Oatmeal: The new (very old) hurricane super food

Hurricane season isn’t fully staffed at my house yet because I haven’t amassed my annual hurricane pantry. It’s like the snow emergency pantry on steroids since here in Miami, a mere Category Three can cut power for over a week. You’ve got to take it seriously.

So I decided to do a bit of online research. That’s when I discovered Oscar Pike, a food scientist at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and what I’ll call his “Long Live Food” experiments. Pike and fellow researchers kept a bunch of dried oatmeal around for 28 years and guess what?

That oatmeal was still edible, according to his panel of taste testers. (Well, 75 percent of them though so.) The team also taste-tested freeze-dried apples stored since 1973. Click here to watch the entertaining results on video. (And click here for our terrific granola recipe if you decide you don't want to keep your oats around for decades!)

"All the foods that we've tested have been stored at room temperature or below, so you want to avoid attic and garage storage," Pike says in the video.

In addition, use only food-grade containers, date foods and rotate them at least once a year. Not surprisingly, the best foods for stockpiling include canned soups; freeze-dried items (meats, fruits and/or vegetables); powdered or evaporated milk; and basic staples such as sugar, salt, pepper, rice, coffee or tea. And of course, oatmeal.

Got any emergency pantry advice or stories to share? Please post them on the comments section of this blog post. Thanks!