The Thirty Day SHTF Test Diet: Day 17

Today was Day 17 for my test of Mountain House food packets as emergency food, The Thirty Day SHTF Test Diet. Lots of preppers recommend storing food for a disaster; this series tests it out. As detailed earlier, this diet has turned into a weight-loss diet too.

I was still locked into a topsy-turvy graveyard-shift sleep pattern, but I'm slowly shaking it off. This reversal is a way I react to stress; your mileage will undoubtedly vary. In aid of shaking myself out of it further, I'll be attending the "Blockchain & Quantum Computing Meetup" tomorrow evening.

Today's Meals

Still alternating between the two breakfast varieties, I went with the Scrambled Eggs and Ham with Peppers:

As I've noted before, the amount of fluid that's left over varies. After the cup of boiling water is added and the stirring & waiting are done, there's sometimes a little and sometimes a lot. This packet was on the little side.

As you can see, the original freeze-drying left all the food - including the eggs - in cubes. That's just a quirk of the freeze drying; as usual, it tasted like a real meal.

For the dinner, the old standard macaroni and cheese:

Funny enough, I'm verging on running out: only three more left. :)

I mentioned yesterday that the mozzarella cheese in the lasagna adheres to the spoon. This is not the case with the mac and cheese. Although the cheese part does cling to the spoon after it's stirred, it washes off easily with water.

As per all the dinners, two cups of boiling water, stirring rounds and less than ten minutes' reconstitution time got it ready to eat:

As per usual, the mac and cheese was salty and the cheese was mild. As a test, I nibbled a couple of the noodles when they were raw. They were not crunchy, but crumbly like a snack. If you're ever in a pinch where you can't access water (let alone boiling water), you could eat this packet.

The Nutrition Facts boxes for each, with the scrambled eggs on the left and the mac-and-cheese on the right:

shows a total calorie count that's about mid-range for these meals. It also shows a near-dearth of Vitamin C. The other values are okay, except for relatively high sodium.

In the teeth of my troughing, I did get some consolation from the scale:

My weight dropped to a new low, and is approaching (for now) a net loss of almost twenty pounds. So I've got a rationale for the psychological trough: "no stress, no [weight] loss."

Effects, So Far:

I'm still stuck in a trough, although I'm slowly climbing out. Of help was going over to Canadian Tire for a free torque check for some new tires I bought. That might be the cure for the low: finding something else to do rather than simply trying to bull my way through the day.

Clearly, I'm come down with a case of stress. Not unexpected, as a diet is going to be stressful; in fact, I was lucky early on when the novelty of the diet boosted my energy a bit.

Conclusion

You might say that this is the February of my discontent. :) It's also a heads-up for how I would react in a real disaster. Given my experience, after a burst of energy from the change, I'd trough out psychologically and would probably see my sleep patters disrupted. I can add this forecast to my "psychological prepping," as it is something to prepare against. Maybe activity will help.

Speaking of activity: as mentioned above, I'll be at the "Blockchain & Quantum Computing Meetup" tomorrow evening. It starts at 7 PM, so the next installment of this series will be posted earlier in the evening.

Thanks for reading.

And feel free to comment below!

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Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
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Day 15
Day 16
Day 17
Day 18
Day 19
Day 20
Day 21
Day 22
Day 23