by a lot i mean maybe once a week and maybe 3 work lunches. “A Lot” seems to be a lot different in the US!
pah! The above was me
anonymous — i certainly am not speaking for the entire US! (-:
But I think I’m on safe ground in my estimation of MANY people in my urban area “eating out” — by which I mean mostly drive thru or take out — more than 3 X a week for dinner. I can’t tell for sure what people do for lunch; I knwo there are a lot of fast food places and cafeterias and sandwhich shops, and most of my friends with kids in daycare say the daycare provides breakfast and lunch — they just give their own kids an early morning snack in the car.
Of course I do know people who cook as well — we aren’t all unable to!
On the OTHER hand, a close friend was at my house the other day and brought a microwaveable soup-in-a-cup for her daughter to eat. We do not have a microwave, though, so she was perplexed as to what her daughter would eat. (!!) I finally convinced her (college graduate for what it is worth) that we could just boil water. (-:
Anyhow, it all brings me to a different conclusion, at least among the folks I know, which is that telling them to go ahead and stockpile 6 weeks of food really doesn’t resonate with them because they don’t really GET how much 6 week’s of food really is. They are thinking 6 times their weekly grocery shopping, which likely doesn’t include many of their meals!
ACM, I so agree. I guess I have lived sheltered,rural life. Until I started following these (and other)flu threas, I just assumed that everyone knew how to bake bread,can, preserve,garden etc.Almost everyone I know does. Lived most of my life in smallish towns, with many Mormons. :-)
Gosh cactus, I can only do one of those things — bake bread (kind of!) I bet you can sew and knit, too! (-:
No, I can guarantee to you that there is no one in my area (well, in my age group) who cans or preserves. In fact I’m trying to find someone with a canner I can try out before I buy one, and out of a group of about 100 families in town, no one has or uses one. (I did find one woman who makes jams, but she grew up Mennonite.)
At least we HAVE grocery stores, though, where I live, though none within walking distance. What the original poster wrote about was I think describing parts of inner cities, especially, which have NO grocery stores — just fast food chains and maybe some 7–11 convenience shops. I know this is a huge problem in some areas of my city. The residents there are overcharged for the food they buy (compared to their equivalent prices at the big box Walmart type stores in the suburbs). It would be much more expensive for inner city residents to stockpile food for that reason, even if they had the extra money to begin with.
I thought I had some notion about the average family and its eating habits but such is not the case. I don’t can (but do now have all the equipment plus seeds to grow a garden if I have to), I bake (but only once in awhile because we only eat one slice of bread a day) but I eat all but one meal (Sunday brunch) at home. I do on rare occasions eat crackers or some cookies store bought. I use canned beans if I’m in a rush but slowly dropping those because of sodium content. From the concern of bird flu I think what all of you are saying is true and quite alarming. During a pandemic going from eating out to cooking over wood or propane will be such an incredible challenge.
My other thought is about what people are eating can not be making them healthy. I look at it that if 90% of what I eat is healthy then the 10% where I treat myself is okay; it’s how I justify it to myself. But if 90% is treats and 10% is healthy isn’t the Western diet going to make us a bunch of sitting ducks (pun intended). Bodies made up of preseratives, sodium, sugar and fat doesn’t sound like a body that can fight disease. What have we done? This is terrible and don’t get me going about people not exercising. I think at this time getting as fit and as strong as you can be is just as important as prepping. We will need physical strength to see us through this- how many are up for that challenge?
Prepping Gal, I agree with your concerns and in addition, from what I have studied and observed, I am concerned about the effects on mental health that prolonged bad dietary habits cause. My doctor was also asking if I had noticed this. He and his colleagues are concerned.
All quiet — what kind of effects on mental health are you talking about?
Ignoring my own amatuer studies, my doctor told me there has been a dramatic increase in depression, anxiety and disorders such as bi-polar. He feels long-term poor dietary habits are possibly affecting chemical levels in the brain. Diet and exercise do have a strong effect on bi-polar, he told me.
Getting trapped in a large city seems to be a desert of sorts, IMHO.
Allquiet - do you think he was talking about essential fatty acids (omega 3s?) I have been reading a lot about using them to treat depression — and I know they are in short supply especially in deep fried fast foods….
Average, (although I doubt you’re average) He didn’t get specific other than general concern about modern dietary habits but you are right about the fatty acids being essential. He mostly wanted to know if I had noticed the shocking jump in mental disorders. The reason I brought it up here is that I have been interested in how people coped in the 1917 outbreak and have been concerned that in a modern pandemic, we could see a vacuum of coping skills due to mental breakdown. Of course I see there is another thread now this would be better in.
I very much agree with you — about the mental breakdown, it has been of concern and interest to me as well. Please share whatever srouces you are finding on how people coped in the Spanish Flu epidemic — one big difference I think is that they really didn’t see it coming — that’s a whole mental issue in and of itself — to be blindsided by something versus to know in advance that it MIGHT or then again MIGHT NOT be coming — sometimes the anticipation (dread) of an event can be worse than the actual emotional effects of it when it happens. (Not saying dread is worse than death of course.)
But you are right, we are discussing this issue on “coping with Emotions”.
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