BRAT Diet For Tummy Troubles–Food Storage Style

Once upon a time, I was young and married and had no children.  Sweet husband and I went to a picnic with some friends and a few days later we both became quite sick.  We didn’t think too much of it–random flu or something.  Nothing we ate stayed in too long.  Lots of stomach cramps and diarrhea.  Well, being young and dumb, we waited it out for about 3 days, then instead of calling a doctor, we called the ask-a-nurse hotline about it.  The phone nurse said it could be salmonella if it went on 10 days or so.  Maybe we got it at the picnic–salmonella has about a 3 day incubation time before you show symptoms.  Oh, maybe that’s what it is.  Now, I know you’re thinking I could have just googled salmonella and gotten all the information I needed, but this was before the days of google!  And I was sick.  Really sick.  The phone nurse told us to start eating the BRAT diet–it was good for sensitive stomachs.  Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Toast.  No fresh fruits or veggies (except the bananas), avoid milk products.  So that’s what we started eating.  It worked a little better.  We figured if this went on 10 days we’d go to a real doctor and get checked for salmonella.  So we hung around our house eating the BRAT diet and still not keeping much in for 7 more days.  Really, we were that dumb.  If any of you know me, you know I don’t have 10 days worth of sick weight to lose.  I was laid out on the couch barely able to move, crying over everything, mildly incoherent, and miserable.  Good thing I didn’t have kids at the time.  I really should have been to a doctor long before the day 10 mark, but hey, ask-a-nurse said if it went on 10 days it could be salmonella, so we were just waiting 10 days to find out if that’s what it could be.  Thankfully sweet husband fared better and was able to keep me fed, although we both look back on this as one of the dumbest things we ever did.  At the end of 10 days, sweet husband went in and got tested and sure enough, we’d had salmonella.  The doctor said if he had come in earlier he could have done something to help, but after 10 days, the disease has pretty much run its course, so the dear doctor didn’t do anything but let him know that’s actually what he had.  We stayed on that BRAT diet for some time trying to recover from that bout of nastiness and since then it has become a staple around here for anyone sick with stomach problems.

You or your kids will still get sick if your family is out of work and you’re living off your food storage.  There will be sick people in an emergency situation.  Especially if it is a long term, end of the world as we know it type of emergency.  There may even be more stomach troubles than usual due to decreased sanitation or even just the introduction of “new” food storage foods like whole wheat into your post-emergency diet.  Thankfully, the BRAT diet isn’t too hard to have stocked in your food storage room.  Here’s how you can do it.

Bananas. Bananas can be stored as either banana chips you dehydrate yourself or the crunchy banana chips that are commercially dehydrated.  There are also freeze dried bananas that taste amazingly like fresh bananas.  Banana baby food is another option although kind of pricey and it doesn’t have as long a shelf life as the dehydrated products.

Rice. Rice is a food storage staple.  Cook up some white rice and you’re good to go.  You can also make rice water.  If you don’t have rice or want a little variety, use some germade (also called farina or commercially “Cream of Wheat”).  It’s not rice, but it’s super mild and easy to digest.  Commercial products like rice cakes or baby rice rusks would be great here as well.  Just make sure they’re stored in a container other than just their original packaging to keep the pests out.

Applesauce. Applesauce can be stored by canning your own, purchasing commercially canned applesauce, or there’s even dehydrated applesauce.  Just add water and mix.  In a pinch, dried apples could be used as well.

Toast. Ideally you have ingredients stored to make bread so you could actually have toast.  Let your slice of bread dry out a bit or just eat it as bread if you need to.  One substitution for toast is crackers–you can have saltines, etc. in your short term storage, but they need to be rotated regularly to avoid going rancid.  There are MRE crackers that are nice and dry and have some crazy long shelf life.  You could also make a simple flat bread or biscuit.  Maybe as simple as hardtack which could be made as needed or made ahead and stored.  If made and stored properly, hardtack has a very long storage life–50 years or more.  There is still existing hard tack from the Civil War!

In addition to the BRAT diet, you may also want to keep some re-hydrating drinks on hand.  Pedialyte or Gatorade in their original bottles will keep for a year or  more.  For longer shelf life and more compact storage, you can also store Gatorade powder to mix your own, or other hydration drink mixes like Vitalyte’s Gookinaid or Nuun hydration tablets. The Nuun tablets are great for your emergency kit as well since they are compact with no powder to spill.

Remember life will go on and people will get sick during an emergency.  Be ready to help them or yourself out by including a few basics from the BRAT diet in your food storage plan.

Keep preparing!
Angela