Cool. I just happened upon this series today due to a resteem. I have a couple of containers full of dry goods. Rice and beans, beans and rice. Also have a huge bulk container of multivitamins, a bunch of dried milk, several containers of iodized salt and a few day's supply of canned fruit. It would get our family through about a month without any of us losing weight, albeit not exactly tastefully. More than that and I could start hunting for meat since we live in a semi-rural area with lots of game.
It's funny because I learned how to calculate a diet like this because of my problems putting on and maintaining weight over the years. When I moved to Cali I was kind of poor, and I had resolved to pay off credit card debt, so I very methodically sat down and calculated how many calories I would need to maintain weight. Then I went to the local grocery stores and equally as methodically found the cheapest foods that I could find that would a.) give me enough calories, and b.) give me a balanced diet.
What I settled on were TV dinners (meat, veggies, carbs, all in one place), yogurt (the kind that comes in packets 10 or 12, the ultra cheap stuff), bananas, hot dogs, ramen and frozen burritos. Eventually I had to get rid of the burritos because they were almost entirely composed of fat and made me nauseous and lethargic after a while, and replaced them with salads so I got some fresh greens in there somewhere. Regardless, I was able to get my food cost down to less than $5 a day (many days it was around $3, some days I would splurge and get a dollar sandwich and dollar fries at McDonald's) with this diet and because I was so methodical about the calorie intake I actually put on healthy weight for the first time in my life! By healthy weight I mean that it happened gradually over several months.
Now, it wasn't the healthiest food around, but I did learn that I just simply wasn't eating enough calories before this time, and it also convinced me that the methods would work in reverse. If you were trying to lose weight, just cut a couple hundred calories from the "maintain weight" number of calories for your weight and you'll take it off nice and slow, you know, so as not to shock the system into famine mode.
And yes, I paid off all that credit card debt in only two years time while making shit money.
Oh, something I forgot to mention. I slept less and needed less sleep now that I was finally getting enough food. So if you're ever in a SHTF scenario, sleep as much as possible. It will help you conserve energy.
Good advice, especially since a real SHTF scenario would prolly take your work away (except for disaster-relief volunteer work.)
Good for you! With my "regular" stored food, I've latched onto similar food so as to save costs. For example, I've stocked up this past month using off-inventory sales.
One way of eating cheap - provided that multivitamins are part of the diet - is to see cheap staples like flour, rice, ramen, and so on as "base" foods and the rest as "ingredient" materials. I'm starting to knock around with a rice cooker to see what I can do with it.
One thing I found is that you can use it for macaroni (not very well,but serviceably if you don't mind the taste of some "browned" macaroni) and you can also use a single slice of cheese on top (processed "Swiss" in my case), pop it in the microwave for 30 sec., and get home-brew mac and cheese. Not as good as the processed stuff - for one, the cheese coating is thin - but serviceable.
The same trick works for rice & cheese, although one slice doesn't provide enough "cover." This one's a work in progress. :)