In Our Heritage: A Brief History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there is a brief recounting of the Winter Quarters experience of those who fled Nauvoo. Some of the experiences of Brigham Young’s son John are recounted.
“Brigham Young’s son John called Winter Quarters ‘the Valley Forge of Mormondom.’ He lived near the burial grounds there and witnessed the ‘small mournful-looking trains that so often passed our door.’ He recalled ‘how poor and same-like’ his family’s diet of corn bread, salt bacon, and a little milk seemed. He said mush and bacon became so nauseating that eating was like taking medicine and he had difficulty swallowing. Only the faith and dedication of the Saints carried them through this trying time.”
Appetite fatigue is a real thing. It can happen eating beans and rice every day. It can happen eating freeze-dried food every day even if the meals are different. Do you have enough variety in your food storage? Variety of foods and variety of seasonings? Variety of preparation so you have a variety of textures and flavors?
Several years ago, I posted the above message. An online acquaintance replied with real life experience with appetite fatigue. Here are her recommendations and her story (with a few minor edits for clarity):
“Yep. Since we experienced food fatigue, variety has been a huge emphasis for our new-and-improved food storage plan.
“It took my kids years before they would eat beans or oatmeal after we lived [completely] off our food storage for 4 months.
“A few years ago, we had a job loss. As we applied for jobs all across the country and looked at our year supply of food storage, it seemed like a good idea to eat up what we had stored and put our food storage plan to the test. We ate from our canned goods liberally, anticipating we would relocate in less than a year, so we wanted to use up the heavy stuff.
“We thought we had a solid plan—30ish rotating recipes, plenty of canned meats, fruits and vegetables, plenty of all of the spices we used in our daily cooking.
“But man, we got tired of everything before 2 months. Even fresh baked bread every day became a chore to eat. We had solid nutrition, but ugh, none of us wanted any of it by 4 months.
“After we relocated to a new job, across the country, we made some changes!
“#1- RECIPES and SEASONINGS
Ideas for ‘something new’, anything new. We looked beyond ‘what we usually ate,’ and tried new spices, etc. to insert variety…
[Someone else made the following comment on my post that supports this idea of something new – “That’s why I started looking at Indonesian, Balkan, Polish recipes. I ended up with several really good cookbooks.”]
“#2 GARDEN
We found that including fresh ingredients, even if just seasonally, did wonders to insert awesome into the staples we had stored!! For us, a garden is really more about vitamins, flavor, and variety than calories. You still need to store grains, beans, etc. as your staples, but wow, a garden has been [a] hugely helpful move for variety!“#3 TEXTURE
A garden also helps provide crunchy stuff (cucumbers, carrots, snap peas, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cabbage, celery, peppers, …) that we missed when we were living off preserved foods. We had plenty of vegetables stored, but they weren’t ‘crunchy.’ I also actively seek out recipes that present different textures, because cooked-beans-and-rice texture gets really old, really fast.“#4 VARIETY OF GRAINS
Instead of primarily wheat, oats, and cornmeal, we bought a smaller variety of grains such as multi-grain cereals, buckwheat, barley, etc.“#5 ADD-INS
Oatmeal again? We store soooo many things to add to oatmeal now. Add-ins go a LONG way to add variety to inexpensive staples. Instead of brown sugar, cinnamon and raisins, our new oatmeal menu includes dried blueberries, apricots, apples, figs, dates, golden raisins, craisins, mixed fruit, frozen peaches from the tree we planted, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, walnuts, and other spices. Way more variety. Same thing for lunch/dinner—a variety [of] add-ins make a difference!! Bacon bits, sunflower seeds, different spices, olives, green chiles, powdered sour cream, powdered cheese, dehydrated vegetables, …“Appetite fatigue is real. And we only lived on our storage for 4 months. Our food storage is based on staples. They really need to be the backbone of a food storage plan. But now we make sure to store a bigger variety of what it takes to make those staples into something we won’t dread eating.
“When I see people claim you can mix up “x” buckets of scotch broth and it’ll keep you alive for a year I always cringe. Yeah, it would keep you alive, but I promise you’d be miserable too. With a little planning and not too much more expense you can learn to do something with the staples you have stored! We own ‘zero’ freeze dried anything. I have no doubt that it’s awesome. But it’s also expensive. For significantly less money than buying even a dozen cans of freeze-dried food, I can store a heck-of-a-lot-of variety to go with my staples.”
Sound advice from someone with experience. Think about it before dismissing the idea of appetite fatigue.
