Let's talk about
Emergency Snacks
Search for emergency food online and you will be offered a brick. A dense, sweet, crumbly brick, sealed in foil, with enough calories to keep a sailor going for days in a lifeboat. Marvellous, if you happen to be in a lifeboat.
Most of us won't be. If you ever have to pick up your grab bag (a flood warning, a gas leak in the street, the trains stopping with you stranded at the office) you are looking at a day or two away from your own kitchen, not three weeks adrift in the North Atlantic. Nobody starves in two days. What you need from food in that time is simpler: something that fills you up, and something that cheers you up.
What a grab bag snack has to do
It has four jobs.
-
Fill you up: protein, fat and fibre keep hunger away for longer than sugar on its own. A handful of nuts beats a biscuit.
-
Lift your mood: a bad day goes better with something you like eating. Familiar food is comforting, and with children it can stop a wobble turning into a meltdown.
-
Survive the bag: it will be squashed, dropped and sat on. If it turns to crumbs in the packet, it will turn to crumbs in your hand.
-
Keep for a year: when you buy, look for a best before date at least a year away.
Our grab bag snack list
Pick a few of these for each person in the house, enough for a day or two each.
-
Unsalted nuts, or nut butter in single-serve sachets: the best filler there is. (Obviously not for anyone with a nut allergy.)
-
Biltong or beef jerky: proper protein, in a bag that weighs almost nothing.
-
Oatcakes: sturdier than crackers, filling, and they go with the nut butter.
-
Dark chocolate: keeps longer than milk chocolate and copes better with a warm bag. This is the morale department.
-
Boiled sweets: last for ages, give a quick lift, and keep a fractious child busy for ten minutes.
-
Dried fruit: apricots, dates, a little box of raisins. Sweet, chewy and impossible to crush.
-
Tea bags or coffee sachets: they weigh nothing. If you end up in a rest centre or a friend's spare room there will be a kettle, and a proper cup of tea is half the battle.
-
Something your family loves: the cereal bar your teenager lives on, the biscuits your other half would trade you for. It is on no official list anywhere, and it is the most important thing on this one!
What to leave out
-
Salty snacks in quantity: crisps and salted nuts make you thirsty, and the water in a grab bag is limited. More on that in ‘What to drink in an emergency situation’.
-
Anything that needs cooking or a tin opener.
-
Milk chocolate and anything else that melts into a puddle.
-
Food nobody has tried: a crisis is not the moment to discover the whole family hates it.
-
Anything with a short date: bakery bits, sandwiches, fruit.
Which bag are you packing?
The snack list changes a little depending on the bag.
-
The grab bag at home: the snack tin described above, enough for a day or two for everyone in the house.
-
The car grab bag: this is the one place a lifeboat ration bar makes sense. A car boot is an oven in July and a fridge in January, and car kits tend to be forgotten for years. A compact ration pack copes with both. Add a few of the snacks above and swap them when the clocks go back. The rest of the car kit is in ‘Using the car in an emergency ’.
-
The Get-home bag: you need one evening, not two days, so keep it small and light. A handful of nuts, a bar of dark chocolate and some boiled sweets is plenty, and a little cash for a hot meal if the station café is open. If your plan is a colleague's spare room, they will probably feed you; the train you are stuck on will not.
If someone in the house has a medical diet
-
Diabetes: pack the hypo treatment your diabetes team recommends, in a pocket you can reach without unpacking the bag.
-
Allergies or coeliac disease: give their snacks a separate, clearly labelled bag, so a stressed helper can't hand the wrong thing to the wrong person.
-
Babies and toddlers: pack the formula and food they already have, not something new.
Don't forget the pets
Pets need the same two things: food that fills them and something that cheers them up. Pack a couple of days of their usual food in a sealed pouch, and resist switching them to something new. A sudden change of diet can upset their stomach, and an upset stomach is the last thing you want in a borrowed spare room. Add a few of their favourite treats. If you choose freeze-dried raw treats, wash your hands after handling them. There is more in ‘Looking after your pets in an emergency’.
How to pack them
-
Put everything in a tin or a hard plastic lunchbox, so nothing gets crushed.
-
Give each person their own zip bag, with their name on it.
-
Write the date you packed it on the lid.
-
Keep the tin at the top of the grab bag. It is the first thing anyone will ask for.