At Home – Step 4 of 4

1. Disaster Food Supply
2. No Heat Food
3. Calories Count
4. Dried Foods

First, Read the Information You Need:

Food goes bad over time. How long it takes depends on the food. There are many ways used to preserve food.

Simply keeping it cold in a refrigerator or freezer preserves the food for longer. The cold prevents or slows down certain bacteria growth.

Dehydrating food removes moisture. Moisture is needed for a lot of bacteria and mold to thrive. A lack of moisture in food helps keep it safe to eat for longer periods of time. Dry food must be carefully prepared to ensure the correct amount of moisture is removed. If stored too soon (before completely drying), the food will still rot in the pantry. When you go to use it, the food will be bad.

A lot of bacteria and mold need oxygen to grow. Sealing food in a dry pack bag with an Oxygen Absorber Packet, helps remove the oxygen and keeps food safe. Only certain foods can be dry packed.

Canning food (sealing food in glass jars with metal sealed lids) also seals food inside to keep Oxygen away from it. It’s why if you see a jar of preserved food that does not have a sealed lid, you can’t trust the food inside of it. Sometimes the lid doesn’t properly seal during canning at home, or the seals breaks somehow during storage or moving. The heating process of canning also helps to kill any bacteria in food, which is why the temperature is important. Lastly, people who do canning at home must sterilize their jars and lids before using them to make sure nothing on the jar could contaminate the food being preserved.

Second, Choose an Option:

Option 1: Dehydrate Your Own Food	Option 2: MREs	Option 3: Family Garden
Use this website to look at ways you can dehydrate food without a food dehydrator.   Use this website to see how to dehydrate food using a dehydrator. Talk with you parents about which ways you could dehydrate food at home. Dehydrate your own food and do a taste test. Did you like it?	MRE means “Meal Ready-to Eat”. These are typically freeze dried food that only needs hot water to re-hydrate it and make it edible again. Most people who have tried MREs say it’s an acquired taste. That means they would eat it, but not if they had any other choice. Some really like them and wish they weren’t so expensive. Look at this website, or find another company that sells MREs to see what kind of food is out there. Try one MRE. Would you eat it again?	Most people who dehydrate food do so because they want to preserve what they grow for themselves.   Think of fruits or vegetables that your family eats. Make sure they are ones that will grow where you live. Use Burpee and your zip code to find out what growing zone you live in. Use Burpee’s search engine to find the name of the food you want. If you live in Texas and try Banana, you’ll only see Banana peppers, because the Banana fruit won’t grow in Texas well. Plan a family garden, using only plants that grow well in your zone. Make sure you have 3-5 varieties of plants that you are willing to eat.

Congrats! You’ve earned your Food rocker!

Go on to the Cooking rocker!

Return to Food Rocker Step 3 page.

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