303: Rice and Beans - Your 3000-Calorie Survival Base

Everybody, Brian Duff here, and welcome to another episode of The Mind for Survival.

In this episode, I'm getting back to the basics with a concept that I've been noodling

over for a while.

I'm talking about an aspect of food prepping that even some solid preppers out of the

Mind for Survival Facebook group disagree with me on.

And that has to do with the food stockpile concept of dry rice and beans establishing

the foundational backbone and last line of defense in your Paces food plan, which I'll get

into the Paces food plan here again in a bit.

Now as preppers, I think that we can all agree that there is little to no room for guesswork

when it comes to feeding our families anytime, but especially when we're planning ahead

for long-term disaster scenarios, right, like, hey, how much food do I have?

How long can I sustain my family for?

We want to know that stuff because then we can form a plan because we know how long

we are able to operate as our own fallback when everything else is falling apart.

You need to know exactly what you have and how much you have so you know how long it

will last before you're going hungry and your family is in trouble.

Building a well-prepared food supply addresses one of your most fundamental needs, food.

It's on the survival pyramid.

And with the methodology that I'm discussing today with this thing that I've been noodling

out here, it does not have to be complicated or, as one of the benefits of the rice and

beans, is that it doesn't have to break the bank to feed anyone and their family for

weeks, months, or longer with a food supply that can last for decades.

Rice and beans is one of those foods that you can buy, stick in the cupboard for a couple

of years, and it's going to be fine.

If you make the effort, like I'm going to talk about, to put it in buckets and seal

it in mylar bags and all that, oxygen absorbers and everything, it can last 25 plus years.

That's a great reassurance to always know that, hey, I have this food, then I'm going

to tell you the benefits of it here in a little bit, that can last for 25 years.

Imagine getting that when you're a 20-year-old or maybe a 20-year-old probably wouldn't

appreciate it a lot of times.

I would have, but 30-year-old or when that preparedness bug hits, and boom, here's 25

years of food that at a minimum, you and your family can live on.

Now I'm not going to talk about when it comes to those food supplies here.

Throwing random cans of soup into a dark cabinet and calling it good, preparedness is about

building intentional systems based on how people actually live.

So with that, I'm going to discuss what I think is a solid foundational fallback, not a

primary thing you want to eat all the time, a fallback for your family's survival food

supply, bulk dry rice and dry beans.

I'm going to cover why they are an excellent starting point for food prepping, how to calculate

exactly what you need.

I'm going to talk about where a lot of preppers get the calorie requirements wrong, and I'm

going to talk about how to store them properly, how to cook them, what it costs to get a

30-day or even one-year food supply together using this method.

And I'm going to cover the legitimate objections to rice and beans that the members of the

Mind for Survival Facebook group raised, and we're going to discuss that.

So grab a notebook, get ready, and let's dive into this week's episode.

Oh, before we do that really quick, hey, I was out for the last two weeks, I had a horrible

case of the flu that, man, I was coughing every like 60 seconds.

So it wasn't able to get the podcast done, but I'm back.

And thank you for everybody for always listening and for being a great audience.

Now, let's start with the why.

Why should rice and beans be one of your primary considerations, something to think, yeah,

that's what I'm going to base my preparedness food supply plan on.

That's the backbone of your long-lasting pantry.

First, they cost very little.

Second, they can be stored for decades when properly sealed.

And third, this simple combination of rice and beans provides the energy.

Also a complete protein and fiber that your body requires to function.

Now while you probably would not want to live on rice and beans alone for the rest of your

life, they do offer an incredible baseline of stability for your food plan.

A key advantage of pairing rice with beans is the protein quality.

Your body, our body, the human body relies on nine essential amino acids that it cannot

produce on its own.

We have to take those in, we have to supplement those into our body.

Now these essential amino acids are the building blocks that support things like muscle repair,

immune strength and overall resilience.

I mean, doesn't that sound like something as preppers that we want some muscle repair

abilities, some immune strength for our immune system and some improved overall resilience?

That's pretty important.

White rice provides excellent carbohydrates to give you energy, but it lacks sufficient

lysine, which as I mentioned is an essential amino acid that we humans use to do things

like protein synthesis, boosts the immune system.

It helps with the maintenance of your soft tissue, your bones and your organs.

And it also helps with a really good thing for a disaster as HDF scenario is it manages

to stress an anxiety.

And if you're someone that suffers with cold sores, it helps with that too.

So lysine is found in high protein foods such as meat, eggs, soy, lentils and finally

beans, which is why it pairs with white rice as a foundational survival food.

White rice doesn't provide the lysine, beans do.

Now beans on the other hand deliver plenty of lysine, but lack the essential amino acid

methionine, which white rice has.

So when you combine the two white rice and beans, they fill in each other's gaps in the

essential amino acids.

Because of that, this natural pairing creates a complete protein matching what you would

normally get from animal sources.

The best part?

You do not even need to eat them in the exact same bite.

If you have a bowl of rice that lunch in a serving of beans at dinner, your body efficiently

pulls those amino acids so that in desperate times you can operate as optimally as possible.

Now let's talk about the numbers because how much do you actually need and if you look

around online, you will often see people recommending a 2000 calorie per day diet for emergencies.

I know because at one time I used to say 2000 calories a day.

And well, that's a great starting point for an active adult working hard to maintain

their home and care for their family 2000 calories is for most a strict calorie deficient

diet.

In other words, if you want to lose weight, shoot for 2000 calories a day and you'll probably

do it.

Calories are our fuel.

They keep us moving, thinking and making good decisions.

He is that most active adult males need 3000 calories per day, sometimes more to maintain

their health, strength and energy.

Therefore, if you want a full-proof food stockpile, plan for 3000 calories per day per person,

not to 2000 calories that people recite and put out there a lot.

Now if anyone in your food plan needs less, planning for the higher number that 3000

calories per person per day creates a buffer, which in an SHTF situation, long-term disaster,

maybe that's a life-saving buffer.

I mean, there is always the question that comes up, well, what if somebody that you know

shows up and asks you for food?

Guess what?

You just gave yourself a buffer that if you're feeling generous, you can provide to others.

Likewise, if you keep it for yourselves, that just extends the number of days you can

go before you have to figure out where you're going to find your next meal from.

Like you don't have it, you're not providing it.

You're having to figure that out on the fly because you've extended past your meals.

And I'm not sure about you, but as a prepper myself, I believe that whenever possible,

maintaining a food buffer to bolster my life-sustaining prepping, all those fallbacks I'm working

on, it's probably a pretty wise investment.

Now, for planning purposes, it's a good idea to store your rice and beans paired up in

such a way that they're ready to go.

And what I've worked out here is what I call the balanced bucket method, because this

is designed so that one five gallon bucket of white rice pairs with one five gallon

bucket of black beans.

Ratio lets you use a single ratio to empty a container of rice and a container of beans

simultaneously.

Basically, when you get to the bottom of them, you're not going to have much of anything

left.

Typically, a standard five gallon food grade bucket lined with the proper mylar bag.

That can hold about 35 to 37 pounds of long grain white rice.

And it can hold 32 to 34 pounds, typically, of dry black beans.

Now some of you may be saying, hey, Brian, why is there 35 to 37 pounds of long grain white

rice in a bucket and only 32 to 34 pounds of dry black beans?

And that's because rice packs down a bit denser than beans do, which accounts for the weight

difference between the two five gallon buckets.

Now if you use a proper bag, a mylar bag, if you fill it up, leaving a little bit of

room at the top, half inch, an inch, whatever that is for you, add in your oxygen absorbers

and seal it tight.

You in that bag, in that bucket, you will create an environment that keeps your rice and

beans fresh for 25 years or more.

If you've been prepping for a while, you know all this.

What does that do?

It locks out moisture.

It locks out oxygen and ensures your family has a reliable fallback of food for decades

down the road.

But remember, if you're just starting out, you're just saying, hey, I'm just getting

prepared.

I'm hearing this podcast for the first time.

I don't even know about buckets and mylar bags and all this stuff.

I just want to get some food because I don't have anything.

I want to make sure my family's ready.

Don't stress about the buckets right away.

Just buying the bags of rice and beans and keeping them in a cool, dry place is a massive

step forward.

They'll keep on a shelf in a pantry for a couple of years with no additional storage prepping

done.

Keep it in some place dark away from the light and it'll be fine.

Next, let's talk about the budget because building a practical food stock pile and by

practical, I mean something that's going to keep you alive.

We're thinking in terms of, I want to keep my family fed.

This isn't right now.

If we're especially if we're starting out, we're looking, hey, how can I accomplish the

most with the least?

You can use this plan to create a solid foundation for a fraction of the costs that you're going

to pay for commercial meals, the freeze-dried stuff, MREs, all that.

You're also going to pay a fraction of the cost initially of what you would spend if

you're trying to outfit this with canned meat, canned vegetables and all that.

If you want to build a one month supply for one active adult male, hitting that 3,000

calorie daily baseline, remember, it doesn't have to be an active adult male.

This is just your baseline.

I'm planning for 3,000 calories per day per person.

You need roughly 30 pounds of rice and 26 pounds of beans.

At current prices, things are fluctuating all the time, right?

You can secure this 30-day supply for under 80 bucks.

That is less than $20 for a week of survival food.

Now this, in my opinion, this is a budget-friendly approach, right, that makes readiness accessible

to everyone.

Because what do we hear about?

Time and money is the biggest problems people have.

Well, you're going to the grocery store.

You're buying dry rice, dry beans, and you're sticking them on the shelf, and you're doing

that for less than 80 bucks.

Now, when you stick them on the shelf, I recommend you practice cooking your rice and beans,

soaking your beans and doing all that.

But that's basically, hey, you're just, you're now in the world of preppers.

You are consciously putting away food to get you going.

You can do that for 80 bucks a month, 20 bucks a week.

I think of it this way for less than 100 bucks, $100.

I can store over 30 days worth of food with one bucket of rice and one bucket of beans.

If I did that at 30, I'd have a 30-day supply of, I'm out of option survival food.

That would last until I'm around 60.

Talk about a food pantry rotation that you don't have to worry about.

Do that at 60 or 65, and you probably never have to worry about it again.

Then once you have your 30-day foundation set, you're good.

I got 30 days worth of survival food in my cupboard.

If you have the mindset that more food is better, that's my mindset.

You can scale up from there.

So, projecting forward, a full year supply of survival food, this is rice and beans that's

called survival food, because that's what it is.

For an adult, it costs right around $900 bucks, a year's worth of food.

You could live on that for a year, spending that money to ensure an entire year of food

security.

Personally, I think that's an incredibly smart way to prepare you and your family to overcome

some of the worst of the world has to throw at you, should it throw it at you, a monkey

sitting back there flicking stuff, and what is that thing that we're sick and throw

at you?

Think about the people around the world that live in famine areas that have to watch

their families go hungry all the time.

No, man, that's what we're doing this for.

Now, in spite of all that of what I think are the benefits of rice and beans, they are

not without their critics and their points.

Valid points, in some cases, because some people strongly dislike the idea of storing rice

and beans as a foundational part of a prepping plan.

They correctly point out, and Tony, you correctly point this stuff out to, that it takes time

to prepare.

You have to soak the beans overnight, and in a crazy wild, wild wild world version, if

you're up and moving and having to do stuff, that's kind of a pain.

It also requires a significant amount of water upwards of an extra gallon per person.

So if you're on water, if you're tied on water, it may not be the best plan for you.

And it requires cooking, fuel, lighting, a fire, whatever you're doing to heat up the

water and do everything that it does.

Now those are all true and real considerations that any prepper worth the salt should

take an account.

I would add that it's mundane and boring.

Rice and beans, that's it.

I mean, I hope you have a bunch of sauces and stuff.

That would be a really good thing to plan and things that you can make up to change

up the texture, you know, gravy and stuff.

And with all those factors being true, that just illustrates a critical point of preparedness

that should be applied to all of our preps.

Everything in the prepping world has a positive and negative that applies uniquely to each

one of our individual situations.

We manage our risk profile, if you haven't read the Mind for Survival book, head over to

Amazon, put in mind for survival or put in Brian Duff into the search bar, click on the

Mind for Survival book.

This is a lot of what's in the book.

I have an entire chapter dedicated to objectively managing your risk because we manage our

risk profile by reducing the impact of a problem and our vulnerability to that problem.

So if something's a problem for me, a threat that might cause me issues, how can I minimize

or mitigate that threat?

One way is by reducing the impact of whatever that problem does to me.

So maybe it's, hey, that problem is a fire that destroys my foodstores.

Okay, I split up my foodstores so that one fire won't take them all out.

I've minimized that problem somewhat.

Likewise, we minimize our vulnerability to a problem.

Another term for vulnerability is lack of preparedness.

We are most vulnerable where we are most unprepared.

So in my mind, one of the benefits of rice and beans is that it is a stopgap that can

address a function of life that if I don't have, if I don't have nutrition, I will die.

I will degrade, I will lose energy, I'll lose the ability to deal with the events that

are at hand and eventually if that goes on long enough, we know how that works.

And as a test concept for a stopgap, last ditch food and nutrition option, rice and beans

are a good primary choice.

Overall, look at all of the times rice and beans were provided to keep starving people

alive.

You can go do an internet search in 1954, the U.S. Food for Peace Act solidified the practice

of donating U.S. produce goods such as rice and beans for humanitarian aid.

In 2000, the Lamb and J Food Program began delivering daily meals of rice and beans to

children and families in Haiti.

All over the world, rice and beans are often used as a stopgap to keep people from dying.

The list goes on and on and whenever people are completely out of options living in an

emerging or SHTF level event for them, donated survival rations of rice and beans, that can

keep people alive.

And again, when it comes to rice and beans, when it comes to all of our preps, we have

to figure out what are the pluses and minuses for us.

But how does that relate to us in our situation?

Because not every emergency or SHTF event will shut down the water system.

Likewise, every event won't result in a non permissible environment.

At the end of the day, though, whatever it is, it's so screwed up that we're having

to live on rice and beans.

I guarantee if that's the point we come to, all these pluses and minuses of water and

impact on the rice and beans and what people in the Facebook group has said, those are

all going to be part of something that will happen in every disaster we deal with.

And that is guaranteed problem solving and creating fallback options will be a nonstop

part of that.

If we're in a disaster, if things are a mess, I guarantee you're going to be doing a lot

of problem solving and creating fallback option after fallback option, after fallback option,

as you go throughout your day and your life, dealing with that crazy event.

Now when it comes to fallback options, this brings us to the Paces plan and Paces stands

for primary, alternate contingency, emergency and SHTF options.

It's a layered system that you can apply to any aspect of your preparedness, whether

that's routes, water sources, kit bags, you name it, you can create a hierarchy that

makes the most out of your time and money and in the case of food, your Paces plan should

be something along the lines of my updated Paces food plan.

Now when I say updated on the Paces food plan, all this stuff is I go through my day, I

think about this stuff.

I have a giant three by four or three by three white notepad, it's three feet by three

feet notepad hanging out my living room on an easel and I just sit there and like think

about these ideas, the pluses and negatives, like what Tony and the guys do in the Mind

for Svival Facebook group and we think about different ideas.

So this Paces plan is improving it's an evolution of what I had here in the past about a year

ago.

Now when it comes to the Paces food plan, your primary food, think of that as your refrigerator

and freezer perishables, that without any support, you know, energy, whatever coming in, you

doing something and that refrigerator being dead, that freezer being dead, that that food

will go bad with an hours today's.

That's your primary food.

The lights go out.

Hey, that's what I should eat first.

That's the food you typically eat.

Most people they eat and we live and eat out of our fridge and freezers.

Hey, your alternate food, that's your shelf stable food that when fresh and new last several

months to a year, right?

There's all that Salamis and different stuff that last several months maybe up to a year.

The next level of food is your contingency food.

That's your shelf stable food that when newly produced, last one to five years, canned

food, canned meats, a lot of that kind of stuff.

You also have your emergency level supplies, your tier of emergency supplies.

Those are your dry goods, your rice beans, etc., and freeze dried foods which when properly

package, properly preserved last over five years, we're looking at 25, 30 years in some

cases.

And finally, there is the SHTF options.

Your SHTF food options are when you've gone through the primary alternate contingency

emergency, you've gone through your fridge, your freezer, the stuff that expires in a few

months, the stuff that expires after a couple of years, and finally you've eaten through

all your rice and beans, you're in your SHTF options and that's your out of food.

Now it's the figure it out, find it, grow it, pick it, hunt it, scavenge it, that kind

of thing.

That is up to you're putting your food, there's luck involved with getting your food

then, right?

Hey, I'm growing it.

What happens with the weather?

I'm finding it.

Is it available?

Somebody already come through here looking for food, right?

That kind of thing.

Preparedness is about having fallbacks, perhaps, because water is such a concern with rice

and beans because hey, if the average person, we have the rule of thumb, the average person

needs a gallon of water per day for drinking water.

Well, now you just threw a gallon per day for cooking rice and beans, plus you need more

for whatever, you know, hygiene, all that kind of stuff.

If you don't have it, well, then that's becomes a problem.

So that's where our paces plan goes into effect for water.

What's our primary source of water?

Well, that's coming out of my tap.

If that goes down, well then what's my next sort?

What's my alternate source of water?

Maybe there's not a good alternate source of water and so, hey, in my planning phase,

my primary source of water goes out, the food that goes up to the primary food I'm going

to be using, maybe that's your canned food because it doesn't need as much water.

Have a plan for that.

Don't just rely on the rice and beans because as the guys point out in the group, you may

end up stuck because of something beyond your control.

Hey, we don't have water, we don't have this.

Everything is all, it's like a game of pickup sticks, pickup sticks with spaghetti.

All this preparedness stuff, when something's going on, all intertwines.

One thing affects another.

It's also good to know that while rice and beans, in my opinion, provide an amazing foundation,

provided you accommodate the weaknesses of it, the extra water and all that, they do

not have everything you need.

Over the long haul, the rice and beans diet, it lacks a lot of vitamin minerals that

you need, such as vitamin C and vitamin A, and there's others in there.

So this is why you should view rice and beans as a foundation, not the entire house.

You take that rice and beans, if you start with it, say how I'm just getting into this,

here's what I got.

I have rice and beans, okay, I know I'm good for a month.

Well now let me add 30 days worth of meat to this, you go out and you buy 30 cans of

spam.

Boom, well guess what, a can of spam has right over a thousand calories in it.

If you add that to the 90,000 calories at 3,000 calories a day worth of rice and beans,

you have, you now have 120,000 calories.

What does that mean?

What's all the big math, Brian?

I'm not a mathematician.

What does that mean?

That means that that extra calories from the spam that I added just extended my food supply

by 30,000 calories.

In other words, 10 days of additional food that I now have.

So now I have rice, beans, and spam, okay, well let me go out and get some vegetables.

Now I have rice, beans, and vegetables.

Over time, as you add to this stockpile, you're going to displace your use of rice and

beans for the stuff that tastes good.

And you'll get down to the end where you're not going to have as much rice and beans.

But what happens if a long-term disaster happens?

You run through all your filler foods, first, the paces plan, your primary intake contingency,

all those things in your fridge and the shelves.

And eventually once you use them all up, if that's how long it goes, guess what you're

back down to, the rice and beans.

That's why it's an important part of this foundation.

It gives you a long-term fallback option that doesn't break the bank.

So to wrap this up, like all preps, rice and beans have considerations to account for.

You got to plan on certain aspects with it.

It's like having canned food.

Hey, you got to figure out you have to know how to open a can or have a can opener with

you.

That's something you have to plan for.

Ultimately, though, rice and beans provides a practical, affordable, and reliable foundation

for your family's readiness.

It strips things down to the essentials.

It helps you focus on what actually keeps people healthy and energized to move forward.

You do not need thousands of dollars to start building this safety net.

Start simple.

The next time you go to the grocery store, grab an extra bag or two of white rice and black

beans.

And a cool, dry place in your home to store them.

And over not that long, you'll have enough to keep you and your family on the positive

side of their survival equation, and that's a good thing.

Maybe you're someone who goes, you know, I have tons of canned food.

I got all this stuff.

I really don't know how much I got in there, how long I can survive on it.

So you know what?

I'm going to call that good.

Like, that's what we're going to live out of when something first happens.

And I'm going to go down and stock up on some rice and beans.

So now I know I have this fallback plan and having a fallback plan, well, that's why

we do it.

That's a good thing.

So with that, everybody, I hope that made sense.

And if you are someone who is not on board with the rice and beans as a foundational thing,

part of preparedness, like I talked about here, man, I'd love to hear why.

If you haven't joined the Mind for Survival Facebook group, please head over to Facebook,

put in Mind for Survival in the search bar when you see the group come up, go ahead and

click join.

It's going to ask you three or four questions in there.

Go ahead and answer those and we will get you into the group where we have lots of great

discussions, lots of great thoughts, lots of people who preparedness is part of their lifestyle

and they are in there, slinging their advice, slinging their insights, telling you their experiences,

really good, low key, not a bunch of people off the rails.

Like some of the groups that are these days, I think you like it, head over Facebook,

put in Mind for Survival and join the group.

So with that, everybody, hey, as always, stay safe, secure and prepared and never forget

my friends.

You are just one prep away from being better prepared.

Bye for now.

No one saves a weed, you prep his plan, you stand on your feet, not a bad fear, not

chasing gold.

It's my city and where does that matter most.

Let's go out, people crack true, shows up when the grid goes black, you're either one

who acts and moves or the one they care out on the evening news, Mind for Survival,

sit over here, cut through the noise to see it clear, head on a swivel, boots in the

dirt, prepared on me, doesn't hurt, the same again, get your life, Mind for Survival,

Mind for Survival, do it right.