Could you elaborate on this?
He doesn’t mean literally “Rice and Beans” but he is using it as an example of something that someone could stock up on without being familiar with it, and suddenly learning that they are allergic to it, or don’t like it, or are totally unprepared for the gastric reaction to suddenly switching to a diet heavy with ground wheat, or beans, or lentils.
Personally I am very, very much into rice and beans and wheat for long term survival, it fits my budget, and the shelf life fits my budget also, I love MREs but I can’t afford them, and I don’t want to think in relatively short terms of 10 years of shelf life (budget again).
Wheat and beans and rice are the basis of real food, it is better to have to “forage” and scrounge, and hunt, for meat and greens, than it is to have an occasional rabbit or apple, and desperately need big bowls of real, filling, food, that can’t be found easily.
Those staples require water, and lots of cooking time though, and dietary adjustments for most.
Pressure cookers and canning helps cut down on fuel use when cooking the beans for instance, you can cook them while canning them, which means all that fuel gathering and effort, gives you leftovers that you can put up on the shelf without refrigeration.
To me it means several things.
First is just because something stores a long time don’t store it if you don’t eat it! Store what you eat and eat what you store.
A good example of this is those 1 month, 3 month, 1 year and so on food kits (this pertains to MRE’s as well)that are so popular.If you never tried them how do you know you will eat them. Lets say the kit comes with 10 different dinners a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i and j. Now you like a, b and f. You find c, g, j and h are tolerable, but d and i are horrible and h you wouldn’t feed to your dog. That means you will hold out on those three and someday you could find yourself with only food you can’t STAND! 30% of your food storage is almost UNLESS!
There’s also something called food fatigue it’s were you have the exact same thing every day for weeks on end soon you have to make yourself eat and before long much of what you prepare goes uneaten. JRandomFreeper is more knowledgeable on this as he has seen it happen. Same with your stores oatmeal for breakfast, spam and flat bread for lunch and rice and beans for supper day in and day out will get old so store as much variety as you can, spices, gravies and additives to dress up those staples are a MUST!
The second thing is food and guns aren’t enough in themselves. Lots of food and guns won’t get you through. The most valuable thing is knowledge. You have to know what to do with what you have you need to have a plan a, b and c. Also the longer the situation last the lower morale gets. People stop being sharp and nerves become frayed remember moral of your group is important.
Lastly man does not live by bread alone all the guns gadgets and food in the world won’t get you as far as Faith alone will. Trust in God and keep the Faith.
You might find this article useful:
http://thesurvivalmom.com/2011/11/20/8-morale-boosters-for-any-worst-case-scenario/