Food storage battles: Store and ignore or a basement store?

WEST VALLEY CITY — It wasn't a community catastrophe that made Stephan Gabrielson break into the extra supplies of food he had stored in his home.

"I envisioned a disaster on a large scale where everyone had to rely on their food storage to survive — something like an earthquake where we are without power and transportation for weeks," Stephan said recently in his home in West Valley City.

"But that isn't what we use it for," his wife Fayone added.

"There are more down-to-earth and practical uses for food storage," Stephan said.

Many of the uses for food storage are related today's recovering economy. Tim Pedersen, manager for Emergency Essentials, a group of stores specializing in emergency preparedness, said buying food storage for possible economic problems is becoming more popular.

"Since Sept. 11, the reasons for getting food storage has branched out in scope to include job loss and the economy," Pedersen said. "Before then, food storage was not used as frequently except when we were forced to eat it."

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average time someone may spend out of work these days is 40.9 weeks. With this reality facing many Americans, food storage like the Gabrielsons' have can be an economic lifesaver.

Basic mindset

But it requires a different mindset said Teresa Hunsaker, family and consumer sciences agent at the Utah State University Extension. "If all I am storing for is the big earthquake or the inevitably flood. If I am basing, philosophically, my food storage program on needing it because there is a natural disaster I typically will plan and structure it differently than if I look at it as a supplement to a financial downturn," she said.

The Gabrielsons had to change their mindset back in 1999 after Stephan was out of work for about nine months.

The type of food storage they used then was mostly staples — the typical number ten cans of flour, sugar and the like. The basics helped them, but the experience also taught them to expand their understanding of the purposes of food storage.

Since then, the contents of their food storage have become more useable on a daily basis. "We learned early on to avoid the foods we don't like and to get and store more of the foods we do like," said Cameron Gabrielson, their 18-year-old son.