The Emergency Essentials Food Storage Analyzer Reviewed

Ok, so I must admit that I only looked at the analyzer after seeing it on their newsletter and seeing the "Sign up for a gift card" thinggie on there.  Basically, the analyzer is a web based program that, after you create an account and tell it some info is able to tell you about the "State of Affairs" in your pantry.  Specifically, the nutrition available, days of food, and some of the more important Recommended Daily Allowances for some Vitamins and Macro Nutrients. 

The Basics
First, you create an account and then enter the analyzer site.  From there you enter the demographics of your family.  The program then tells you basically how much calories you should allot for each member of your family.  (Remember, for those of us who are more practical than blind by what THEY recommend, if things are really THAT bad then caloric expenditures will surely be WAY off, but that's for another time.)  Anywho, You then go to the analyzer and enter all your stored foods into the program.  I entered just the number 10 cans that I have, and guessed, being conservative (duh) and came up with roughly 58 days of stored dried food for the 4 of us.

The good of the program
The program has a great search feature that never failed to find what I was looking for, with the exception of Coconut oil.  (For my money and my preps, it stores longer and is overall more healthy that their only Oil entry, good ol' veggie oil.  Remember folks, fats are an important macro nutrient.  Maybe more so than we are led to believe. The hard part about them is that they spoil relatively fast.)  The printer friendly list available is very nice as well.  I could see entering a 1 for everything you know you have, printing off the list, then going to your pantry and doing a more thorough count then coming back and fixing your levels.  The program even allows you to put together an order and see ultimately how what you ordered helps up the days of food storage you have. The fact that you can add items whether they are in  #10 cans, 41 pound super pails and other various measurements made things easier as well.

The bad of the program
So I had entered most of my list by searching for an item and adding it, then on to the next item.  I hit calculate and it said, 3.81 days.  WTF??  67 freaking #10 cans and all it was was 3 days, Does mason get 8500 calories per day for a growing kid?  then I noticed that in the RDA portion, I saw that all was listed was 6 cans of pinto beans.  Good to know that there are enough calories in 6 cans of them to get us a few days.  The thing is, you have to enter your item amount and then hit calculate before you go onto the next item.  It doesn't calculate every time you enter something.  It's not a big deal, but I had to go back and re-enter everything.

CH-ch-ch-changes?
The only thing I would change is something to do with an auto update feature, or maybe atleast a reminder to hit calculate after every item entered.  Oh, and add coconut oil...

The Food Storage Analyzer seems to be a great program, and something that I can see most folks utilizing, no matter their level of preparedness experience.  Those with more preparedness experience can have an easy to read one stop order platform, and those with less experience can use it as a great starting off point and something to accurately judge their preps. 

Jim